aiM y stical

-.'"
~~II

'.III

Paran~rmal
Experience
Introduction by
Marion Zimmer Bradley

Harper's
Encyclopedia

of

Mystical

&

Paranormal
Experience

Also by Rosemary Ellen Guiley

The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft
Tales of Reincarnation
The Mystical Tarot
Moonscapes: A Celebration of Lunar Astronomy,
Magic, Legend and Lore

HARPER'S

ENCYCLOPEDIA
of

Mystical

&

Paranormal
Experience
Foreword by
Marion Zimmer Bradley

ROSEMARY
ELLEN

GUlLEY

HarperSanFrancisco
A Di~'i5ion of HarperCollinsPublishers

ENCYCLOPEDIA
OF JvlYSTICAL A,"-;D PARANORMAL
EXPERIENCE.
Copyright 1991 by Rosemary
Ellen Guiley. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book
may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address
HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.
HARPER'S

FIRST DmOl'-:

Library

of Congress

Cataloging-in-Publication

Data

Guiley, Rosemary.
Harper's encyclopedia of mystical and paranormal experience I Rosemary Ellen Guiley :
foreword by Marion Zimmer Bradley. - 1st ed.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-06-250365-0 (hard: alk. paper)
ISBN 0-06-250365-9 (pbk.)
1. Occultism-Encyclopedias.
2. Parapsychology-Encyclopedias.
3. SupernaturalEncyclopedias.
1. Title.
II. Title: Encyclopedia of mystical and paranormal experience.
BF1407.G85 1991
133'.03 -dc20
90-21718
CIP
93 94 95 RRD(H) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
This edition is printed on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standards Institute
Z39.48 Standard.

Complete credits for illustrations:

Page 86: From The Chakras

and the Human Energy Fields by Shafica Kangulla, M.D. and

Dora van Gelder Kunz. Reprinted by permission of the Theosophical Publishing House. Page
121: Photo by Leon Isaacs. Courtesy The White Eagle Lodge. Page 133: Photos by Bonnie Sue.
Used with permission. Page 186: Photo by Bonnie Sue. Courtesy The Foundation for Research
on the Nature of Man. Page 352: Photo by Bonnie Sue. Courtesy Craig Junjulas. Page 490:
Photo by Norman Seef. Courtesy Concept: Synergy. Page 525: Photo by Nandlal Ramdya,
United Nations. Courtesy Dr. Erlendur Haraldsson. Page 602: Photo by Bonnie Sue. Reprinted
by permission of Morgan Press Inc., 145 Palisades Street, Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522. Cards
Morgan Press.

For
James G. Matlock

Contents
Foreword by Marion Zimmer Bradley

IX

Preface

Xl

Acknowledgments
The Encyclopedia

Xlll

Foreword
When I was first asked to write a foreword for this encyclopedia, I wasn't exactly enthusiastic. Reading an unbound
manuscript almost ten inches tall is a bit
of an ordeal. At least it takes a considerable stretch of the imagination to imagine
what the final printed and bound volume
will be like.
However, I remembered Rosemary's
The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft, which adorns my own coffee table.
I thought it an excellent book and quite
worthy, so I agreed.
Among the virtual flood of books on
the occult with which bookstores have
been cluttered of late, this book stands
out. I find it hard to imagine a better
book for browsing or one that is likely to
give the neophyte more comprehensive
information on the subject. Even the person who is well informed is likely to find
out something he or she didn't already
know. And, after all, for what other purpose is an encyclopedia intended?
The classic book review, "This book
tells me more about penguins than I care
to know," has always been a pitfall of
encyclopedists. This is not the case with
Harper's Encyclopedia of Mystical and
Paranormal Experience. Of course, it
does not cover absolutely everything. No
human work can do that. But, by and
large, it informs readers about anything
they're likely to want to know without
boring them with irrelevant material.

Foreword

I cannot tell you whether you are going to want to put this book on your coffee table, because interior decoration is
not within my field of expertise, no matter how loosely that subject is defined.
What I can say is that it's certainly good
reading. It ought to be fun for the casual
browser as well as the serious seeker of
information, and it's likely to turn the
former into the latter.
One of things I like most to do is
start out in a book like this almost anywhere, find something so fascinating that
one thing simply leads to another, and
before you know it you've read the whole
thing through.
Especially in these troubled times,
we need information, and we need it
badly. In fact, acquiring information can
be the substitute for all those things to
which we're supposed to "just say no." I
sincerely believe that one of the things we
can put in the place of any socially disapproved behavior is the gathering of information, one of the more satisfying
things anyone can do.
And so publishing an encyclopedia
in this day and age can contribute to one
of the major spiritual challenges of our
time. I don't know whether that's what
Rosemary Ellen Guiley or her publishers
first set out to do. But whether they know
it or not, that's what they've done. And
for that, I salute them.
Marion Zimmer Bradley

tX

Preface
This book is a result of my personal odyssey into "alternate realities," which began years ago. As anyone else who has
undertaken such a quest also knows, the
subjects are many and the literature vast.
Reading to find answers raises more
questions in the process.
Early on in this quest, I began to
wish for a handy reference-something
that would provide a quick grasp of subjects and concepts that were new to me. I
envisioned a book that would both satisfy
an immediate need to know and stimulate
deeper inquiries into subjects of particular interest. Looking around, I didn't find
anything quite like what I had in mind.
Years passed and eventually a series of
synchronicities opened up an opportunity
for me to materialize my own wish.
This encyclopedia is intended for the
layperson who is curious about a good
many topics that fall under the "alternate
realities" umbrella. I use the term "alternate realities" for want of a bener one.
"Occult" is too limited and, for many, a
tainted term; "supernatural" has its limitations as well. "New Age" came and,
thankfully, went. Unfortunately, there is
no broad, definitive term to describe the
range of subjects that pique one's curiosity on a spiritual quest. "Alternate realities" suggests the worlds that open up
through many paths of inquiry.
It was not difficult to decide what to
include in the book. Rather, it was difficult to decide what to leave out. The

Preface

book gives preference to subject over person. While it does include a number of
biographies of people of historical note
and popular interest, biographies were
limited in favor of phenomena, disciplines, systems, philosophies, traditions,
and concepts. The emphasis throughout
is on experience. That emphasis, I believe,
will be particularly helpful to those readers who are trying to understand and
come to terms with unusual experiences
they have had themselves. Some of my
own experiences have become part of the
research.
The book is not meant to be definitive, but a reflection of evolving thought.
The reader will find that a good many of
the subjects offer widely disparate theories and points of view. I have attempted
to give objective overviews. Admittedly, I
am not a skeptic, though I seek to be
open-minded and consider all possible
sides and arguments. The sources listed at
the end of every entry will open additional doors for the reader who wishes to
explore a topic further. Due to space
limitations, and because sources are listed
throughout, there is no bibliography at
the end of the book. Sources include approximately 1,100 books and several
hundred periodical articles.
My own interests have always been
eclectic, which I believe is typical of the
interests of many others. Consequently, I
have sought to include a range of subjects
under one cover. One scientist I inter-

Xl

viewed expressed his unhappiness that

parapsychology would be included with
such topics as Tarot and channeling. Why
shouldn't one have diverse interests?
Casting a wide net is part of the discovery
process. When a spiritual quest begins,
one wishes to learn about a good many

xu

things. Only when one is informed can

one make decisions about what to accept
and what to reject. I hope that the reader
who picks up this book because of an interest in one topic will in turn be introduced to something new.

Preface

Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to the many people
who provided material, art, or critiques
that helped the realization of this book. I
would like to give special thanks to:
Joanne P. Austin and Margaret Guiley,
Seattle, and Don Wigal, Ph.D., and Bruce
S. Trachtenberg, New York, for their meticulous help in the research and compilation of many entries; James G. Matlock, New York, parapsychologist and
anthropologist, for his review of a substantial portion of this book, and for his
comments and suggestions, which were
of great help to me; Elda Hartley,
founder of Hartley Films, Cos Cob, Connecticut, for providing me numerous photos taken during her many years as film
chronicler of spiritual quests; and photographer Bonnie Sue, Somers, New
York, for providing numerous photos as
well. Special thanks also to Dorothy Kroll
and Patricia Godfrey, New Jersey, for
their help in research.
I also would like to thank the following individuals and organizations for
their assistance: Renee Haynes, past president of the Society for Psychical Research, London; the staff of the American
Society for Psychical Research, New
York; Eileen CoIl', president of the Parapsychology Foundation, New York; author Tom Perrott, president of The Ghost
Club, London; Susan Jion Postal, Zen
priest, Meeting House Zen Group, Rye,

Acknowledgments

New York; Tinley Nyandak, information

officer of the Office of Tibet, New York;
Celia Regan, public information officer
of Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville,
New York; author Peter Russell, London; Thomas Berry, director of the Riverdale Center of Religious Research,
Bronx, New York; Charles Honorton,
director of the former Psychophysical
Research Laboratories, Princeton, New
Jersey; Peter M. Rojcewicz, assistant
professor of folklore and humanities at
the Juilliard School, New York; author
David Spangler, Seattle; author and spiritual teacher Ram Dass; Colum Hayward, executive director of The White
Eagle Publishing Trust, New Liss and
London, England; Sir George Trevelyan,
founder of the Wrekin Trust, West Malvern, England; the Krishnamurti Society
of America, OJai, California; author Dick
Sutphen; the Sun Bear Tribe, Spokane,
Washington; the Fifth Epochal Fellowship (formerly the Urantia Brotherhood),
Chicago; and psychic and author Craig
Junjulas, New Rochelle, New York.
Finally, I would like to thank my editor at HarperSanFrancisco, Mark D.
Salzw-edel, for shepherding this book
through a lengthy and at times complicated creation process, and for providing
me with guidance and numerous research
materials.

xm

Harper's
Encyclopedia
of

Mystical

&

Paranormal
Experience

I
I
II
I
I
!

i
I
I
I

III

A
A Course in Miracles
A self-study spiritual development course
that was channeled through an atheist
over a seven-year period, from 1965 to
1972. A Course in Miracles is a threevolume work comprising
over 1,100
pages: a 622-page Text, which lays the
theoretical foundation; a 478-page Workbook for Students, which includes 365
lessons, one for each day; and an 87-page

A1anual for Teachers.

Though written in Christian terminology for a contemporary
audience, the
material espouses no single religion, but
has a broad mystical foundation of eternal truths. It is closely related to the
Hindu Vedas. The Course is Zen-like in
its approach to "holy instants," momentto-moment experiences of truth achieved
through
love, forgiveness,
and atonement. Like mainstream Christianity it denies reincarnation.
The basic message of the Course is
that all human beings share a oneness of
love and the capacity for compassion,
forgiveness, and peace. It instructs in ageless lessons, such as love thy neighbor,
love thyself, and forgive and forget. It
stresses that rather than trying to reform
the \vorld, one must change oneself and
one's view of the world. It defines miracles as shifts in perception that remove
the blocks to one's awareness of love's
presence,

which

are inherent

A Course

in Miracles

in human-

kind. The opposite of love is not hate but

fear.
The Course does not claim to be the
only path to enlightenment.
The Manual
states that "Christ takes many forms with
different names until their oneness can be
recognized. "
The Course was dictated by a clear
inner voice to Helen Cohen Schucman, a
psychologist at Presbyterian
Hospital in
New York and an assistant professor of
psychology at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. Schucman was born in the early 1900s to a
Jewish family, but later became an atheist. For years she had experienced visions
she called "mental pictures," which came
to her like black-and-white
still photographs. In the 1960s the visions began to
appear in color and motion, and in meaningful sequences. The same changes occurred in her dreams. Schucman kept
hearing a silent inner voice, which she
called simply the "Voice." She feared she
was gomg msane.
At the same time, she was undergoing stress at work. Schucman shared her
visions and fears with William Thetford,
her supervisor, who thought she might be
having psychic experiences.
In September 1965 she felt she was
about to begin something very unusual. A
month later the Voice began dictating the
Course with the opening words, "This is
a course in miracles. Please take notes."

Frightened, Schucman wanted nothing to do with the Voice, but felt compelled to continue. She took the dictation
in shorthand from the Voice almost daily,
sometimes several times a day. It always
resumed dictation precisely where it had
left off, no matter how much time elapsed
between sessions. Courteously,
it never
intruded during her work or social activities. The Voice never identified itself. It
was clear but silent. Schucman never entered a trance or wrote automatically.
Schucman shared the material with
Thetford. He encouraged her to continue,
though the experiences greatly upset her.
Some of the material was dictated in
prose, some was dictated in blank verse
or iambic
pentameter.
Occasionally,
Schucman was tempted to change the
words that were dictated, but always restored them to their original dictation.
Until almost the end of the project, she
was fearful of the content of the material,
and repeatedly expressed no interest in
reading \vhat the Voice had given her.
and
Beginning in 1971 Schucman
Thetford arranged the Text into chapters
and subsections. By September 1972 the
Manual was finished, completing the entire work. The Voice predicted that a
woman would come along who would
know what to do with it.
That woman was Judith R. Skutch,
president of the Foundation for ParaSensory Investigation. In 1975 she met Thetford and Schucman, who gave her a copy
of the Course. Skutch and her husband,
Robert, changed the name of their foundation to the Foundation for Inner Peace.
In 1976 they dedicated it to publishing
and distributing the Course. Information
spread solely through
word-of-mouth.
Schucman and Thetford chose to remain
anonymous,
but acted as advisers to the
Foundation.
Study groups, independent
of the foundation,
have been started
around the \vorld.
The Voice continued
to speak to
Schucman, who wrote down a collection

of poems. According to her wishes,

name was not revealed until after

her
her

death in February 1981. The Foundation

for Inner Peace published her poems as
The Gifts of God. See Channeling.
Sources: A Course in Miracles: Manual for
Teachers. Tiburon, CA: Foundation for Inner Peace, 1975; "Interview: Judith R.
Skutch." New Realities 1, no. 1 (1977):
17-25; Robert Skutch. Journey without
Distance: The Story behind a Course in
Miracles. Berkeley, CA: Celestial Arts,
1984; Robert Skutch. "The Incredible Untold Story Behind A Course in Miracles."
New Realities 6, no. 1 (July/August 1984):
17-27; Brian Van der Horst. "Simple,
Dumb, Boring Truths and A Course in Miracles." New Realities 1, no. 1 (1977):
8-15+; Brian Van der Horst. "Miracles
Come of Age." New Realities 3, no. 1 (August 1979): 48-55.

Acupressure
See Bodywork.

Acupuncture
See Bodywork.

Age of Aquarius
A supposed rwo-thousand-year-Iong
era
of enlightenment,
joy, accomplishment,
intellect, brotherly peace, and closeness
to God, heralded by the entry of the sun
into the zodiac sign of Aquarius.
Astrologers
disagree on the exact
start of the Age of Aquarius. Dates range
from 1904 to 2160; the latter was arrived
at in calculations made by the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn. The disparities in dates are due to the backward
drift of the vernal equinox through the
zodiac. The vernal equinox takes 25,920
years to make a complete cycle through
the zodiac, but a gradual slipping creates
a retrograde of one zodiac sign approxi-

A Course

in Miracles

mately every 2,160 years. Some astrologers take this slippage into account, others do not. American
medium Edgar
Cayce, called by some "the Prophet of the
New Age," said the Age of Aquarius and
its preceding age, the Age of Pisces, overlap and that the transition could not be
fully understood
until the beginning of
the twenty-first century. The Age of Pisces is supposed to be characterized by disillusionment and skepticism. The transition to Aquarius
allegedly will bring
ferment and change in social behavior
and institutions. Aquarius is ruled by t\vo
planets: Saturn, symbol of time, endurance, tests, and tasks; and Uranus, symbol of the new, revolutionary,
strange,
and bizarre. The 2160 starting date for
the Age of Aquarius approximately
coincides with various predictions
of cataclysms, war, and a shift of the North Pole
in the closing years of the t\ventieth century, followed by a t\vo-thousand-year
era of peace, tranquility,
and brotherhood.
See Nostradamus;
Revelation,
Book of. The term "Age of Aquarius"
was popular during the 1960s, which saw
a great deal of societal change and upheaval and interest in spiritual exploration. The Great Conjunction
of the sun,
moon, Venus, lvlars, lvlercury, Jupiter,
and Saturn in Aquarius on February 5,
1962, was said by astrologers to be a significant influence on quickening the transition to the new era. The term "Age of
Aquarius" has been supplanted by "New
Age." See Harmonic Convergence;
New
Age.

Sources: "Astrology and the New Cult of

the Occult." Time (lvlarch 21, 1969): 4756; Mary Ellen Carter. Edgar Cayce on
Prophecy.
New York: Warner,
1968;
Grace Cooke. The Illumined Ones. New
Lands, England: White Eagle Publishing
Trust, 1966; Jean-Charles de Fombrune.
Nostradamus:
Countdou/ll to Apocalypse.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and \{'inston,
1980; Doreen Valiente. Witchcraft for To-

Akasha

(akasa)

morrow.

Custer, WA: Phoenix Publishing,

1978.

Aikido
See Martial

arts.

Akasha (akasa)
In Hinduism
and Buddhism,
the allpervasive life principle or all-pervasive
space of the universe. Akasha is the Sanskrit term for "all-pervasive space."
In Hinduism the akasha is seen as
the substance ether, the fifth and subtlest
element. The akasha permeates
everything in the universe and is the vehicle for
all life and sound. In the practice of yoga,
the akasha is one of three universal principles, along with prana ("breath of life")
and "creative mind," which form a trinity
of sources of magical and psychic power,
and are immanent in all things from the
mineral kingdom on up, throughout
the
universe. From the akasha comes will,
\vhich enables all manner of feats to be
accomplished.
In Buddhism

the akasha

is not ether

but space, of which there are two kinds.

One is space limited by the material and
associated with the skandas or "aggregates," which form the personality: physical form, sensation, perception,
mental
formations,
and consciousness.
The second is space that is unlimited, beyond all
description, unbound by the material yet
the container for all things material.
A concept of the akasha was introduced to the West in the early twentieth
century by Madame Helena P. Blavatsky,
mystic and founder of the Theosophical
Society. Blavatsky likened the akasha to
other interpretations
of the universal life
force, such as the "sidereal light" of the
Rosicrucians, the "astral light" of French
occultist Eliphas Levi, and the "Odic
force" of German physicist Baron Karl
von Reichenbach.
It also is seen as an
equivalent of the Hebrew ruah, the wind,
breath, air in motion, or moving spirit.

According to Blavatsky the akasha

forms the anima mundi (the world soul,
which allows divine thought to manifest
in matter) and constitutes the soul and
astral spirit of humankind.
It produces
mesmeric, magnetic operations of nature.
See Akashic Records; Umversallife
force.
Sources: H. P. Blavatsky. Isis Unveiled: A
Master Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and
Modern Science and Theology. London and
Benares: The Theosophical Publishing Society, 1910; H. P. Blavatsky. The Secret
Doctrine. 1888. Pasadena, CA: Theosophical University Press, 1977; Joseph Campbell. The Masks of God. Vol. 4, Oriental
Mythology.
New York: Viking Penguin,
1962; The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion. Boston: Shambhala,
1989; C. W. Leadbeater. The Chakras.
Wheaton,
IL: Theosophical
Publishing
House, 1927; Ormond McGill. The Mysticism and Magic of India. Cranbury, NJ:
A. S. Barnes & Co., 1977.

Akashic Records
In Theosophy the master records of everything that has ever occurred since the
beginning of the universe. The records are
said to exist as impressions in the astral
plane, and provide a dossier of sorts for
souls who wish to examine their spiritual
progress through many lifetimes.
The term "Akashic" comes from the
Sanskrit word akasha, defined as either
the fundamental
etheric substance in the
universe or all-pervasive space. According
to Theosophy
the akasha is an eternal
record of the vibrations of every action,
thought, emotion, light, and sound.
Some psychics say they consult the
Askashic Records either through clairvoyance or our-of-body travel, to receive
information
about past history or lives.
The process is variously described as tuning into an astral television set, or tuning
into a radio broadcast,
or visiting an
enormous library and looking up information in books. Some say they encoun-

ter spirit guides, who assist them in locating information.

American medium Edgar Cayce often consulted
the Akashic Records to
look into past lives to find reasons for
health, personal, and marital problems in
the current lives of clients. Cayce alternately called the Akashic Records the
"Universal Memory of Nature" and the
"Book of Life."
In Edgar Cayce on Reincarnation, by
Noel Langley, Cayce describes an apparent out-of-body
trip to the Akashic
Records to get information about a client.
Cayce said he felt himself leave his body
and travel in a narrow, straight shaft of
light. On both sides of the shaft was fog
or smoke, and shadowy beings who tried
to distract him from his mission. Some
pleaded for him to help them, but he kept
to the light. As he continued on, the beings took on more distinct form and
bothered him less. Eventually, they quit
trying to distract him and seemed to help
him on, then ignored him altogether. Finally, he arrived at a hill, where he saw a
mount and a great temple. Inside was a
large room like a library, filled with
books of people's lives. All he had to do
was pull down the book he wanted. See
Cayce, Edgar.
Philosopher
Rudolf Steiner delved
into the Akashic Records, which he called
the Akashic Chronicle, to produce his detailed descriptions
of the mythical, lost
civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria.
According to Cayce and other psychics, the Akashic Records travel on
waves of light, and anyone can gain access to them with proper psychic training
and attunement.
See Akasha.
Sources: Richard Cavendish, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Unexplained. New York:
McGraw-Hill,
1974; Individual Reference
File of Extracts from the Edgar Cayce
Readings. Virginia Beach, VA: Edgar Cayce
Foundation,
1976; Noel Langley. Edgar
Cayce on Reincarnation. New York: Castle
Books, 1967; Robert A. McDermott, ed.

Akasha

(akasa)

and intra. The Essential Steiner. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984; Joan Windsor. The Inner Eye: Your Dreams Can
Make You Psychic. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1985.

Alchemy
Literally, an ancient art of transmutation
and the precursor of modern chemistry
and metallurgy. Symbolically, a mystical
art for the transformation
of consciousness.
Current Western interest in alchemy
is due largely to psychiatrist Carl G. Jung,
who sa\v it as having a spiritual dimension as well as a physical one: The true
purpose of the art is the psychological
and spiritual transformation
of the alchemist.
Alchemy is called a "spagyric"
from the Greek terms for "to tear"

an,
and

"to bring together." As a mystical art, it

draws on various spiritual traditions, including the Hermetica,
Gnosticism,
Islam, the Kabbalah, Taoism, and yoga.
Western and Eastern alchemical arts have
developed

differently.

Western Alchemy
Western alchemy draws on the Hermetic tradition,
Greco-Egyptian
esoteric
teachings.
According
to legend
the
founder is Hermes T rismegistus, a form
of the Egyptian and Greek gods of magic
and wisdom, Thoth and Hermes, respectively. See Hermetica. In the late centuries
B.C. and early centuries .\.D., the Egyptians
combined metallurgy with Hermetic philosophy and ideas drawn from Western
mysteries, Neoplatonism,
gnosticism, and
Christianity.
The Egyptians
developed
one of the basic fundamentals
of alchemy: that the world was created by divine force out of a chaotic mass called

prima materia, or "first matter."

Thus in
alchemy all things can be reduced to first
matter through soh'e et coagula, "dis-

Alchemy

Alchemists at work
solve and combine," and transmuted
to
something
more desirable.
Specifically,
alchemists sought to transmute through
joining opposites.
By the fourth century .\.D., alchemy
had assumed its historical form and essentially replaced the disintegrating mysteries. It spread throughout
Europe beginning in the twelfth century, a product
of the Muslim occupation
of Spain. It
\vas a highly respected science, practiced
by adepts who wrote their treatises and
manuals in deliberately obscure language.
The term "gibberish"
is derived from a
medieval
alchemist
named
Jabir
ibn
Hayyan, generally known as Geber (c.
721-815), whose writings were largely
unintelligible.
Alchemy was at its peak from the
late Middle Ages through the Renaissance. Alchemists sought the elusive "philosopher's stone," or lapis, a mysterious

substance believed to enable the transmutation of base metals into silver or gold.
The philosopher's stone also served as the
"elixir of life," a means to immortality.
While most attempts at metals transmutations were failures, some alchemists
claimed to succeed. Nicholas Flamel, one
of the great alchemists of the fourteenth
century, is said to have achieved the
transmutation of mercury into silver or
gold on three occasions.
The writings and drawings produced
by the alchemists tend to be obscure and
difficult to understand. The alchemists
based their study primarily upon direct,
personal revelation through visions and
dreams. The alchemists did not describe
their work in direct terms, but wrote and
drew in symbols intended only for the
comprehension of other adepts. They varied in their use of terminology.
According to early alchemy, all
things have a hermaphroditic composition of two substances: sulfur, which represents the soul and the fiery male principle; and mercury, which represents
spirit and the watery female principle.
Later European alchemy added a third ingredient, salt, which corresponds to
body. The transmutation process involves
separating these three essentials and recombining them into a different form.
The process must be done according to
astrological auspices.
As a continuation of the mysteries,
alchemy may essentially have been a euphemism for the sacred service of cocreation, made possible by immortalization,
a status that had been achieved through
initiation into the mysteries.
The hermaphroditic nature of alchemy was often expressed in erotic art,
though there is no evidence that actual
sexual rites were practiced.
Medieval and Renaissance alchemists were responsible for many discoveries important in metallurgy, chemistry,
and medicines. See Paracelsus. However,
in the early nineteenth century, alchemy

was discredited by the discoveries of oxygen and the composition of water. Alchemy was reduced to the level of pseudoscience and superstition and was
replaced by physics.
Interest in alchemy remained low
key until about the second half of the
twentieth century, when a revival of interest began taking hold in the West. Alchemy schools were founded to teach the
ancient art, resulting in spagyric products
for cosmetics, herbal medicines, beverages and wines, perfumes, and so on.

Eastern Alchemy
Alchemy was highly developed in ancient China. It was an oral tradition until
c. A.D. 320, when the classic alchemical
text, Nei P'ien, was written by Ko Hung.
The immortality sought by the Chinese
was not an extension of earthly years;
they sought instead to attain a state of
timelessness spent with the Immortals, in
which one had supernormal powers. To
this end ancient Chinese alchemy focused
on various elixirs, which were purified by
combining ingredients and repeatedly
heating them in various vessels.
The alchemical process is analogous
to Taoist meditation, in which ch'i, the
universal life force, is created and purified
in the body. Ch'i is created when the nutritious elements of food are combined
with secretions from glands and organs.
This forms blood and sexual energy
(ching). Heat in the form of breath transforms the sexual energy to ch'i, which circulates up and down psychic channels
along the spine, from the crown to the
abdomen, somewhat akin to the kundalini energy of yoga. The ch'i passes
through twelve psychic centers located
along the channels. After many cycles the
ch'i becomes refined. It reaches the crown
in a highly concentrated state, where it
can be manipulated or else sent back
down to the abdomen. The ch'i can be
stored for future use.

Alchemy

In India alchemy traces its roots to

earlier than 1000 B.C. in the development
of Ayurvedic ("the wisdom of life") medicine, where it continues to play a role
today. Indian alchemy is a union of male
(Shiva) and female (Parvati) principles;
the result is jivan, an enlightened being.
In both Hindu and Chinese traditions, one may also achieve immortality
through Tantric, yoga. Prolonged abstinence or coitus without ejaculation
is
believed to intensify the life force (prana
or ch'i) and produce
physiological
changes.

Jung and Alchemy

Carl G. Jung's interest in alchemy
grew out of his intense interest in Gnosticism, and his desire, as early as 1912, to
find a link between it and the processes of
the collective unconscious
that would
pave the way for the reentry of the Gnostics' sophia (wisdom) into modern culture. He found such a link in alchemy,
which he saw as analogous to individuation, the process of becoming whole.
Jung had many significant dreams
during his life, and in 1926 he had one in
which he was a seventeenth-century
alchemist who was creating a great alchemical work. The dream proved to be prophetic, for Jung made alchemy a focus of
much of his work. Inspired by that and
other alchemical dreams, Jung collected a
vast body of works on alchemy and immersed himself in study of the subject.
His research was greatly influenced
by The Secret of the Golden Flower, a
Chinese mystical and alchemical tract discovered by lung's friend Richard Wilhelm, and given him by Wilhelm in 1928
for comment. The Secret of the Golden
Flower revealed to lung the bridge between Gnosticism and the psychology of
the unconscious.
In comparing the Chinese tract with Latin alchemical works,

Alchemy

lung found that the alchemy systems of

both East and West essentially dealt with
transformation
of the soul.
lung was amazed to notice that
many of his patients-men
and women of
both European
and American
backgrounds-produced
in their dreams and
fantasies symbols that were similar or
identical to those in myth, fairy tales, the
mystery cults, and alchemical works. This
insight led him to develop his ideas about
the collective unconscious, a repository of
primeval images and patterns of behavior
shared by humankind.
lung's first important words on alchemy were a lecture on alchemical symbolism in dreams, entitled "Dream Symbols and the Individuation
Process,"
delivered in 1935 at Villa Eranos on Lake
Maggiore in southern Switzerland. A year
later, also at Eranos, he lectured on "The
Idea of Redemption
in Alchemy."
His
first book on the subject was Psychology
and Alchemy (1944). Aion, Alchemical
Studies, and Mysterium Coniunctionis
also deal with alchemy. lung's knowledge
of alchemy is exemplified throughout
all
of his later writings.
lung saw alchemy as a spiritual process of redemption
involving the union
and transformation
of Lumen Dei, the
light of the Godhead, and Lumen Naturae, the light of nature. The alchemists'
experimental
procedure of solve et coagula symbolized
the "death"
and "rebirth" of the substances they used. Alchemists were part of the process, and transmuted their own consciousness
into a
higher state through
rebirth.

symbolic

death and

According to lung the early Christian alchemists

used the philosopher's
stone as a symbol of Christ. Thus, in its
highest mystical sense, alchemy represents the transformation
of consciousness
to love, personified
by the hermaphrodite, the union of male-female opposites
(physicality
and spirituality)
who are
joined into a whole. See Collective Ull-

conscious;
Gustav.

Gnosticism;

Jung,

Carl

Sources: Richard Cavendish, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Unexplained. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1974; Martin Ebon, ed. The
Signet Handbook of Parapsychology. New

York: New American Library, 1978;

Manly P. Hall. The Secret Teachings of All
Ages. 1928. Los Angeles: The Philosophic
Research Society, 1977; M. Esther Harding. Psychic Energy: Its Source and Its
Transformation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973; Stephan A. Hoeller.
"c. G. Jung and the Alchemical Revival."
Gnosis 8 (Summer 1988): 34-39; Stephan
A. Hoeller. The Gnostic Jung and the Seven
Sermons to the Dead. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1982; C. G.
Jung. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffe. New
York: Random House, 1961; C. G. Jung.
Psychology and Alchemy. Rev. ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968; C.
G. Jung. The Practice of Psychotherapy. 2d
ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1966; C. G. Jung. Aion. 2d ed. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1968; C. G.
Jung. Mysterium Coniunctionis.
2d ed.
Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1970; John Lash. "Parting of the Ways."
Gnosis 8 (Summer 1988): 22-26; Da Liu.
T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Meditation.
New
York: Schocken Books, 1986; Jim Melodini. "The Age of Gold." Gnosis 8 (Summer 1988): 8-10; Hans Nintzel. "Alchemy
Is Alive and Well." Gnosis 8 (Summer
1988): 11-15; Peter O'Connor. Understanding

Jung,

Understanding

Yourself.

New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press,

1985; Andrew Samuels, Bani Shorter, and
Fred Plaut. A Critical Dictionary of Jungian
Analysis. London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1986; Elemire Zolla. "Alchemy Out
of India." Gnosis 8 (Summer 1988):
48-49.

Alexander Technique
See Bodywork.

Alpert, Richard
See Ram Dass.

Altered states of consciousness

Any of a variety of states characterized by
a radical shift in the pattern of consciousness from one's "normal" waking state.
The term "altered states of consciousness" (ASCs) was coined by parapsychologist Charles T. Tart. ASCs have been
shown to be of some benefit in psi functioning, but have been difficult to study
scientifically because of their subjective
and internal nature. There is no universal
"normal" state of consciousness from
which to begin a study, though there are
probably biological limitations to the
possible range. The highest ASCs are
mystical states of consciousness.
States of consciousness-ordinary
and altered-take place in four levels of
brain-wave activity: beta, alpha, theta,
and delta. The beta level is complete,
waking consciousness, with brain waves
ranging from 14 to 27 cycles per second.
Approximately 75 percent of the waking
consciousness is consumed with monitoring physical functions. The alpha level is
characterized by brain waves of 8 to 13
cycles per second. In the alpha state material from the subconscious is accessible.
The brain is in this state during light hypnosis, meditation, biofeedback, daydreaming, and the hypnagogic and hypnapompic states just prior to and after
sleep. In the theta level, brain waves
range from 4 to 8 cycles per second.
Theta is the equivalent of light sleep, a
state of unconsciousness in which one is
unaware of what is going on around one.
Some people are able to drop into the
theta level in biofeedback and meditation. The delta level is deep sleep, with
brain waves ranging from 0 to 4 cycles
per second.
Numerous ASCs can be differentiated, including: (1) dreaming, with periods of rapid eye movement (REM) and
absence of "slow" brain waves; (2) sleeping, with "slow" brain waves and absence of REM; (3) hypnagogic, between

Alchemy

wakefulness and sleep; (4) hypnapompic,

between sleep and wakefulness; (5) hyperalert, or prolonged and increased vigilance induced by intense concentration
or drugs; (6) lethargic, which includes depression, fatigue, and so on; (7) rapture,
or overpowering positive emotion; (8)
hysteria, or overpowering negative emotion; (9) fragmentation; (10) regressive,
as in age regression induced by hypnosis;
(11) meditative, characterized by continuous alpha waves, lack of visual imagery,
and minimal mental activity; (12) trance,
characterized by absence of continuous
alpha waves; (13) reverie, which occurs
during trance and with REM; (14) daydreaming; (15) internal scanning, or
awareness of bodily feelings on a nonreflective level; (16) stupor; (17) coma; (18)
stored memory, in which information
must be recalled by conscious effort; (19)
expanded consciousness, such as peak
and mystical experiences; and (20) shamanic consciousness, an altered but lucid
state in which a shaman accesses the underworld or the celestial world. See Shamanism.
ASCs can occur spontaneously, or
can be induced through disciplines such
as yoga, Zen, and other forms of meditation; prayer; and various occult and
magical techniques. They also can be induced through dancing, chanting, intoxication, self-inflicted pain, sensory
deprivation, sensory overload, sleep deprivation, progressive relaxation, hypnosis,
fatigue, malnutrition, fasting and diet,
physical and psychological trauma, birthing, staring, sex, and psychotic episodes.
ASCs and Psi
In laboratory tests since the early
1950s, ASC-inductive techniques, such as
relaxation, sensory deprivation, ganzfeld
stimulation, hypnosis, and meditation,
have been shown to enhance psi functioning, especially in forced-choice extrasensory perception (ESP) tests, and also in

Altered states of consciousness

free-response tests and psychokinesis

(PK) tests. The most frequently used induction techniques are progressive relaxation and ganzfeld stimulation. See
Ganzfeld stimulation. Drugs, especially
psychedelics, are avoided because they
are too disorienting. See Drugs in mystical and psychic experiences. Induced
ASCs remove distractions from the conscious mind, and might serve to bolster
the confidence and expectations of the
test subject. The influence of suggestion,
either deliberate or implicit, also must be
considered, for suggestion alone can positively affect test results.
Not all parapsychologists agree on
the value of ASCs in psi testing. Remote
viewing (seeing a distant site or object by
clairvoyance or visiting a distant site by
out-of-body travel) produces equally
good results in "normal" consciousness,
for example. Some factors are unpredictable, such as the individual reactions to
an ASC, and the potential for bad experiences among some individuals.
ASCs as a State-Specific

Science

Orthodox science largely rejects the

experiences and knowledge gained from
ASCs, many of which are intensely spiritual in nature. Most ASCs have no physical phenomena and thus are epiphenomena, to which science gives little value.
Furthermore, they are highly subjective
and resist laboratory controls. However,
in the mid-1970s Tart introduced the
terms "discrete states of consciousness"
and "altered states of consciousness," referring to recognizable patterns that are
maintained despite variations in particulars.
Scientific research has been effective
in the areas of dreams, meditation, biofeedback, and some intoxicated and
drug-induced states. Transpersonal psychology has focused on the therapeutic
benefits of ASCs, especially the higher
mystical states. See Biofeedback; Dreams;

Meditation; Mystical experiences; Sheep/

goat effect; Psychology.
Sources: Hoyt L. Edge, Robert L. Morris,
John Palmer, and Joseph H. Rush. Foundations of Parapsychology. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986; Philip Goldberg. The Intuitive Edge. Wellingborough,
Northamptonshire, England: Turnstone,
1985; Charles T. Tart, ed. Altered States of
Consciousness: A Book of Readings. New
York: John Wiley & Sons, 1969; Charles
T. Tart, ed. Transpersonal Psychologies.
San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1975;
Charles T. Tart. States of Consciousness.
New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975; John
White, ed. The Highest State of Consciousness. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books/
Doubleday, 1972; Benjamin B. Wolman,
ed. Handbook of Parapsychology. New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977.

Alternative religious movements

Various churches, sects, and cults that are
outside mainstream, conventional religions. In the West alternative religious
movements have been on the rise since
the early nineteenth century, and seem to
have experienced significant growth since
the 1970s; many are identified with the
New Age movement. Most groups are
small and sincere in pursuing their individual visions, but some cults have been
accused of abusing and manipulating
members.
There are various definitions of alternative religious movements. Social scientists divide them into three groups:
churches, sects, and cults. Churches are
large denominations that fit within the
prevailing culture; sects are groups that
have broken away from denominations,
such as Quakers, Jehovah's Witnesses,
and so on; and cults are groups that follow structures alien to the prevailing environment.
The term "cult" is subject to differing definitions. As alien and transplanted

10

religions, Hinduism and Buddhism technically are cults in the West, and Christianity is a cult in the East. Some conservative Christians define cult as any
religious group that is non-Christian.
"Cult" also has become a pejorative
term. Cults usually are identified as
groups having a charismatic leader,
which is characteristic of any emergent
religion, including Christianity.
Alternative
religious movements
have existed throughout history. In the
West they have arisen out of paganism,
Christianity, and Western occultism, and
have also been imported from the East. In
the present day numerous Eastern religious groups have taken root and flourished in the West. Some of these groups
exist primarily to serve the ethnic communities of immigrants, and have attracted the intellectual and religious interest of occidentals. Other groups have
been established primarily to spread their
teachings to Westerners. The common
themes of Eastern religious groups include pantheistic universalism; a sense of
the divine within; the goal of uniting with
the inner divine through meditation or
mystical experience; a cosmos that is
an infinite, nondualistic, conscious, and
transpersonal Reality, which is the divine
that dwells within and is the true nature
of all things; and karma and reincarnation.
The religions and philosophies of
East and West have cross-fertilized each
other since ancient times. Major influences on modern alternative movements
date to the influence of Confucian philosophy on the Enlightenment, as well as
on some of the founding fathers of America, including Benjamin Franklin. In the
nineteenth century the Transcendentalists
were influenced by Hinduism. Transcendentalism and Theosophy brought Eastern concepts to the West. They combined
with other movements such as mental
healing, Spiritualism, and a revival of occultism, and in turn influenced the for-

Altered

states of consciousness

mati on of various alternative

religious
movements, whose numbers grew significantly after World War II. In the 1970s,
following the social and political unrest
of the 1960s, alternative religious movements increased. In America the lifting of
strict immigration quotas for Asians also
influenced this proliferation.
The number of alternative religious
groups
is unknown.
Estimates
vary
greatly because of the different definitions applied. J. Gordon Melton, a scholar of alternative religions, estimates that
in the United States there are five hundred to six hundred stable, nontraditional
religious groups with a total of approximately 150,000
to 200,000
members,
and that more than one hundred of the
groups are ethnic and oriented to communities of immigrants. Various anti cultists claim that thousands of cults, mostly
destructive, exist; however, there is no evidence to support the claim. Membership
figures do not include the unknown thousands who sample alternative
religious
movements bur do not join.
Alternative religious movements appeal primarily to single, young, uppermiddle class, urban adults, though the total audience is broader. In the United
States, approximately
50 percent are Protestant, 25 percent are Catholic, and 25
percent are Jewish. With the exception of
the Jews, who are over-represented
in alternative religious groups, the figures are
representative
of the general religious
population mix. More than 90 percent of
those 'who become members of an alternative group leave within a few yearsmost within two-and
either return to
their original religion or follow no religion at all. The overwhelming majority of
those who leave do so of their own volition. Only a very small minority must be
deprogrammed.
Space considerations
preclude a discussion of all of the alternative religious
movements. The following groups, however, have received a great deal of atten-

Alternative religious movements

tion and have at various

times been the

targets of anti cult organizations.

International Society of Krishna

Consciousness (ISKON)
A conservative

form

of Hinduism

based
on Bhakti
(devotional)
Yoga,
ISKON was founded in America in 1965
by A. C. Bhaktivedanta
Swami Prabhupada (born Abhay Charan De) of Calcutta, India. ISKON is the latest revival
of a movement started in the sixteenth
century by a Bengali saint, Chaitanya
Mahaprabhu
(1486-1534?).
At age
t'Nenty-one,
Chaitanya
began chanting
the name of Krishna, and attracted a following. Swami Prabhupada
(1896-1977)
became a follower of one of the revivalist
movements, the Gaudiya Mission, and in
1933 was charged by its leader, Bhakti
Siddhanta,
with carrying Krishna Consciousness to the West. Prabhupada
did
little until 1965, when the United States
lifted restrictions on Asian immigration.
By that time Prabhupada was seventy. He
came to New York and quickly built up
a following. By 1970 ISKON was spread
throughout
the United States and to Europe, England, Australia,
Canada, and
Japan.
Devotees of ISKON are called the
Hare Krishnas for their incessant chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra
(see
Mantra),
which they believe will raise
their consciousness
to a state of bliss.
Krishna is considered the Personality of
the Godhead. Knowledge of the Vedic literature, especially the Bhagavad-Gita, is
stressed, although all great scriptures are
held to contain the Absolute Truth.
Devotees adopt clothing associated
with the devotional life in India and follow a semimonastic
tarians. They gained
their chanting in the
of funds in airports,
become restricted.
quarters

life. They are vegepublic attention for

street and soliciting
practices that have
International
head-

are in West Bengal, India; Amer-

11

ican headquarters
California.

are in Los Angeles,

The Church Universal and

Triumphant (Summit
Lighthouse)
Founded by Mark L. and Elizabeth
Clare Prophet, the Church Universal and
Triumphant is often confused with a similar group, the "I AM" Religious Activity,
with which it has never been affiliated.
Both are centered on the Messengership
of the Ascended Masters.
In 1958 Mark L. Prophet was
anointed a new Messenger of the Masters
by the Ascended Master EI Morya, and
began to give lectures based on the dictations he received. Several years later he
married Elizabeth Clare Wulf, who subsequently was anointed a Messenger.
When EI Morya announced the Keepers
of the Flame Fraternity, the Prophets
formed Summit Lighthouse as a vehicle
for their work. In 1973 Mark Prophet
died of a stroke, and Elizabeth assumed
full leadership. Mark is believed to dictate teachings to her. In 1974 the Church
Universal and Triumphant was incorporated and Summit Lighthouse was made
its publishing arm. The organization includes the Montessori International educational system, founded in 1970, and
owns various properties, including a
33,000-acre ranch near Livingston, Montana, which supports a commune.
The church holds that God exists in
the soul of each individual as the "I AM"
Presence. Union with this presence is accomplished by raising the energy of the
feminine principle and wedding the soul
to the universal Christ consciousness.
Doctrines include reincarnation and the
law of karma.
The Montana ranch features a shelter, which members intend to use in the
event of nuclear war, predicted at least
twice by Prophet. In 1989 Prophet's second husband, Ed Francis, was charged

12

with illegally purchasing semiautomatic

weapons, ammunition, and handguns.
Other weapons at the ranch were confiscated. In March 1990 several thousand
followers purchased places in the shelter,
some paying as much as $6,000, because
Prophet warned of imminent nuclear
war.

Divine Light Mission

Short-lived in the United States bu't
successful elsewhere, the Divine Light
Mission began informally in India in
1930 under 'the leadership of Sri Hans
Maharaj Ji, a disciple of the Sant Mat tradition. In 1960 he founded the Divine
Light Mission. He died in 1966 and was
succeeded by his eight-year-old son, Prem
Pal Singh Rawat, who was directed to do
so by a divine voice. He took the title
Maharaj Ji. The boy had been recognizee!
as an adept and initiated at age six.
The Divine Light Mission acquired
American followers in India, some of
whom became initiates, or "premies,"
and invited the boy wonder to the United
States. The Maharaj Ji arrived in 1971 at
age thirteen, intending to spread the Divine Light Mission throughout the West,
despite opposition from his mother. Tens
of thousands flocked to him, but by 1973
the American drive was in trouble. A
"Millennium 73" event held at the Houston Astrodome to announce the beginning of one thousand years of peace and
prosperity was a huge flop. The Maharaj
Ji's marriage in 1974 to his twenty-fouryear-old secretary, whom he declared an
incarnation of the goddess Dulga, added
to the decline. In India his family ousted
him from control of the Mission, and in
1975 he returned there to sue them. He
won control of the Mission everywhere
but in India.
A small following continues in the
United States. The Maharaj Ji has been
more successful converting followers in

Alternative religious movements

South America, Southeast Asia, and the

South Pacific.

Rajneesh Foundation
International
The Bhagwan ("godman") Shree Rajneesh, born a Jain in India in 1931,
proved to be one of the more controversial gurus to set up shop in the West. He
claimed to have his first experience of samadhi (enlightenment) when he was
seven; in 1953, while a student at the
University of Saugar, he experienced a
spiritual death and rebirth. In 1966 he
became a full-time spiritual leader, espousing nontraditional teachings that became known as Rajneeshism, a synthesis
of major religions and humanistic psychology. He was discovered by Westerners in Bombay in 1970. In 1974 he
founded the Rajneesh Foundation (later
the Rajneesh Foundation International)
and established an ashram at Poona.
In 1981 Rajneesh came to the United
States, where he purchased a 64,000-acre
ranch near Antelope, Oregon; in 1982 it
was incorporated as Rajneeshpuram. His
followers were at constant odds with the
residents of Antelope, especially when
Rajneesh hosted seven thousand followers at a summer festival. In a 1982 election, devotees took control of the Antelope government. Efforts to deport
Rajneesh failed, for he had been adopted
in 1936 by an Indian who became a US
citizen in 1973 -the father of his secretary, Ma Anand Sheela. Despite Rajneesh's blatant materialism, most notably
a fleet of nearly one hundred Rolls Royces (gifts from his followers), his devotees
increased across the country.
In 1985, in a storm of controversy
that involved charges of attempted poisoning of a number of people, Ma Anand
Sheela resigned, and Rajneesh denounced
her and accused her of crimes against him
and the movement. He then denounced
Rajneeshism, which he said she had cre-

Alternative religious movements

ated. Within weeks he was indicted on

charges of immigration fraud. He left Oregon and was arrested in North Carolina.
In a plea bargain he confessed to two felonies and agreed to pay a $40,000 fine
and leave the United States. He returned
to India. Rajneeshpuram was closed and
the property sold, which effectively ended
the movement in the United States, but
not in other countries. Rajneesh died of
heart failure at age fifty-eight on January
19, 1990 in Poona, India.

Unification Church
The Unification Church, the target
of the most anti cult activity in the United
States, was founded in 1954 in North Korea by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon
(born Young Myung Moon in 1920).
Moon was ten when his parents converted to Presbyterianism, and was sixteen when he had a vision of Jesus, who
anointed him to fulfill Jesus' unfinished
mission. According to Moon, in order to
restore the world from the Fall, a messiah
is required who conquers sin and manifests God's masculine nature, and marries
a woman who manifests God's feminine
nature. By not marrying and having children, Jesus offers only spiritual salvation
but not physical salvation.
In Japan during World War II,
Moon had another spiritual experience in
which he entered the spirit world and engaged in winning combat over satanic
forces. He then changed his name to Sun
Myung Moon, which means "Shining
Sun and Moon."
The Holy Spirit Association for the
Unification of World Christianity, as the
Unification Church officially is known,
grew slowly after its founding in 1954,
and was expanded to Japan in 1958. In
1960 Moon married his second wife, who
bore twelve children by 1981. At that
point Moon called himself "Lord of the
Second Advent" and said he had completed Jesus' mission.

13

The church was imported to the

United States by three Korean missionaries in 1959. Moon visited the United
States in the 1960s-on
one visit, the
control of the medium Arthur Ford called
him a New Age teacher/revealer-and
in
1972 received a revelation to move to the
United States. From 1972 to 1976 the
church grew rapidly. Its goal is to evangelize the world according to the views
of Moon. Initiates align themselves with
the messiah by a period of sacrifice and
celibacy, following which the Moons,
known as the True Parents, select spouses
and officiate at their wedding ceremonies.
They conducted mass weddings in 1982.
To further its objectives and still critics, the church engages in a wide range of
charitable, educational, political, ecumenical, and media enterprises that employ
many nonchurch staff. Its most visible enterprise is the Washington Times daily
newspaper in Washington, DC, the
former Washington Star.
In 1982 Moon was convicted on
charges of income tax evasion for interest
income earned on a savings account in his
name. He spent thirteen months in jail in
1984 and 1985, which ironically garnered him new supporters. Outside of the
United States, the church is strongest in
Japan and North Korea. A Unification
Theological Seminary in Tarrytown, New
York, trains church leaders.

Religious Groups and Violence

Many alternative religious groups
are the targets of much opposition from
established elements in society, chiefly
churches that feel threatened and families
that feel their children have been stolen.
Alternative groups are charged with
brainwashing, sexual perversion, violence, crime, and heresy. Antagonism was
particularly high during cult scares in the
1960s and 1970s and was directed chiefly
at groups with communal life-styles, such

14

as ISKON, the Unification Church, and

The Way International.
Some groups have been involved in
incidents of violence or crime. The most
notable example is Jim Jones's People's
Temple, whose members, including Jones
himself, committed murder and mass suicide at their compound in Guyana in
1979. However, incidents demonstrating
threats to the established order have been
isolated, and have been exaggerated by
anticultists. More often than not, the alternative groups are the victims, rather
than the perpetrators, of violence and
persecution.
Many religious groups that are now
well established in society were once persecuted in much the same manner. In the
early nineteenth century in the United
States, for example, Catholics were the
targets of some of the severest persecutions in the history of the nation; they
were accused by Protestants of deception
and coercion, sexual perversion, murder,
political subversion, and financial exploitation. Christian Scientists, Mormons,
and Seventh Day Adventists have similarly been harassed. Quakers once were
hung by the colonial Calvinists (who
themselves came to America to escape
persecution in England), and were sentenced to death for refusing to serve in
the military. Undoubtedly, some of the alternative groups now perceived as threats
will in the future achieve a more accepted
status. See Charismatic renewal; Church
of All Worlds; Church of Christ, Scientist; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, the; Church of Scientology; ECKANKAR; "I AM" Religious Activity, the;
Neo-paganism; New Age; Shakers; Society of Friends; Witchcraft.
Sources: David G. Bromley and Anson D.
Shupe, Jr. Strange Gods: The Great American Cult Scare. Boston: Beacon Press,
1981; Robert S. Ellwood, ed. Eastern Spirituality in America. New York: Paulist
Press, 1987; Rev. James J. Lebar. Cults,
Sects, and the New Age. Huntington, IN:

Alternative religious movements

Our Sunday Visitor, 1989; J. Gordon Melton. Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in

America. New Yark: Garland Publishing,
1986.

American Society for Psychical

Research (ASPR)
Organization founded in late 1884 in
Boston under the auspices of the Society
for Psychical Research (SPR) of England,
and dedicated to the advancement of psychical research (now called parapsychology). The society became formally active
in 1885; astronomer Simon Newcomb
was elected the first president. Other major figures in the formation of the society
were English physicist Sir William Barrett, and Harvard philosopher William
James.
The early ASPR operated independently of the SPR, but organized itself
along the same lines, with investigative
committees to research and collect data
on thought transference, telepathy, hypnosis, apparitions, mediumship, and
other phenomena. Its membership included many scientists who considered
psychical research of secondary interest.
As a result, in 1889, less than five years
after founding, the society was forced for
financial reasons to dissolve and reorganize as the American Branch of the SPR.
Richard Hodgson, a member of the SPR,
moved to America and directed the
branch's activities until his death in 1905.
In 1906 the American Branch was
dissolved and the ASPR reestablished itself as an independent organization with
headquarters in New York City. James
H. Hyslop served as secretary until his
death in 1920; most of the new leadership was comprised not of scientists, but
of other professionals who had an avocational interest in psychical research and
Spiritualism. During this period the ASPR
suffered from a shortage of funds and did
a modest amount of collective research.
Hyslop was more interested in publish-

American

Society for Psychical

Research

ing, and devoted a great deal of time to

fund-raising.
Following Hyslop's death the ASPR
went through a strained and divisive period in which many members were extremely dissatisfied with the leadership's
neglect of experimental parapsychology
in favor of mediumship and seance phenomena. The division was exacerbated by
a controversy over a fraudulent medium
known as "Margery" (Mina Stinson
Crandon) of Boston, to whom the ASPR
devoted much attention and money. In
1925 a group of academically oriented
opponents of Margery split off and
formed the Boston Society for Psychic Research, which did little but publish. In the
1941 ASPR elections, a "palace revolution" occurred and the key Margery supporters were voted out of office. The
ASPR terminated official involvement
with Margery, who died later the same
year. The Boston group returned to the
fold.
Under the presidency of Hyslop's
son, George Hyslop, and the leadership
provided by eminent psychologist Gardner Murphy, who became chairman of
the Research Committee, the society reinstated research as its primary function.
Prior to the "palace revolution," the
ASPR had been run to appeal to the lay
public, not academics or scientists. The
first sign of a change in this orientation
occurred in 1938, when Murphy conducted the first systematic ESP experiments under the auspices of the ASPR,
using American parapsychologist ]. B.
Rhine's ESP cards. Under the new administration, the organization returned fully
to a scientific purpose. It benefited from
the experimental work of Rhine, who
saw parapsychology as an emerging scientific discipline, and from the academic
approach of Murphy, who sought to integrate the paranormal with psychology
and philosophy. Murphy's stature as a
psychologist-he
served for a time as
president of the American Psychological

(ASPR)

15

Association-did attract Rhine, Margaret

Mead, Henry James (son of William
James), and other luminaries to the board
of directors. However, he did not achieve
the great integration he desired.
From the 1940s until 1971, eight
years before his death, Murphy served as
key leader of the ASPR; he served as president from 1962 to 1971. In 1948 a
"Medical Section" was established to research the integration of psychiatry and
depth psychology to the paranormal; one
outgrowth was the dream research of
Montague Ullman and others. See
Dreams. The Medical Section ceased operation in the 1950s, when a key member
of the group, Jule Eisenbud, left New
York for Denver.
In the mid-1950s Murphy directed
ASPR attention to spontaneous psi,
which he thought would yield more information on the nature of psi than did
laboratory experiments. He encouraged
research on creativity, altered states and
psi, meditation and transpersonal factors
of psi, deathbed observations, and survival after death. Laboratory equipment
to induce altered states was purchased in
the 1960s. See Altered states of consciousness; Deathbed visions; Meditation.
Membership and lecture attendance
began to increase in the 1940s, and
reached a peak in the 1960s and 1970s,
fueled in part by the counterculture's interest in the paranormal. Liberals, however, were squeezed out by conservatives,
and membership and interest then began
to decline. Without Murphy factions
again developed in the ASPR, between
"reductionists," those who sought to define all phenomena as either ESP, PK, or
chance, and more liberal researchers interested in out-of-body experiences, neardeath experiences, behavioral medicine,
dreams, and reincarnation. The ASPR has
sought a balance of interests.
Scientific articles are published in a
quarterly Journal, while informal articles

16

American

appear in a quarterly ASPR Newsletter.

The ASPR maintains one of the most
comprehensive parapsychology libraries
in the world, and offers symposia and lectures. Membership is international. See
James, William; Parapsychology; Society
for Psychical Research (SPR).
Sources: Roger 1. Anderson. "The Life and
Work of James H. Hyslop." The Journal of
the American Society for Psychical Research 79 (April 1985): 167-200; Nandor
Fodor. An Encyclopedia of Psychic Science.

1933. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1966;

James G. Matlock. "The ASPR in 1888."
ASPR Newsletter 14, no. 3 (July 1988):
23; James G. Matlock. "The ASPR in
1913." ASPR Newsletter 14, no. 4 (October 1988): 29; James G. Matlock. "The
ASPR in 1938." ASPR Newsletter 15, no. 1
(Winter 1989): 8; Seymour H. Mauskopf.
"The History of the American Society for
Psychical Research: An Interpretation."
The Journal of the American Society for
Psychical Research 83, no. 1 (January

1989): 7-32; Karlis Osis. "The American

Society for Psychical Research 1941-1985:
A Personal View." The Journal of the
American

Society

for Psychical

Research

79, no. 4 (October 1985): 501-29.

Amulet
Object, inscription, drawing, or symbol
believed to be imbued with a supernormal or magical power to protect against
disease, evil spirits, the evil eye, bewitchment, infertility, impotence, bad luck,
and a host of misfortunes and calamities.
In their simplest form, amulets are
natural objects that have an eye-catching
color, an unusual shape-such as a holed
stone-or are rare, such as a four-leaf
clover or double walnut. Ancient civilizations, in their efforts to control spirits
and the forces of nature, made amulets
from a variety of materials. The practice
continues universally in modern times.
The term "amulet" is derived either
from the Latin amuletum, or the Old
Latin amoletum, for "means of defense."

Society for Psychical

Research

(ASPR)

Amulets customarily are worn on the

body, especially around the neck, in the
form of jewelry or a charm, which is a
magical phrase, rhyme, or prayer inscribed on paper, parchment, or an object. Amulets also are commonly worn as
rings. Some amulets are designs, symbols,
or inscriptions engraved on the doors or
posts of homes, buildings, holy places,
and tombs.
Virrually anything can become an
amulet, depending on beliefs and resources. Among the most common are
gems and semiprecious stones (see Crystals) fashioned into jewelry, starues of deities, or statues of animals associated with
certain powers and properties. Eyes also
are common; perhaps the best-known eye
amulet is the Eye of Horus of ancient
Egypt, which guarded health and protected against evil spirits. The Egyptians
also used frog amulets against infertility,
and scarab beetle amulets to guard the
soul for resurrection after death and protect it against sorcery. Mummies have
been found wearing pectoral necklaces
containing scarabs and the Eye of Horus.
Vegetable amulets, including berries,
fruits, nuts, plants, wood, and leaves, are
very common in many parts of the world.
The use of garlic as an amulet against
evil, most notably vampires, may be
traced to the ancient Romans, who used
it against witches. Peach wood and stones
are considered strong amulets against evil
spirits in China.
Certain metals are believed to have
amuletic properties. Iron universally is
believed to keep away demons and
witches. In India rings made of copper,
silver, gold, and iron are worn to protect
against sorcery. Elsewhere, iron horseshoes hung over the doorways of stables
and homes keep out witches and evil spirits. Bells made of silver or iron will drive
away the same. Amethyst pendants set in
silver and worn on silver chains are believed to protect wearers from negative
energy.

Ancient

astronauts,

theory of

Written amulets also have been common since ancient times. The Romans
had formulae for preventing various diseases. The ancient Hebrews believed in
the protective powers of the names of angels and of God, and in the written word
of scriptures. Written amulets are worn
about the neck, hung over doors and
beds, or carried in cases, boxes, and bags.
The cylindrical mezuzah is one example
of this type of amulet. Originally intended to protect against demons, it was
later given religious significance with biblical inscriptions about monotheism. The
mezuzah continues to be worn as a pendant and hung on the doorjambs of Jewish homes.
Other types of written amulets include spells, words of power, secret symbols and signs, religious phrases and
scripture, and legends. In magic, magic
circles are inscribed with amuletic symbols and words and names of power,
which help protect the magician from
harm by the spirits summoned in ritual.
See Magic; Talisman.
Sources: Francis Barrett. The Magus. 1801.

Reprint. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1967;

E. A. Wallis Budge. Amulets and Superstitions. 1930. New York: Dover Publications, 1978; Richard Cavendish. The Black
Arts. New York: Perigee Books, 1967;
Emile Grillot de Givry. Witchcraft, Magic
and Alchemy. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931; Maria Leach, ed., and Jerome
Fried, assoc. ed. Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology,
and Legend. San Francisco: Harper &

Row, 1979.

Ancient astronauts, theory of

Popular but unsubstantiated
theory,
which holds that extraterrestrial beings
visited ancient Earth, mated with human
beings, and taught them advanced science, technology, and mystical wisdom.
Myths and legends of advanced beings, angels, or gods who come down
from the sky have existed the world over

17

since ancient times. The ancient astronauts theory holds that these accounts
may be based on actual events. Erich Von
Daniken, a German author, helped to
popularize the theory in the early 1970s.
In Chariots of the Gods? (1971), Von
Daniken suggested that the mysteries of
various ancient pictographs, sculptures,
sites, myths, and legends could be explained as efforts by ancient peoples to
depict how extraterrestrials and their
spacecrafts appeared and how the aliens
communicated with human beings. The
theory also was offered as explanation
for stupendous physical feats accomplished by ancient peoples, such as the
construction of the pyramids in Egypt
and Stonehenge in England, and the legendary but unproven civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria.
Scholars dismiss the ancient astronauts theory as fantasy, yet some circumstances raise questions about its plausibility. The Dogon of Africa, for example,
possess unusual knowledge about the star
Sirius and still practice rituals based on a
Sirian cosmology. Ancient drawings and
artworks portraying alien gods who came
down from the sky still exist in various
parts of the world. For example, cave
drawings in France, South America, and
Africa depict men in spacesuit-type attire,
including antennae-like spirals on their
headgear. The figures in the "Spacemen
of Val Camonica" drawings in Italy have
geometrical symbols in their hands and
wear headgear resembling modern space
helmets.
The ancient astronauts theory proposes that the extraterrestrials who visited Earth long ago continue to monitor
the progress of the human race. See Atlantis; Extraterrestrial encounters; Lemuria; Nazca lines.
Sources: Charles Berlitz. Mysteries from
Forgotten Worlds. New York: Dell, 1972;
Peter Kolosimo. Not of This World. Secau-

cus, NJ: University Books, 1971; Eric Norman. Gods and Devils from Outer Space.

18

New York: Lancer Books, 1973; Robert K.

G. Temple. The Sirius Mystery. Rochester,
VT: Destiny Books, 1987; Erich Von Daniken. Chariots of the Gods? New York:
Bantam Books, 1971; Erich Von Diiniken.
Gods from Outer Space. New York: Bantam Books, 1972; Erich Von Daniken. The
Gold of the Gods. New Yark: Bantam
Books, 1974; Erich Von Daniken. Miracles
of the Gods. New York: Dell, 1976; Clifford Wilson. Crash Go the Chariots. New
York: Lancer Books, 1972.

Andrews, Lynn V.
American author whose popular books
describe her initiatory shamanistic experiences with various tribal medicine
women. Lynn V. Andrews says the purpose of her books is to help restore the
balance between male and female power,
and to heal Mother Earth. Inevitably, she
has been compared to Carlos Castaneda,
author of books describing his personal
experiences as apprentice to Yaqui sorcerers.
Andrews grew up in the Seattle,
Washington, area. At age fifteen she
moved to Los Angeles, California, where
she enrolled in a Catholic girls' school
through college. After graduating from
college, she worked for a brief time as a
stockbroker until she married. She became an accomplished equestrian and an
avid art collector, and lived in Beverly
Hills.
Her shamanistic journeys reportedly
began in 1974, during a traumatic period
following her divorce. According to Andrews she saw, or thought she saw, an
intriguing Native American basket in a
photography exhibit in Los Angeles.
Though no one else recalled seeing the
basket, Andrews tracked it down to
Agnes Whistling Elk, a Cree medicine
woman of Manitoba, Canada. Andrews
traveled to Manitoba, where she met
Agnes Whistling Elk and her colleague,
the blind Ruby Plenty Chiefs. She learned

Ancient

astronauts,

theory of

that she had been brought there by a vision. The basket, a sacred marriage basket, could not be purchased, but had to
be won. It was in the possession of Red
Dog, a white man turned sorcerer, who
had once been an apprentice of Agnes
Whistling Elk. He had sought out Agnes
to restore the female balance in his own
consciousness, but had attempted to steal
all the power for himself and had been
dismissed. He had stolen the female
power in the form of the basket.
Andrews became an apprentice to
the medicine women and was the first
white person to join the Sisterhood of the
Shields, a secret society of forty-four shamanesses from various tribal cultures
who had dedicated themselves to preserving their shamanic traditions. Agnes told
Andrews she was to be a bridge between
the tribal and industrialized cultures, and
was to write about her experiences. Andrews retrieved the sacred basket from
Red Dog, who then became her lifelong
enemy, and went on to other initiations.
She chronicled these adventures in four
bestselling books: Medicine Woman
(1981), Flight of the Seventh Moon: The
Teaching of the Shields (1984), Jaguar
Woman: And the Wisdom of the Butterfly Tree (1985), and Star Woman: We
Are Made from Stars and to the Stars We
Must Return (1986). She explored the
culture of aboriginal shamanesses in
Crystal Woman: The Sisters of the
Dreamtime (1987), Nepalese female adepts in Windhorse Woman (1989), and
medieval wise women in The Women of
Wyrrd (1990).
Andrews's work has drawn criticism
from some Native Americans who feel
she has misrepresented Native American
spirituality, citing factual inaccuracies of
geography, rites, and language. Andrews
has stated she changed certain names and
facts to protect the identity of her teachers, and that she described her experiences as they happened. She is not teaching or practicing Native American

Andrews, Lynn V.

Lynn V. Andrews
tradition, she says, but is providing information to help reinstate "the feminine
consciousness. "
Andrews, like Castaneda, has been
charged by some with fictionalizing her
accounts. She has denied those allegations. In addition to writing, she has
given shamanic initiatory seminars. Andrews lives in Beverly Hills, California,
and writes at her studio in Santa Fe, New
Mexico. See Castaneda, Carlos.
Sources: Jonathan Adolph and Richard
Smoley. "Beverly Hills Shaman." New Age
(March/April 1989): 22-26+; Lynn V. Andrews. Medicine Woman. San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1981; Lynn V. Andrews.
Flight of the Seventh Moon: The Teaching
of the Shields. San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1984; Lynn V. Andrews. Jaguar
Woman: And the Wisdom of the Butterfly
Tree. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985;
Lynn V. Andrews. Star Woman: We Are
Made from Stars and to the Stars We Must
Return. New York: Warner Books, 1986;
Bob Groves. "Mainstream Mysticism: Author Takes Her New Age Act on the
Road." Los Angeles Herald Examiner (September 1, 1988): B1+; Beth Ann Krier.
"The Medicine Woman of Beverly Hills."

19

Los Angeles Times (November 23, 1987):

part 5,1+; Rose Marie Staubs. "Andrews's
Sisters." Omni (October 1987): 28; "The
Beverly Hills Medicine Woman: An EWj
Interview with Lynn Andrews." East West
Journal (June 1984): 30-35.

Angel
An immortal being who lives in the spirit
world and serves as an intermediary between God and humanity. The word "angel" is derived from the Greek angelos
and the Latin angelus, which mean "messenger." In religion angels belong to the
class of beings known as demons; they
may be either friendly or hostile to humankind. In art angels are depicted with
wings and halos.
Angelology was developed in ancient
Persia, and was absorbed into Judaism
and Christianity. According to the Babylonian Talmud, all beings are led and
protected by angels, who connect the
earth to God.
The ancient Hebrews applied the
term malakh (angel) to anyone who carried God's message in the world, including people. In Genesis 18 three men, or
angels, appear to Abraham to predict the
birth of Isaac. Later angels became spirit
beings, serving God in heaven and coming to earth upon his instructions. Some
angels evolved into guardian angels, such
as Michael, the guardian of Israel.
The legions of angels are ranked in
hierarchies. The highest in Judaism and
Christianity are the seven archangels,
each of whom is assigned to one of the
seven spheres of heaven: Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, Uriel, Jophiel, Zadkiel,
and Samael (Satan). When Lucifer was
cast out of heaven by God, his angels fell
with him. Theodore of Mopsuetia, an
early Christian father, said these angels
were not demons, but men who submitted to Lucifer and became his instruments, spreading vice, heresy, lies, profane learning, and all manner of ills
throughout the world.

20

Lesser-ranked angels are the cherubim, seraphim, and various virtues,

among many others. Catholics and some
Protestants believe every person has a
guardian angel. See Spirit guide.
In the mystical Jewish Kabbalah, an
archangel is assigned to each emanation
on the Tree of Life: Metatron for Kether,
Ratziel for Chokmah, Tzaphiel for Binah,
Tzadqiel for Chesed, Khameal for Geburah, Raphael for Tipareth, Haniel for
Netzach, Michael for Hod, Gabriel for
Yesod, and Sandalphon for Malkuth. The
ancient Hebrews believed Metatron also
served as a heavenly scribe, recording the
good deeds of Israel.
Islam has four archangels, Azrael, Israfil, Gabriel, and Michael.
The Gnostics, who were influenced
by Persian traditions, emphasized angelic
hierarchies as well, and believed that angels lived in a world of mystical light between the mundane world and the Transcendent Causeless Cause.
Until about the eighteenth century,
angels played roles in everyday life. Magicians conjured angelic and demonic
spirits to effect their spells and do their
bidding. Visions of angels were often reported as portents. Wizards, wise women, and witches credited angels with effecting cures. Angels were blamed for
plagues, and were believed to intercede in
the affairs of humankind. The Age of Enlightenment, with its emphasis on science
and intellectual thought, relegated angels
to the realm of poetry and romantic
fancy.
The eighteenth-century Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg claimed to commune with angels in his mystical trances.
He said all angels once lived as men and
women. As angels they are forms of affection and thought, the recipients of love
and wisdom. The Lord appears as the sun
above them.
Occultist and philosopher Rudolf
Steiner conceived of a complex society of
angels and spirits, the result of his own

Andrews, Lynn V.

vIsiOnary experiences. Angels, in his

unique system, exist on the first level of
consciousness above humankind; above
them, in ascending order of levels, are
Archangels, Archai (Original Forces), Exusiai (Revelations or Powers), Dynameis
(Mights),
Kyriotetes
(Dominions),
Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim. Beyond the Seraphim is the Godhead. Each
level of being has higher and broader responsibilities in terms of spiritual evolution, beginning with archangels, some of
whom are responsible for leading races or
nations.
In 1924 Geoffrey Hodson, a clairvoyant and Theosophist, was contacted
by an angel named Bethelda, who transmitted to him ideas and information that
Hodson turned into five books, the best
known of which is The Brotherhood of
Angels and Men (1927). Hodson envisioned humankind and angels as two
branches in the family of God, who need
to work more closely together for the
spiritual benefit of humans.
According to Hodson the angelic
host is arranged in divisions: Angels of
Power, who teach humankind how to release spiritual energy; Angels of Healing;
Guardian Angels of the Home, who protect the hearth against danger, disease,
and ill fortune; Building Angels, who perfect and inspire in the worlds of thought,
feeling, and flesh; Angels of Nature, the
elemental spirits; Angels of Music; and
Angels of Beauty and Art. Hodson prescribed rituals of invocation and prayer
that would bring humans closer to angels.
People continue to experience angelic visions today, as they have throughout history. Often the appearance of a
brilliant, loving being of light is interpreted within the context of the individual's religious beliefs. According to research of near-death experiences, the
most common element is the appearance
of an angelic being to guide the dying
across the threshold of death. Communication is done by telepathy. On rare oc-

Angel

Angel announcing the birth of Christ

(Luke 2:10-11)
casions the angel may be visible to people
who are near the dying one.
In New Age occult and religious beliefs, angels have made a comeback in
popularity. They are portrayed in karmic
aspects of astrology, channeled, meditated upon, and said to exist in spirit
realms. Angelic forces are invoked in
magic rituals in various magical systems
and witchcraft. The popular view holds
that angels are benevolent beings and are
different from demons, who are malevolent beings. See Demon; Encounter phenomena; Nature spirits; Near-death experience (NDE).
Sources: Francis Barrett. The Magus. 1801.
Reprint. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1967;
Jean Danielou, S.J. The Bible and the Liturgy. Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Books,
1956; Jacques de Marquette. Introduction
to Comparative Mysticism. New York:
Philosophical Library, 1949; Vergilius
Ferm. The Encyclopedia of Religion. Secaucus, NJ: Poplar Books, 1955; Geoffrey
Hodson. The Brotherhood of Angels and
Men. 1927. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical
Publishing House, 1982; Raymond A.
Moody, Jr., M.D. Life After Life. New

21

York: Bantam Books, 1975; Gershom Scholem. Kabbalah. New York: New American Library, 1974; Rudolf Steiner. The Influence

of Spiritual

Beings

Upon

Man.

Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press,

1961; Emanuel Swedenborg. Divine Providence. 1764. New York: Swedenborg
Foundation, 1972; Keith Thomas. Religion
and the Decline of Magic. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971; Leo Trepp.
Judaism: Development and Life. Belmont,
CA: Dickenson Publishing, 1966.

Animal psi (also Anpsi)

The apparent ability of animals to experience clairvoyance, precognition, telepathy, and psychokinesis (PK). It is not
known conclusively that animals possess
psi, though many owners of pets are certain they do. Scientific evidence suggests
that if psi exists, it probably does so in
both humans and animals.
If animal psi exists, it most likely occurs in all species. In this discussion the
term "animal psi" is all-inclusive. Some
individual pets seem to be especially
gifted. Animal lovers suggest that psigifted pets are those most loved by their
owners, and that love nourishes psi.
Some reports of animal psi would be
quite remarkable if demonstrated by human psychics. Missie, an allegedly clairvoyant Boston terrier, reportedly gave the
correct number of barks to predict the
victors of presidential elections, the number of delays in the launching of Gemini
12, the end of a New York subway strike,
and the winner of the 1966 World Series.
Similarly, various horses have been said
to have psychic powers, and have tapped
out messages with their hooves or by
picking out alphabet blocks. In some
cases, however, it has been shown that
the animals were in fact responding to
subtle body language and physical cues
from their owners. See Horse.
Information about animal psi is
largely anecdotal. The experimental evidence for animal psi is weak but encour-

22

aging. Generally, animals do not test well

for psi, and it is often difficult to determine if the human experimenter unconsciously uses psi to influence the results of
a test. See Experimenter effect. Psi tests
are also complicated by differences in
physical sense characteristics of various
species. The rattlesnake, for example, has
sensors behind its nostrils to help it detect
the slightest changes in temperature.
Most animal psi tests in the laboratory
are done with cats and rodents, which are
among the easiest and most convenient
animals with which to work.
American parapsychologist J. B.
Rhine pursued animal psi tests at Duke
University. From five hundred unsolicited
stories reported by animal owners, Rhine
found five basic types of animal psi: the
ability to sense impending danger; the
ability to sense at a distance the death of,
or harm to, a beloved human or fellow
animal; the ability to sense the impending
return of a master; the ability to find the
way home; and the ability to "psi trail."

The Ability to Sense Impending

Danger
Some animals seem to have precognitive awareness of natural disasters, or
doom for their loved ones or themselves.
They also appear to know telepathically
when' their loved ones are in danger.
Animals have been reported to act
strangely before various types of catastrophes, such as avalanches, cyclones, volcanic eruptions, fires, and bombings. In
parts of China, animals are considered to
be potential predictors of earthquakes.
Hours before the 1963 earthquake in
Skopje, Yugoslavia, animals in the zoo
became restless and agitated, pacing back
and forth in their cages and charging the
bars. Some scientists say that these animals are not picking up information psychically, but are reacting to subtle
changes in the natural environment, such
as changes in air pressure and tremors in

Angel

the Earth, which are too slight to be noticed by humans. That theory, however,
does not satisfactorily explain many incidents.
During the Battle of Britain in World
War II, some people watched cat behavior as a predictor of bombings. If the hair
on a cat's back stood up and the animal
ran for cover into a shelter, people took
shelter as well.
A study at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, suggested that
rats have a sense of their own impending
doom. Researchers J. G. Craig and W. C.
Treurniet released rats at one corner of a
reference grid and recorded their activity.
Some time later half of the group was
randomly selected to be killed. A subsequent analysis of the slain rats' movements on the grid indicated that they had
been more active than the tats who were
spared.
Many psychics like to have animals
accompany them when they are investigating apparitions and haunted houses,
because animals are assumed to be more
sensitive to ghosts and spirits. Many dogs
and cats have been known to visibly react
in fear when placed in a suspected
haunted house. One of the functions of
the witch's animal "familiar" is to sense
the presence of unwanted or evil energy.
Various laboratory tests have been
done on animals to see if their precognition of impending harm to themselves
causes them to use PK to avert the harm.
Researcher Helmut Schmidt exposed
both brine shrimp and cockroaches to
electric shock determined by a random
number generator. The shrimp received
fewer shocks than would be expected
by chance, but the cockroaches were
shocked more, perhaps indicating psi
missing. See Psi hitting and psi missing.
The tests were inconclusive. Schmidt
could not replicate the results with the
shrimp, and his dislike for cockroaches
may have influenced those tests. See Experimenter effect.

Animal psi (also Anpsi)

The Ability to Sense at a

Distance the Death of, or
Harm to, a Loved One
Many reports exist of animals knowing that a master or companion animal is
about to be harmed or is being harmed.
Abraham Lincoln's dog reportedly began
to howl and run around the White House
shortly before Lincoln was assassinated.
A veterinarian reported that a dog in his
care while its owners were vacationing
howled for the entire hour that the owners were stranded in a flash flood. When
Lord Carnarvon, sponsor of the expedition that discovered King Tutankhamen's
tomb, died in Cairo, his dog in England
died at about the same hour.
Animals also seem to sense danger to
loved ones who are related to their owners. A Great Dane sensed that his master's visiting sister had been killed while
on a day trip. The dog's response was to
gather the sister's personal belongings together, lie down on the floor, and whimper. On three different occasions packs of
mice were seen abandoning a New York
City townhouse a few days before the
death of the house's owner.
Laboratory experiments also have
suggested that animals experience physiological reactions when they psychically
receive this type of information from distant people or animals. A boxer attached
to an electrocardiograph had a violent
heartbeat when his mistress in another
room was suddenly threatened by an abusive stranger. Soviet researchers tested a
mother rabbit and her reactions when her
babies were in danger at a distance. The
mother's brain was implanted with electrodes and monitored in a laboratory on
shore, while her babies were taken out
beneath the sea in a submarine. As each
baby was killed, the mother's brain indicated a strong reaction.

23

The Ability to Sense the

Impending Return of a Master

Animals in Out-of-Body
Experience Tests

Animals will anticipate the return of

a loved one from a short or long trip by
sitting near the door or gate until the person's arrival. A Vietnam soldier coming
home unexpectedly, and planning to surprise his family, was preempted by his
dog, which had gathered the soldier's personal items and piled them by the door
several hours before his arrival.

In the 1970s a group of researchers

used animals as detectors in out-of-body
experiments (OBE). A human subject,
Keith Harary, projected himself out-ofbody and visited the animals to see if they
would react to his invisible presence.
Poor results were obtained with rodents
and a snake, but statistically significant
results were obtained with a seven-weekold kitten that had demonstrated an immediate and strong rapport with Harary.
During the tests Harary "visited" the kitten in a certain corner of the animal's box
and comforted it. Consistently, the kitten
was active except during Harary's OBE
periods, when it became very quiet. Another test to determine the kitten's response to direction and distance of
Harary's OBE yielded poor results. However, critics contend various factors could
have interfered with the procedure. Compare with Plants, psychism of.

The Ability to Find the

Way Home
Many animals exhibit remarkable
abilities to find their way home through
unfamiliar territory and without any discernible assistance or means. Scientists
who have studied the homing and migratory instincts of birds have put forth theories that birds take cues from the position of the sun in the sky, or are sensitive
to the Earth's magnetic field. In the 1950s
American parapsychologist Gaither Pratt
did extensive tests with homing pigeons.
A pigeon's orientation within seconds of
flight suggested to him that psi was a factor. His tests, however, were inconcluSIve.

The Ability to "Psi Trail"

Psi trailing is the ability of an animal
that is separated from its owner to find
its way over long distances to be reunited.
Animal enthusiasts see it as a manifestation of the animal's great love and devotion. Researchers Vincent and Margaret
Gaddis theorize that animals follow a
"directional beam of love, a magnet of
the heart."
In a laboratory setting at Duke University, parapsychologist Karlis Osis attempted to will cats to follow a certain
direction. The higher number of correct
choices was made by those cats with
which he had developed a special rapport.

24

Sources: J. Allen Boone. KinshiP with All

Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1954;

Hoyt L. Edge, Robert L. Morris, John

Palmer, and Joseph H. Rush. Foundations
of Parapsychology. Boston: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1986; Jurgen Keil, ed. Gaither
Pratt: A Life for Parapsychology. Jefferson,
NC: McFarland, 1979; Robert L. Morris,
Stuart B. Harary, Joseph Janis, John Hartwell, and W. G. Roll. "Studies of Communication During Out-of-Body Experiences."
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 71, no. 1 (January 1978):

1-21;
Sheila Ostrander
and Lynn
Schroeder. Psychic Discoveries Behind the
Iron
Curtain.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1970; Rene Peoch. "Chicken
Imprinting and the Tychoscope, an Anpsi
Experiment." Journal of the Society for
Psychical Research 55, no. 810 (January
1988): 1-9; D. Scott Rogo. Psychic Breakthroughs Today. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England: The Aquarian Press,
1987; Bill Schul. The Psychic Power of Animals. New York: Fawcett Gold Medal,
1977; Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook

Animal

psi (also Anpsi)

of Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977; Joseph Edward Wydler. Psychic Pets: The Secret World of Animals. New York: Stonehill Publishing,
1978.

Anthroposophy
See Steiner, Rudolf.

Apocalypse,

Book of the

See Revelation, Book of.

Apparition
The supernormal manifestation of people, animals, objects, and spirits. Most
apparitions are of living people or animals who are too distant to be perceived
by normal senses. Apparitions of the dead
are also called ghosts. Despite extensive
study since the late nineteenth century,
science still knows little about the nature
of apparitions.
Characteristics
Most apparition experiences feature
noises, unusual smells, extreme cold, and
the displacement of objects. Other phenomena include visual images, tactile sensations, voices, the apparent psychokinetic movement of objects, and so on.
Visual images are seen in only a small
percentage of reported cases.
A srudy of apparitions published in
1956 by American psychical researcher
Hornell Hart and collaborators showed
no significant differences between characteristics of apparitions of the living and of
the dead. Some apparitions seem corporeal, while others are luminous, transparent, or ill-defined. Apparitions move
through solid matter and appear and disappear abruptly. They can cast shadows
and be reflected in mirrors. Some have

Apparition

A possible apparition captured on film.

Apparition was not visible when
photographer took picture inside the
Duomo church in Parma, Italy.
jerky and limited movements, while others are lifelike in movement and speech.
Apparitions invariably are clothed.
Ghosts appear in period costume, and apparitions of the living appear in clothing
worn at the moment.
More than 80 percent of the apparitions cases that have been studied manifest for a reason, such as to communicate
a crisis or death, provide a warning, comfort the grieving, or convey needed information. Some haunting apparitions seem
to appear in places where emotional
events have occurred, such as murders or
battles, while other hauntings seem to be
aimless.
Apparitions can be divided into at
least seven types:
1. Crisis apparitions: usually visual images, which appear in waking visions
or dreams at a moment of crisis,
such as to communicate dying or
death. Typically, but not always,
they appear to individuals who have

25

close emotional ties to the agent (the

person who is the source of the apparition).
2. Apparitions of the dead: manifestations of the deceased, usually within
a short time after death, to comfort
the grieving or to communicate information, conclude unfinished business, or announce a role as guardian
spirit.
3. Collective appantlOns: manifestations of either the living or dead that
occur simultaneously to multiple
witnesses. Approximately one-third
of reported apparitions are witnessed
collectively.
4. Reciprocal apparitions: apparitions
of the living in which both agent and
percipient (the person who perceives
the apparition), separated by distance, experience each other simultaneously. A possible explanation is
that the agent has a strong desire or
impulse to see the percipient and unconsciously projects out-of-body. See
Out-of-body experience (OBE).
5. Veridical appantlOns: appantJons
that can be corroborated by fact.
Veridical apparitions are of most
value and interest to parapsychologists.
6. Deathbed apparitions: visual images
of divine beings, religious figures, luminosities, and dead loved ones that
are reported by the dying in the last
moments of life. See Deathbed visions.
7. Apparitions in cases suggestive of reincarnation: "announcing dreams,"
in which the deceased appears in a
dream to a member of the family
into which it will be born. Such
dreams occur frequently among the
Tlingit and other Native Northwest
American tribes, and in Turkey,
Burma, and Thailand. See Reincarnation.

26

Systematic studies of apparitions

were inaugurated in the late nineteenth
century by the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), London. Founding members Edmund Gurney, Frederic W. H.
Myers, and Frank Podmore questioned
5,700 people about apparitions of the living and published their findings in Phantasms of the Living (1886). In 1889 a
Census of Hallucinations was undertaken
by Henry and Eleanor Sidgwick, Alice
Johnson Myers, A. T. Myers, and Podmore. They polled 17,000 people, of
whom 1,684 (9.9 percent) reported having apparitional experiences of either the
living or the dead. Some experiences were
witnessed collectively.
The methodology for the census
would not meet modern research standards. The number of 17,000 questionnaires was arbitrary, and there was no
method to the distribution of forms.
Most likely, many went to friends and acquaintances of the surveyors. The survey
asked only one question: whether respondents had ever had an impression of a
being or person, or had heard a voice, not
of natural cause.
Of the 1,684 affirmative replies, approximately six hundred seemed to have
natural explanations and were ruled out.
There were about eighty cases of crisis
apparitions seen within twelve hours before or after someone's death; only thirtytwo of these were cases in which the percipient had no prior knowledge that the
agent was ill or dying. However, even this
small number was statistically significant
when compared to the mortality tables of
England.
A similar census was done in France,
Germany, and the United States. It polled
27,329 people, of whom 11.96 percent
reported apparitional experiences.
By the 1980s polls in the United
States conducted by the University of
Chicago's National Opinion Research
Council (NaRC) showed a dramatic increase in reported apparitions of the

Apparition

dead: 42 percent of the adult population,

and 67 percent of widows, reported experiences, perhaps due in part to changing public attitudes toward acknowledging paranormal experiences. Of these 78
percent involved visual images, 50 percent noises and voices, 21 percent tactile
sensations, 32 percent sensation of a presence, and 18 percent communication
with the apparition. Forty-six percent experienced a combination of phenomena.

Theories about Apparitions

Numerous theories have been put
forth, but none satisfactorily explains all
types of apparitions. Both Gurney and
Myers believed apparitions were mental
hallucinations. Gurney proposed they
were produced by telepathy from the
dead to the living. In collective cases he
said that a single percipient received the
telepathy and in turn telepathically transmitted the hallucination to other witnesses. That theory, however, cannot explain why witnesses in a collective case
I}otice different details. Myers, who believed in survival after death, began to
doubt the telepathic theory as early as
1885. In Human Personality and the Survival of Bodily Death (1903), he proposed that apparitions had a "phantasmogenic center," a locus of energies that
could be perceived by the most psychically sensitive people.
He conceived of a "subliminal consciousness" as the basis from which consciousness springs, and which survives
the body after death. He theorized that
the subliminal consciousness was receptive to extrasensory input.
An elaborate theory of "ideapatterns" was proposed' by English researcher G. N. M. Tyrrell in Apparitions
(1943; 1953). Like Gurney, Tyrrell believed that apparitions were hallucinations on the part of a percipient based on
information received from the agent
through ESP. The hallucination was cre-

Apparition

ated in a two-part drama. First, a part of

the unconscious called the "Producer" received the information via ESP. Then, a
"Stage Carpenter" produced the dramawith the required props, such as clothing
and objects-in visions, dreams, or hallucinations.
Other theories propose that apparitions are:
astral or etheric bodies of the agents
an amalgam of personality patterns,
which in the case of hauntings are
trapped in a psychic ether or psi field
recordings or imprints of vibrations
impressed upon some sort of psychic
ether, which play back to sensitive
individuals
personae or vehicles through which
the "I-thinking consciousness" takes
on a personality, perhaps not fully
conscious, as well as temporarily visible form
projections of the human unconscious, a manifestation of an unacknowledged need, unresolved guilt,
or embodiment of a wish
projections of will and concentration
(see Thought-form)
true spirits of the dead
localized phenomena with their own
physicality, directed by an intelligence or personality. No conclusive
evidence has been found to indicate
whether apparitions are animated by
personalities, however.
The ability to have hallucinatory experiences may be a function of personality. In his examination of hallucinatory
cases, researcher Andrew MacKenzie
found that about one-third of the cases
occurred just before or after sleep (see
Hypnagogiclhypnapompic
states), or
when the percipient was awakened at
night. Other experiences took place when
the witness was in a state of relaxation,
doing routine work in the home, or concentrating on some activity such as reading a book. With the external world shut

27

out, the subconscious was able to release

impressions, which sometimes took the
form of an apparition. See Haunting; Poltergeist.
Sources: Loyd Auerbach. ESP, Hauntings
and Poltergeists:
A Parapsychologist's
Handbook. New York: Warner, 1986; Richard Cavendish. The Encyclopedia of the
Unexplained.
New York: McGraw-Hill,

1967; Tracy Cochran. "The Real Ghost

Busters." Omni 10, no. 11 (August 1988):
35-36+; Charles Emmons. Chinese Ghosts
and ESP. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press,
1982; Andrew Greeley. "Mysticism Goes
Mainstream." American Health (January/
February 1987): 47-55; Celia Green and
Charles McCreery. Apparitions. London:
Hamish Hamilton, 1975; Edmund Gurney,
F. W. H. Myers, and Frank Podmore.
Phantasms of the Living. 1886. London:
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd.,
1918; Hornell Hart. "Six Theories about
Apparitions." Proceedings of the Society
for Psychical Research 50, (May 1956):
153-236; Hornell Hart. The Enigma of
Survival.
Springfield, IL: Charles C.
Thomas, 1959; Hornell Hart and Ella B.
Hart. "Visions and Apparitions Collectively and Reciprocally Perceived." Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 41, part 130 (1932-33): 205-49;

Renee Haynes. "What Do You Mean by a

Ghost?" Parapsychology Review 17, no. 4:
9-12; Ake Hultkranz. The Religions of the
American Indians. 1967. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979; Andrew
MacKenzie. Hauntings and Apparitions.
London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1982;
Elizabeth E. McAdams and Raymond Bayless. The Case for Life after Death. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981; Edgar D. Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for
Science. Edited by John White. New York:
Paragon Books, 1974; Frederic W. H. Myers. Human Personality and Its Survival of
Bodily Death. Vols. 1 and 2. 1903. New
ed. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.,
1954; Karlis Osis. "Apparitions Old and
New." In K. Ramakrishna Rao, ed. Case
Studies in Parapsychology. Jefferson, NC:
McFarland & Co., 1986; Ian Stevenson.
"The Contribution of Apparitions to the

28

Evidence for Survival." The Journal of the

American

Society

for Psychical

Research

76, no. 4 (October 1982): 341-56; Keith

Thomas. Religion and the Decline of
Magic. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1971; G. N. M. Tyrrell. Apparitions. 1943.
Rev. 1953. London: The Society for Psychical Research, 1973; Peter Underwood.
The Ghost Hunter's Guide. Poole, Dorset,
England: Blandford Press, 1986.

Applied psi
An offshoot of parapsychology that assumes the existence of psychic abilities
and seeks ways to apply them to mainstream life. The field also is called "applied parapsychology" and "psionics."
The latter term was created in the early
1980s by American parapsychologist Jeffrey Mishlove, who borrowed it from science fiction literature.
Applied psi has existed since ancient
times in so-called "primitive" cultures, in
which shamans, medicine men, and sorcerers for centuries have used psychic
powers to heal, control weather, ensure
successful hunts and fecund marriages,
and cast and lift spells. It continues to be
used in present times, in its broadest
sense, whenever anyone acts on intuition
to make decisions.
Some experimental studies relevant
to applied psi development, such as studies of mesmeric phenomena, date back to
the eighteenth century. But as psychical
research in general advanced, applied psi
languished as a discipline until the twentieth century. In 1962 the Newark College of Engineering in New Jersey became
one of the first engineering centers in the
United States to explore the psi faculty in
people. Researchers studied successful
husiness executives, and found that most
company presidents not only believe in
psi, but use it daily in their jobs in the
form of intuition, hunches, and gut instinct. Test results did not prove that precognition, the ability to see the future,

Apparition

was related to profit-making, but did

demonstrate that the probability of a
company being run by a superior profitmaker is enhanced with the choice of a
person who scores well in precognition.
In the early 1980s Mishlove urged
parapsychologists to look beyond laboratory experiments that seek to prove the
existence of psi. He said that the existence of psi should be assumed, and research should focus on ways to apply it in
social, business, industrial, and scientific
activities. He accurately predicted that as
the existence of psi became more accepted, scientists would spend less time
convincing skeptics of the validity of research and devote more attention to the
applications of research.
By 1984 applied psi had become an
informal part of at least twenty-eight
fields: archaeology, agriculture and pest
control, animal training and interspecies
communication, contests and gambling,
creativity, education and training, entertainment, environmental improvement,
executive decision making, finding lost
objects, future forecasting, geological exploration, historical investigation, investigative journalism, medicine and dentistry, military intelligence, personnel
management, police work, psychotherapy
and counseling, safety inspection, scientific discovery, social control, and
weather prediction control. However, the
subjective and erratic nature of psi make
it an unreliable tool.
Some experiments have raised interesting questions as to how effective applied psi can be used in financial investing. It is not uncommon for people to
place a bet or make an investment based
on a hunch, dream, or intuitive feeling. In
1937 British psychic researcher Dame
Edith Lyttleton published Some Cases of
Prediction. In many of these cases people
had placed winning bets on horse races
based on precognitive dreams and clairaudient VOICes.In the 1960s experiments
showed the success of applied psi in rou-

Applied

psi

lette. In 1982 Delphi Associates in San

Francisco, California, used a psychic to
predict fluctuations in the silver market,
which netted a reported $100,000 in
profits. The predictions were made by
psychic Keith Harary over a nine-week
period. Harary did not predict actual
price changes, but was asked to describe
an object that was to be placed in his
hands the following week. The objects
were coded according to movements in
the market. The money was invested by a
group of investors participating in the experiment.
Another experiment, conducted by
the St. Louis Business Journal in 1982,
compared the investment results of a
group of nineteen experienced brokers
and a St. Louis, Missouri, psychic, Bevy
Jaegers. Each participant picked five
stocks. The stocks picked by the brokers
fell in value, while Jaegers's stocks rose
17.4 percent.
Despite such successes a more widespread use of applied psi in the stock
market apparently would backfire. If all
investors could predict the market, the
dynamic processes of the market itself
would negate the intuition because there
would be no price that balanced the buyers and sellers. See Psychic archaeology;
Psychic criminology; Psychotronics.
Sources: Douglas Dean and John Mihalasky, and Sheila Ostrander and Lynn
ESP. Englewood
Schroeder. Executive
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974; Jeffrey
Mishlove and William H. Kautz. "An
Emerging New Discipline!" Applied Psi 1,
no. 1 (March/April 1982): 1; Jeffrey
Mishlove. Psi Development Systems. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1983; Jeffrey
Mishlove. "Psionics: The Practical Application of Psi." Applied Psi 3, no. 3 (Fall
1984): 10-14, 16; Marshall Pease. "Intuition and the Stock Market." Applied Psi 3,
no. 3 (Fall 1984): 7-9+; D. Scott Rogo.
Psychic Breakthroughs Today. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England: The
Aquarian Press, 1987.

29

Apport
An object certain mediums and adepts
claim to materialize from thin air or
transport through solid matter. Apports
also are a phenomenon of poltergeist
cases.
Most apports are small objects, such
as candy, coins, feathers, pebbles, rings,
or vials of perfume. Some are large and
quite unusu~l, such as flowers, books,
serving dishes, and live animals, fish, and
birds. During the height of Spiritualism,
apports were commonplace at seances.
The live dove was a favorite. Madame
d'Esperance produced impressive live and
rooted flowers. William Stainton Moses
produced showers of tiny semiprecious
and precious stones. Some mediums were
exposed as frauds in producing their apports, which they hid on their persons or
in the room prior to the seance. Seances
almost always were conducted in the
dark, making trickery easy.
Mediums usually said their apports
were brought to a seance as gifts from
the spirits. Other theories proposed that
the medium pulled objects from other dimensions through sheer willpower and
some sort of psychic magnetism, or that
the medium somehow took existing objects in other locations, disintegrated
them, then transported and reassembled
them.
The Sufis, the mystical adepts of Islam, and Hindu swamis and holy men are
renowned for the apports they produce,
including food, precious jewelry, religious
objects, and vibuti (holy ash). Like mediums, some adepts have been detected using sleight of hand; but others, such as
Sai Baba of India, have never been exposed as frauds. Sai Baba's apports include vibuti, sweets, entire banquets of
hot food, business cards, jewelry, religious statuettes, and many other objects.
Most are produced within his closed fist,
while others are pulled out of sand on the
ground. Food is produced in dishes. See

30

Materialization;
T deportation.

Poltergeist;

Sai Baba;

Sources: Slater Brown. The Heyday of Spiritualism. New York: Hawthorn Books,
1970; Alfred Douglas. Extrasensory Powers: A Century of Psychical Research. Lon-

don: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1976; Nandor

Fodor. An Encyclopedia of Psychic Science.
1933. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1966;
Erlendur Haraldsson. Modern Miracles: An
Investigative Report on Psychic Phenomena Associated with Sathya Sai Baba. New

York: Fawcett Columbine, 1987; Edgar D.

Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge
for Science. Edited by John White. New
York: Paragon Books, 1974; Benjamin B.
Wolman, ed. Handbook of Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold,
1977.

Archetypes
The contents of the collective unconscious as universal primordial images
passed down from an ancestral past that
includes not only early humankind but
humankind's prehuman and animal ancestors. Archetypes are not part of conscious thought, but are predispositions
toward certain behaviors-patterns
of
psychological performance linked to
instinct-such as fear of the dark or the
maternal instinct, which become filled
out and modified through individual expenence.
Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung developed,
but did not originate, the concept of archetypes; they have existed universally
for thousands of years in mythologies and
in the motifs of fairy tales and folktales.
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus was
the first to view the psyche as the archetypal first principle. The idea of archetypes was articulated by Plato in his Theory of Forms, which holds that the
essence of a thing or concept is its underlying form or idea. See Plato. The term
"archetype" occurs in the writing of Philo
Judaeus, Irenaeus, and Dionysius the Ar-

Apport

eopagite. The concept, but not the term,

is found in the writings of St. Augustine.
Jung first wrote of primordial images
in the unconscious of his patients in
1912. He first used the term "archetype"
in 1919, in order to distinguish berween
the archetype itself and the archetypal image, which is perceived on a conscious
level.
According to Jung archetypes are unlimited in number. They are created by
the repetition of situations and experiences engraved upon the psychic constitution. They are not, however, forms of
images filled with content, but forms
without content. When a situation occurs
that corresponds to an archetype, it becomes activated and a compulsiveness appears. God, birth, death, rebirth, power,
magic, the sun, the moon, the wind, animals, and the elements are archetypes; as
are traits embodied in the Hero, the Sage,
the Judge, the Child, the Trickster, and
the Earth Mother. Associations, symbols,
situations, and processes are archetypes.
Their role in the personality changes as
an individual grows and encounters new
situations. Archetypes communicate with
the conscious, and one may achieve insight into the self by attempting to identify and pay attention to archetypal forces
in one's life. Archetypes, said Jung, are
psychic forces that demand to be taken
seriously; if neglected they can cause neurotic and even psychotic disorders.
Jung identified four major archetypes as playing significant roles in human personality and behavior:
1. The persona. The public mask or
"ourward face," as Jung termed it,
behind which a person lives in accordance with the expectations of
society. Individuals have a collection
of masks to meet various social situations.
2. The shadow. The inferior, other side
of a person, which exists in the personal unconscious. The shadow is

Archetypes

uncivilized and desires to do that

which is not allowed by the persona.
It remains primitive throughout life,
and often appears in dreams as an
unlikable, crude person of the same
sex as the dreamer. The shadow is
despised and rejected; the most difficult aspect of psychotherapy is getting the patient to face his or her
own shadow.
3. The anima and animus. The female
and male sides of the psyche, respectively. Every person has qualities of
both sexes, which enables a full
range of expressions. The anima and
animus are projected first onto
mother and father, then onto others.
The anima and animus often are underdeveloped due to Western cultural conditioning, which discourages in children behavior associated
with the opposite sex.
4. The self. The central archetype of the
collective unconsciousness, and the
organizing principle of the personality. It exists apart from the ego,
which is the center of the conscious
mind. The self unites the conscious
and unconscious, and fosters an
awareness of the interpenetration of
all life and energies in the cosmos. It
usually emerges in middle age, after
sufficient development of the personality through individuation
(the
Hero's journey). Jung appreciated
the paths to realization of self
through Eastern religions and meditation, but said greater emphasis
should be placed on knowledge of
self, which may be obtained through
dreams.
Jung said the existence of archetypes
can be proved through dreams, the primary source; and through "active imagination," or fantasies produced by deliberate concentration. He said other
sources of archetypal material are found
in the delusions of paranoiacs, the fanta-

31

sies of trance states, and the dreams of

early childhood, from ages three to five.
Jung himself had an encounter with
archetypes and the collective unconscious
between the ages of three and four, when
he dreamed of a dark opening in the
Earth and of pagan god symbols. The
dream had a profound impact on him,
and he was unable to speak of it until he
was sixty-five; he believed it was evidence
of the collective unconscious. As a boy he
began to feel that he had two separate
personalities: one who was his normal
self, and a second, archetypal personality
who was much older, lived outside of
time, and personified all the experiences
of human life. As he grew older the second personality, whom he named Philemon, increased in dominance and was in
conflict with his first personality.
Jung devoted a great deal of study to
archetypes. Over the years he modified
his concept of them but never offered a
definitive definition. In 1946 he put forward the idea of the psychoid unconscious, which gave rise to the psychoid
archetype. The psychoid unconscious refers to a most fundamental level of the
unconscious, which cannot be accessed
by the conscious, and which has properties in common with the organic world. It
is formed of, and bridges, two worlds; it
is both psychological and physiological,
material and nonmaterial. Thus a psychoid archetype expresses a psychic!
organic link: the psychic in the process of
becoming material.
Jung's critics contended archetypes
were "inherited representations" and superstition, to which Jung replied that if
that were the case, then archetypes would
be readily understood when they appear
in the consciousness. In fact, he said, people are often mystified by archetypes, especially when they appear as unknown
symbols in dreams.
Archetypes are central to Jungian
psychotherapy in the process of individuation, a person becoming whole. Arche-

32

typal symbols in dreams reveal progress,

or lack of it, in the process. By understanding them, the individual discovers
what needs to be done to move forward.
Interpretations of archetypes have been
applied to diverse fields besides psychology, such as women's studies, mythologies, the healing professions, and the
Tarot.
In transpersonal psychology archetypes emerge in certain transpersonal experiences, such as psychedelic therapy, in
which they reflect the material world or
have an existence of their own. In pastlife regression therapy, past-life images
are seen by some therapists as archetypes and not necessarily as real past-life
material. See Collective unconscious;
Dreams; Jung, Carl Gustav; Mythology;
Past-life therapy; Psychology; Symbols;
Tarot.
Sources: Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a
Thousand Faces. 1949. New York: World

Publishing, 1970; Joseph Campbell, ed.

The Mystic Vision: Papers from the Eranos
Yearbooks. Vol. 6. Princeton: Bollingen/

Princeton University Press, 1968; Frieda

Fordham. An Introduction to Jung's Psychology. 3d ed. Harmondsworth, England:
Penguin Books, 1966; Stanislav Grof. Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy. Albany, NY:

State University of New York, 1985;

Calvin S. Hall and Vernon A. Nordby. A
Primer on Jungian Psychology. New York:
New American Library, 1973; C. G. Jung.
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. 2d ed. Bollingen Series 20. Prince-

ton: Princeton University Press, 1968; Carl

G. Jung, ed. Man and His Symbols. 1964.
New York: Anchor PresslDoubleday,
1988; C. G. Jung. "Commentary." The Secret of the Golden Flower. Translated and
explained by Richard Wilhelm. Rev. ed.
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1962; C. G. Jung. Psychological Reflections. 1945. Rev. 1949. Bollingen Series 31.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1953; Carol
Pearson. The Hero Within: Six Archetypes
We Live By. San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1986; Andrew Samuels, Bani Shorter,

Archetypes

and Fred Plaut. A Critical Dictionary of

Analysis. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1986; Roger Woolger. Other
Lives, Other Selves. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1987.

tam Books, 1978; Erlendur Haraldsson.

Arigo

umbine, 1987; Stephen R. Wilson. "It's

Therapeutic to Live in an Ashram." Perspective 9, no. 3 (October 1987): 2.

Jungian

See Psychic surgery.

Sources: Ram Dass. Journey of Awakening:

A Meditator's Guidebook. New York: BanModern Miracles: An Investigative Report
on Psychic Phenomena Associated with
Sathya Sai Baba. New York: Fawcett Col-

Artificial elemental

Assagioli, Roberto

See Thought-form.

See Psychology.

Ashram
Association for Research and
Enlightenment (ARE)

A Sanskrit term for a retreat or center of

spiritual study. Spending time at an ashram is believed to quicken one's progress
in spiritual development. A Spartan daily
discipline is usually followed. This may
include yoga; a vegetarian diet (perhaps
served in only one meal per day); sleeping
on a mat on the floor; long periods of
meditation, contemplation, and silence;
work duties; and studying spiritual teachings under the tutelage of a guru.
Ashrams may admit outsiders into
long- or short-term residencies. Permanent residents at some may hold outside
jobs in the local community. In India
most ashrams attract more Westerners
than Indians and other Easterners; even
so, many have few inhabitants. Westerners seek out ashrams to find spiritual fulfillment they feel is lacking in Western
culture and religion. Young Indians, on
the other hand, look to the West for a
better, albeit material, way of life. One
exception to the low residencies is Sathya
Sai Baba's ashram, Prashanti Nilayam
("Abode of Great Peace") in Puttaparti,
India, where thousands gather to be near
Sai Baba. The emphasis at Prashanti
Nilayam is on short meditation, devotion, purity in daily life, social and welfare work, and the singing of bhajans, or
ancient religious songs. See Guru; Sai
Baba.

A nonprofit foundation established in

1931 by American medium Edgar Cayce
and a group of associates in Virginia
Beach, Virginia, to pursue work and education in spiritual healing, psychic development, reincarnation studies, holistic
health care, and meditation instruction.
The activities and teachings of the ARE
are based on Cayce's philosophy and his
thousands of trance readings. Membership is open to the public.
In 1928, prior to establishing the
ARE, Cayce set up a hospital and university in Virginia Beach. In his dreams and
trance readings, he had been directed to
move from Dayton, Ohio, to Virginia
Beach and establish a great learning institution. The institution foundered in the
Depression and had to be closed in 1931.
Urged by many to continue their work,
Cayce and his associates regrouped and
formed a new association, the ARE, the
same year. The name was suggested by
Dr. Manning Brown.
The ARE regained the hospital
in 1956. In 1975 the ARE constructed
a library/conference center, which receives more than 40,000 visitors and
conference-goers a year. The library has
one of the largest parapsychological and
metaphysical collections in the world,

Association

(ARE)

for Research

and Enlightenment

33

with more than 55,000 volumes and

30,000 Cayce readings. In 1985 Atlantic
University reopened.
One of the foundation's major concerns is health, and the treatment of diseases and illnesses in accordance with
Cayce's diagnoses and remedies. More
than half of his trance readings concerned
physical conditions. The ARE maintains
close ties with doctors who believe in
Cayce's healing concepts. In 1970 the
ARE established a medical clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, where patients are treated
in accordance with Cayce's readings.
The ARE also publishes a wide range
of materials, hosts seminars, and helps
organize small study groups. See Cayce,
Edgar.
Sources: Association for Research and Enlightenment; Mary Ellen Carter. Edgar
Cayce on Prophecy. New York: Warner,
1968; Hans Holzer. Beyond Medicine: The
Facts about Unorthodox Treatments and
Psychic Healing. Rev. ed. New York: Bal-

lantine Books, 1987; Thomas

Sugrue.

There Is a River: The Story of Edgar

Cayce. Rev. ed. Virginia Beach, VA: ARE

Press, 1973.

Astral body
See Aura; Out-of-body experience (OBE).

Astral projection
See Out-of-body experience (OBE).

Astrology
An ancient system of divination using the
positions of the planets, moon, and stars.
According to astrology the celestial bodies exert forces and exhibit personalities
that influence people and events below.
These influences may be determined by
mapping positions in the sky at various
times.

34

Association

The origins of astrology may date to

fifty thousand years ago, when CroMagnon people read patterns of stars in
the sky and marked seasons by notching
bones. It was not until about 3000 B.C.
that astrology was developed into a system, first by the Chaldeans, who gazed at
the heavens from their ziggurats, a type
of staired tower.
The Babylonians also practiced astrology. Scholars disagree over whether
the Chaldeans or the Babylonians formalized the zodiac, c. 3000 B.C. The zodiac is
a band of twelve constellations through
which the sun, moon, and planets appear
to journey. The band is the ecliptic, the
middle of which is the plane of the
Earth's orbit around the sun. The term
"zodiac" ("circus of animals") was
coined later by the Greeks.
The ancients used the movements of
planetary bodies through the zodiac to
forecast auspicious times for matters of
state and war, and to predict weather and
natural disasters. Two types of astrology
evolved: horary, which determines auspicious times for action; and mundane,
which predicts disasters and other great
happenings and is concerned with countries, races, and groups of people.
Around the fifth century B.C., the
Chaldeans observed relationships between the positions of planets at the time
of birth and a person's subsequent destiny. Gradually, the horoscope, or birth
chart, was born, to be fully developed
later by the Greeks. This third type of astrology, natal, has proved to be the most
enduringly popular.
The ancient Chinese, c. 2000 B.C.,
also practiced astrology. The emperor
was considered the high priest of the
heavens and made sacrifices to the stars
to stay in harmony with them. The four
corners of the emperor's palace represented the cardinal points in space, the
equinoxes and solstices, and he and his
family moved from one corner to another
as the seasons changed.

for Research

and Enlightenment

(ARE)

U
~0
'-~

".:,,:"\/"\
__
V.L..-.<"-0 \ J1
~.~,\~'.~\.\
['~--;::,
"j"';\' r",1"":i
,P// ..'""-"

"-\.\\. ...
'T\. x,,;//'\V/n

"";.:;
C

2-

The constellations
The ancient Indians, Maya, Egyptians, and Tibetans also used various
forms of astrology.
Typically, early astrology was the
province of royalty. Around 600 B.C. to
500 B.C., the ancient Greeks assimilated
Chaldean astrology and made it available
to the masses. Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle were among the many great thinkers who accepted the influence, but not
the rule, of the stars upon life on Earth.
The Greeks believed that astrology could
reveal favorable and unfavorable times
for taking certain actions, but could not
guarantee success.
The Romans learned astrology from
Greek slaves c. 250 B.c.-244 B.C.,contributing the names of the planets still used
today. Astrologer fortune-tellers, many of
them fraudulent, became so popular that
they were driven out by decree in 139 B.C.
by Cornelius Hispallus. They infiltrated
society and reestablished themselves
among all classes of society. Augustus
was the first Roman emperor to become a
believer in astrology.
Circa A.D. 140-200 the most important book in the history of Western astrology was written by Ptolemy, GrecoEgyptian astronomer who devised the

Astrology

Earth-centered Ptolemaic system of the

universe. His Tetrabiblios (Four Books
on the Influence of the Stars) created the
foundation upon which astrology still
rests.
In A.D. 333 Emperor Constantine, a
Christian convert, condemned astrology
as a "demonic" practice. Later St. Augustine also denounced it.
While astrology withered in the
West, it continued to flourish in the East
and the Islamic world. Avicenna, the
tenth-century Persian alchemist and philosopher, refuted it, but it remained entrenched in royal courts and society.
Beginning in about the twelfth century, Arab astrology found its way back
into the West through Spanish Kabbalists. By the time of the Renaissance, virtually all great scientists, alchemists, astronomers, physicians, and philosophers
studied and accepted astrology. Paracelsus related it to alchemy and medicine,
advising that no prescriptions be given
without consulting the heavens. Astrology was taught in universities and was
tolerated by the church.
With the development of science in
the seventeenth century, astrology once
again became relegated to superstition

35

and the occult, but never fell out of public favor. Today it is followed by celebrities and the rich and powerful as well as
the general public.
Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung sometimes
consulted the horoscopes of his patients
to search for inner potentials and latent
problems. He believed that astrology, like
alchemy, sprang from the collective
unconscious-that
it was a symbolic language of psychological processes, uniting
the inner world with the outer. He also
said that astrology is synchronistic: whatever is born or done has the quality of
that moment in time.
In the East modern astrology is used
chiefly for divination. In the West astrology has been used increasingly in alternative forms of counseling and therapy.

Natal Astrology
The horoscope-a Greek term meaning "I look at the hour" -predicts the
general course of a person's character and
destiny throughout life based on the positions of the planets at the exact time
and place of birth. The oldest surviving
horoscope is Babylonian, c. 410 B.C.; another found in Uruk, Chaldea (now Iraq),
dates to 263 B.C.
The most important factor in a horoscope is the sun sign, the constellation of
the zodiac occupied by the sun at the time
of birth. The sun sign indicates overall
personality traits.
Next in importance is the rising sign,
or ascendant, which reveals character,
abilities, the manner of self-expression,
and one's early environment. The horoscope is divided into twelve houses, each
of which influences a different facet of
one's life. The houses are, in order, personality, finances, communication, early
home, children, health and service, marriage, philosophy, profession, friends,
and karma.
The horoscope ideally is a guide to
opportunities and potential problems, not

36

predestination. "The stars impel, they do

not compel," is a slogan among astrologers.
Astrology often has been discredited
in scientific tests, but has found support
in the controversial research of French
psychologist Michel Gauquelin. In 1949
Gauquelin began tests to disprove astrology, and succeeded to a great degree.
However, he examined the horoscopes of
576 French physicians and found that
more were born within the two hours of
the rise and culmination of Mars, Jupiter,
and Saturn than could be explained by
chance. He then found that sports champions tended to be born after the rise and
culmination of Mars.
His findings, which became known
as "the Mars effect," were replicated by
other researchers. The ensuing protest in
the scientific community helped to form
the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), in Buffalo, New York, an organization of skeptics and debunkers. A
scandal ensued when CSICOP attempted
to disprove Gauquelin's work in 1981,
and was accused by a former member of
falsifying data. See Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the
Paranormal (CSICOP).
Gauquelin subsequently found the
Mars effect among superachievers in
other professions. He concluded that this
does not demonstrate that planets and
stars directly influence a person, but that
a sort of cosmic biology is at work, including genetic heredity. He observed, as
did French astrologer Paul Choisnard at
the turn of the twentieth century, that
children often are born with the same
sun, moon, or rising sign as a parent. The
effect is doubled if both parents share the
same attributes. Furthermore, Gauquelin
theorized that the unborn child may be
reacting to cosmic influences when it
chooses the moment of birth. The influences are negated, however, by Caesarian
birth and artificially induced labor.

Astrology

Sources: Jean Avery. Astrology and Your

Past Lives. New York: Fireside/Simon &

Schuster, 1987; "Astrology and the New

Cult of the Occult." Time (March 21,
1969): 47-56; Bob Brier. Ancient Egyptian
Magic. New York: Quill/Morrow, 1981;
Richard Cavendish. The Black Arts. New
York: Perigee Books, 1967; Michel Gauquelin. Birth-Times. New York: Hill and
Wang, 1983; Michel Gauquelin. Dreams
and Illusions of Astrology. Buffalo, NY:
Prometheus Books, 1979; Linda Goodman.
Linda Goodman's Sun Signs. New York:
Bantam Books, 1971; Linda Goodman.
Linda Goodman's Love Signs. New York:
Fawcett Columbine, 1978; Alice O. Howell. Jungian Symbolism
in Astrology.
Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, The Theosophical Publishing House, 1987; Into the Unknown. Pleasantville, NY: Reader's Digest,
1981; 1. W. Kelly. "Astrology Cosmobiology, and Humanistic Astrology." In Philosophy of Science and the Occult. Edited by
Patrick Grim. Albany, NY: State University
of New York Press, 1982; Warren Kenton.
Astrology:
The Celestial Mirror. New
York: Avon, 1974; Michael Loewe and
Carmen Blacker. Oracles and Divination.
Boulder: Shambhala, 1981; Ellen Conroy
McCaffery. An Astrological Key to Biblical
Symbolism.
New York: Samuel Weiser,
1975; Dennis Rawlins. "sTARBABY." Fate
34, no. 10, issue 379 (October 1981): 6798; D. Scott Rogo. Psychic Breakthroughs
Today.
Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England: The Aquarian Press, 1987;
Dane Rudhyar. The Astrology of Personality. 2d ed. Garden City, 1\1'1': Doubleday;,
1970; Frances Sakoian and Louis S. Acker.
The Astrologer's Handbook.
New York:
Harper & Row, 1973; Barrett Seaman.
"Good Heavens!" Time 131, no. 20 (May
16, 1988): 25; Paramahansa Yogananda.
Autobiography
of a Yogi. Los Angeles:
Self-Realization Fellowship, 1946.

Atlantis
Fabled island-continent of ancient times
that allegedly sank beneath the sea in a
cataclysm. Numerous legends exist about

Atlantis

the Atlanteans and their highly advanced

civilization, and how they destroyed their
land through their misuse of power. At
least forty-five locations around the globe
have been proposed as sites of the lost
continent, but no proof has ever been
found of its existence.
The story of Atlantis was first recorded by Plato c. 350 B.C.in Dialogues,
specifically Timaeus and Critias. Plato,
who said the story was told to Solon by
a learned priest of Egypt, sited the island
in the Atlantic Ocean behind the Strait of
Gibraltar, or "the Pillars of Heracles."
He said the island was larger than Libya
and Asia Minor combined, and could be
reached by travelers from other islands.
The mighty Atlanteans had an ideal government and an advanced culture of
wealth and technology. They ruled Africa
from the border of Egypt and Europe to
Tuscany, and sought to expand their rule
throughout the Mediterranean.
Plato said the Atlanteans invaded
Athens circa 9600 B.C. and a great war
was fought. Despite their prowess the Atlanteans were defeated by the Atheneans.
Their opulence, materialism, arid aggression angered Zeus, who punished them
by causing great earthquakes and floods
that overwhelmed the continent and in
one night caused it to sink beneath the
sea. The story bears similarities to a legend of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom
(2000 B.c.-1750 B.C.)and to a story in the
Mahabharata of India.
Aristotle, Pliny, and Strabo thought
the Atlantis story was Plato's illusion,
and attempted to debunk it. Arab geographers kept the story alive, and as late as
the Middle Ages it was believed that Atlantis had been a real place.
In 1882 US Congressman Ignatius
Donnelly reignited popular interest in Atlantis with his controversial book, Atlantis: The Antediluvian
World. Donnelly
proposed that Atlantis must have been located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean
to serve as a bridge and source of culture

37

to other areas around the globe. Studying

the achievements of cultures around the
world, particularly Egypt and Central
and South America, he concluded that if
similar cultures arose in such widely diverse geographic locations, they probably
had a common source.
Numerous other theories have since
been put forth. Madame Helena P. Blavatsky, mystic and cofounder of Theosophy, believed the Atlanteans were psychically developed descendants from another
legendary lost continent, Lemuria, and
were the Fourth Root Race of all humans. She claimed to have learned this
from The Book of Dyzan, an alleged Atlantean work that survived the destruction and was kept in Tibet. Blavatsky said
Atlantis was located in the North Atlantic
Ocean, and was formed from surviving
and coalescing chunks of Lemuria. She
described the Atlanteans as twenty-sevenfoot-high giants who built huge cities and
erected twenty-seven-foot-high statues.
Atlantis did not sink because of the depravity of its inhabitants, she said, but
because it is the natural fate of every continent to be born, grow old, and die.
Around the turn of the twentieth
century, occultist and philosopher Rudolf
Steiner, claiming access to the Akashic
Records, also said Atlanteans were descendants of Lemurians. They possessed
incredible memories and thought in images, but were weak in logical reasoning.
Their memory power enabled them to
control the life force and to extract energy from plant stuffs. They rode about
in powered vehicles that floated a short
distance above the ground. He also
claimed that unlike the Lemurians, who
communicated by telepathy, the Atlanteans needed verbal communication, and
developed the first language.
Lewis Spence, who founded and edited The Atlantis Quarterly, a journal reporting on Atlantean and occult studies,
examined archaeological, anthropological, and geological evidence and folklore.

38

In The History of Atlantis (1926), Spence

concluded that Atlantis existed on both
sides of the Atlantic and was the means
of dissemination of culture from East to
West.
American medium Edgar Cayce sited
Atlantis at Bimini, one of the Bahama Islands off the coast of Florida. In his
trance "life readings" of sixteen hundred
people, Cayce identified seven hundred as
reincarnated Atlanteans. Cayce said the
Atlanteans had misused crystals, their ancient power sources used to generate
power for electricity and transportation,
and to rejuvenate living tissues, including
the brain; thus the rulers were able to
control the populace. Through materialism, self-indulgence, and irresponsible use
of the forces of nature, the Atlanteans
eventually destroyed their continent.
Many escaped to other lands. In subsequent reincarnations the Atlanteans still
exhibited the same potentially destructive
traits, Cayce said. He predicted in 1940
that portions of Atlantis would rise from
the sea in the Bahamas during 1968 and
1969. No land mass arose, but apparent
undersea ruins were discovered in 1968
off the coast of North Bimini, which
some believed fulfilled his prediction.
Charles Berlitz, author of Atlantis,
the Eighth Continent (1984), notes that
the lands surrounding the north Atlantic
Ocean bear similarities to the names
given by ancient peoples to a legendary
island continent with a variation of the
name "Atlantis." The Atlanteans also
have been linked to the Titans of Greek
myth, the first race of beings on earth,
who came from the sea and possessed the
power to create thunderbolts, earthquakes, and terrestrial disturbances. See
Bermuda Triangle; Lemuria.
Sources: Charles Berlitz. Atlantis, the
Eighth Continent. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1984; H. P. Blavatsky. The Secret Doctrine. Abridged ed. by Katherine
Hillard. New York: Quarterly Book Dept.,

Atlantis

1907; Edgar Cayce. Edgar Cayce on Atlantis. New York: Warner Books, 1968; James
Churchward. The Children of Mu. New
York: Ives Washburn, 1931; Ignatius Donnelly. Atlantis: The Antediluvian World.
1882. New York: Gramercy Publishing,
1985; Into the Unknown.
Pleasantville,
NY: The Reader's Digest Association,
1981; Ruth Montgomery with Joanne Garland. Ruth Montgomery: Herald of the
New Age. New York: DoubledaylDolphin,
1987; Lewis Spence. The History of Atlantis. 1926. Reissue. Secaucus, NJ: The Citadel Press, 1968; Rudolf Steiner. Cosmic
Memory. San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1959; Immanuel Velikovsky. Worlds in
Collision. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1950; Jennifer Westwood, ed. The Atlas of
Mysterious Places. New York: Weidenfeld
& Nicholson, 1987.

Attitudinal healing
See Behavioral medicine.

Augustine, St. (354-430)

One of the greatest fathers and doctors of
the Christian church, whose philosophical and theological thought influenced
Christianiry for at least a thousand years.
Augustine is not to be confused with St.
Augustine of Canterbury, who died in
604.
He was born Aurelius Augustinus on
November 13, 354, in Tagaste, in North
Africa near Hippo; it is now Souk-Aras,
Algeria. His mother, St. Monica, was a
Christian and his father, a Roman official, was a pagan. He was raised a Christian. In 370, Augustine intended to become a lawyer and went to the universiry
at Carthage to study rhetoric. He excelled
in his studies. He took a mistress, who
bore him a son, Adeodatus, his only
child, in 372. The relationship lasted for
fifteen years, until Augustine sent her
away.
For a number of years Augustine be-

Augustine,

St. (354-430)

lieved in Manichaeism, a dualistic sect of

Persian and Christian ideas. However,
while teaching rhetoric in Milan, he discovered and was greatly influenced by the
writings of Plotinus and other Neoplatonists, and decided to return to Christianiry. St. Ambrose baptized him in Milan
in 387. In 391 he was ordained a priest,
and in 396 was named Bishop of Hippo.
He remained in Hippo for the rest of his
life. He vigorously defended Catholicism
against various heresies, stating that pagan religion and magic were inventions of
the Devil to tempt people away from
Christianiry. He said that error had no
rights; therefore, heretics had no rights.
Augustine witnessed pagan attacks on the
Roman empire, including the Vandals'
fourteen-month siege of Hippo beginning
in May 430. In August, the third month,
Augustine fell ill with fever. He died on
August 28.
Roman Catholic religious orders and
congregations called Augustinians trace a
spiritual lineage to Augustine, but date
their actual origins only from the tenth
and later centuries. The young Martin
Luther (1483-1546) was an Augustinian.
Augustine's Confessions (397--401),
On the Trinity (400--416), and City of
God (413--426) are his greatest writings;
all helped define Christianiry against
pseudo-Christian sects of his and future
ages. The first of these major works is
one of the truly great autobiographies,
but it is also a presentation of the writer's
mystical experiences during his spiritual
struggles to accept Christianiry. However, it is not a mystical work in the sense
of a contemplative introspection or poetic
reflection; rather it is an expression of
what has been called Augustine's "mysticism of action."
It is in his later works that Augustine
became more philosophically theological.
His references to mystical experience appear in Confessions and in City of God.
In the latter he said of experiences of the
supernatural:

39

When ... we hear with the inner ear

some part of the speech of God, we approximate to the angels. But in this work
I need not labour to give an account of
the ways in which God speaks. For either
the unchangeable Truth speaks directly to
the mind of the rational creature in some
indescribable way, or speaks through the
changeable creature, either presenting
spiritual images to our spirit, or bodily
voices to our bodily sense. (XVI, ch. 5)
Augustine usually is acknowledged
to be second only to St. Paul in influence
on Christianity. His writings established
the theological foundation for medieval
Christianity, and much later influenced
the dualistic philosophy of Rene Descartes.
Augustine's patriarchal and dualistic
outlook has been criticized by some,
most notably Matthew Fox, the leading
spokesperson for creation-centered spirituality. According to Fox Augustine's influence, his preoccupation with personal
guilt and salvation, and his promotion of
introspective conscience, account to a
large degree for the devaluation of the female principle and the loss of a living cosmology symbolized by the "Cosmic
Christ." See Creation spirituality.
Sources: John Ferguson. An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mysticism and the Mystery
Religions. New York: Seabury Press, 1976;
Vergilius Ferm, ed. The Encyclopedia of
Religion. Secaucus, NJ: Poplar Books,
1955; F. C. Happold. Mysticism: A Study
and an Anthology. Rev. ed. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin
Books, 1970; Robert Maynard Hutchins,
ed. Great Books of the Western World.
Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952;
Louis Kronenberger, ed. Atlantic Brief
Lives. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971; Jeffrey
B. Russell. A Histor}' of Witchcraft. London: Thames and Hudson, 1980; William
J. Simpson. St. -Augustine's Conversion: An
Outline of His Development to the Time of
His Ordination. New York: Macmillan,

40

1930; Michael Walsh, ed. Butler's Lives of

the Saints. Concise ed. San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1985.

Aura
An envelope of vital energy, which apparently radiates from everything in nature: minerals, plants, animals, and humans. The aura is not visible to normal
vision, but may be seen by clairvoyance
as a halo of light. Then it often appears as
a multicolored mist that fades off into
space with no definite boundary, and
having sparks, rays, and streamers.
Much of what is purported to be
known about the aura is based on occultism and clairvoyance; no scientific evidence has been found to prove its existence. The body does have a magnetic
field-a biofield, as it is called-but it is
far too weak to account for a lightemitting aura. Even if the field were many
times stronger, it still would be insufficient to emit light. It has been theorized
that the aura might actually be a form of
light vibrating at frequencies beyond the
normal range of vision, caused by some
yet-to-be-discovered light-emitting diodes
embedded in living organisms. Another
theory suggests that clairvoyants who say
they see the aura may in fact see the magnetic field, which may register as light,
perhaps because of some sort of sensitive
magnetic detector in the brain.
The emanation of vital energy from
life forms has been believed since ancient
times, and appears in the writings and art
of Egypt, India, Greece, and Rome. In the
sixteenth century Paracelsus was one of
the first Western scholars to expound
upon the astral body, which he described
as a "fiery globe." In the eighteenth century the clairvoyant Emanuel Swedenborg said in his Spiritual Diary that
"there is a spiritual sphere surrounding
every one, as well as a natural and corporal one." Scientific study of the aura

Augustine, St. (354-430)

began in the late eighteenth century,

when Franz Anton Mesmer put forth the
theory of "animal magnetism," an electromagnetic force that could be transmitted from one person to another and effect
healing. In 1845 Baron Karl von Reichenbach, a German chemist, announced the
discovery ofthe "odicforce" energy. Reichenbach's clairvoyant test subjects sat in
darkened rooms and saw flame-like energy radiating from fingertips, animals,
plants, magnets, and certain crystals. The
subjects described seeing flames of red,
orange, green, and violet, which alternately appeared and disappeared; a
violet-red, which disappeared in a smokelike vapor; and intermingled sparks and
stars among all colors.
Shortly before World War I, Dr.
Walter J. Kilner, who was in charge of
electrotherapy at St. Thomas's Hospital
in London, discovered that an apparent
human aura could be made visible if
viewed through an apparatus containing
a coal-tar dye called dicyanin, which
made ultraviolet light visible.
Kilner saw the aura as a faint haze,
which sometimes could be separated into
two or three portions. It enveloped the
whole body. Men in good health all
showed the same aura characteristics.
Women, however, varied. In childhood
their auras appeared the same as males,
but by adulthood were more developed
and more refined in texture, Kilner said.
Kilner divided the aura into three
parts: (1) the etheric double, a transparent dark space, narrow and often obliterated by the second band; (2) the inner
aura, fairly constant in size and the densest portion; and (3) the outer aura, inconstant in size, which often appears
blended into the inner aura. He also observed rays emanating from the body in
healthy people. Kilner noticed that the
aura reflected the state of health, and by
1919 formulated a method of auric diagnosis of illness. In some cases the aura
was affected only locally, while in other

Aura

illnesses the entire aura was affected; as

the patient recovered, so did the aura.
Kilner also noticed that weak, depleted
auras suck off the auric energy of healthy,
vigorous auras around them.
Kilner published his early research in
The Human Aura in 1911. It was greeted
with a great deal of skepticism, but he
continued his experiments, attracting the
interest of Sir Oliver Lodge. Kilner's
work was interrupted by World War 1.
He published a revised edition of his
book in 1920, which was sympathetically
reviewed. He died on June 23, 1920.
In 1939 Semyon Davidovich Kirlian,
a Russian electrician, began work that led
to the development of techniques purported to record the aura on film. Kirlian
photography, as it is called, remains controversial. See Kirlian photography.
Clairvoyants see the aura as emanating from and interpenetrating the human
body. Health and emotion show in various colors, energy patterns or breaks, and
clear and cloudy spots. Physical health
seems related to the part of the aura that
is closest to the body, often called the vital body or etheric body. Clairvoyant
healers say that illness manifests first in
the etheric body, sometimes months or
years before its physical symptoms manifest. Medium Eileen J. Garrett said she
could always see a misty energy field
around every plant, animal, and person,
which changed according to mood and
health. From childhood Edgar Cayce saw
colored fields around people, which he
learned indicated their health, state of
mind, and spiritual development.
With the exception of the etheric
body, which appears to directly affect
health, the composition of the aura is the
subject of conflicting opinions. No two
clairvoyants see exactly the same aura.
Some say they see the entire aura, divided
into different layers or bodies, while others say they see only parts of the aura.
Some of the different bodies said to exist
are:

41

1. Etheric, penetrated by chakras, or

energy vortexes, which enable the
universal life force to enter and nourish the organism. There are seven
major chakras.
2. Astral or emotional, the seat of emotions and the vehicle for consciousness in out-of-body and near-death
experiences. The astral body is said
to be a nonsolid duplicate of the
physical body, and to have its own
seven primary chakras, which are
separate from those of the etheric
body.
3. Mental body, the seat of thought and
intellect.
4. Causal body, the closest to the
Higher Self.
5. Spiritual body.
Interpretations of the colors seen in
the aura vary considerably. It appears
that the aura fluctuates constantly, and
that various colors reflect the fluctuations. However, clairvoyants seem to
have their own scales for the meanings of
the colors: what red means to one will
mean something else to another. Colors,
perhaps, should not be taken at a face
value, but interpreted according to individual imagery systems. See Imagery.
Some psychics use the aura as a psychic screen for the projection of information concerning the past, present, and future. Much as a psychometrist handles an
object to receive information from its "vibrations," an aura reader perceives images and symbols within the aura. See
Psychic reading. See also Bodywork;
Chakras; Halo; Healing, faith and psychic; Out-of-body experience (OBE);
Near-death experience (NDE)j Universal
life force.
Sources: Oscar Bagnall. The Properties of
the Human Aura. 1937. Rev. ed. New

York: University Books, 1970; Robert O.

Becker, M.D., and Gary Selden. The Body
Electric: Electromagnetism
and the Foundation of Life. New York: William Mor-

42

row, 1985; Arthur Ford in collaboration

with Marguerite Harmon Bro. Nothing So
Strange: The Autobiography
of Arthur
Ford. New York: Harper & Brothers,
1958; Richard Gerber. Vibrational Medicine. Santa Fe: Bear & Co., 1988; Shafica

Karagulla, M.D., and Dora van Gelder

Kunz. The Chakras and the Human Energy
Fields. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1989; Walter J. Kilner. The Human Aura. 1920. Rev. ed. New Hyde Park,
NY: University Books, 1965; C. W. Leadbeater. The Chakras. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1927; C. W.
Leadbeater, Man Visible and Invisible.
1925. Abridged ed. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1987; Sheila
Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. Psychic
Discoveries

Behind

the Iron Curtain. En-

glewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970;

L. J. G. Ouseley. The Science of the Aura.
Romford, Essex, England: L. N. Fowler &
Co., 1949; Nicholas Regush. The Human
Aura. New York: Berkely Books, 1974; Joe
H. Slate. Psychic Phenomena: New Principles, Techniques, and Applications. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1988.

Aurobindo,

Sri (1872-1950)

One of India's greatest yogis. A one-time

political activist for the independence of
India, Sri Aurobindo experienced cosmic
consciousness and turned his endeavors
to transforming humanity. He developed
Integral Yoga, a synthesis of yogic traditions adapted for modern times. He is the
namesake of Auroville, the "first planetary city," in India. The object of his philosophy is the spiritualization of the natural world. While other yogic disciplines
seek to escape the world through nirvana,
Sri Aurobindo sought to embody God in
everyday life.
Sri (an honorific) Aurobindo was
born on August 15, 1872, to an illustrious family. His father, Dr. Krishna Dhan
Ghose, was a popular surgeon, and his
maternal grandfather was Rajnarayan
Bose, a leader of the Indian Renaissance.

Aura

His original name was Aravinda Ackroyd, but he dropped Ackroyd during his
school years in England.
From his early childhood Aurobindo
had an inkling of the great destiny that
lay before him, and which steadily unfolded: He had been sent to earth by God
with the power to raise the consciousness
of humankind to its next evolutionary
level of Supermind. He was exposed to
both Western and Eastern thought. From
ages five to seven, he was raised and
taught by Irish nuns in Darjeeling, and
then was sent to England for his education. He spent fourteen years in England,
during which time he was schooled in St.
Paul's School in London and at King's
College in Cambridge. At Cambridge he
gave speeches advocating the political
emancipation of India.
Despite his stance on independence,
he received a civil service appointment in
Baroda State, and in 1893 returned to India. Disembarking from his ship at Bombay, he experienced a profound calm that
lasted for months, a harbinger of his own
rising spiritual consciousness. He entered
the employ of the Maharaja of Baroda,
and served first as professor and then as
vice-principal of Baroda College. Between
1898 and 1899 he began work on Savriti:
A Legend and a Symbol, a poem about
the spiritual ascent and transformation of
the physical world. It reached 23,000
lines in length, and he revised it continually until immediately before his death.
While at Baroda he developed an interest in yoga, and began practicing
pranayama, or breath control, which enabled him to write poetry at prodigious
speed. Vishnu Bhaskar Lele, a Maharashtrian yogi, instructed him in communing
with the Divine, which was seated within
the heart.
From 1900 to 1908 Sri Aurobindo
was a leading political activist for the
freedom of India. As early as 1905 he
identified what he called his three madnesses: He was destined to work for God;

Aurobindo, Sri (1872-1950)

he sought a direct realization of God; and

he regarded India as the Mother, the embodiment of shakti, divine creativity. He
vowed he would fight for the Mother not
with the sword or gun but with the
power of knowledge.
He was arrested on August 16, 1907,
on charges of sedition, and was released
on bail. On May 2, 1908, he was arrested
again and charged with conspiracy
against the British government. He spent
a year in jail at Alipore awaiting trial, including several months in solitary confinement. During his jail term his first
great spiritual breakthrough occurred. He
meditated on the Bhagavad-Gita, felt the
presence of Krishna, and read and was
inspired by the writings of Vivekananda,
the leading disciple of Ramakrishna. His
experiences culminated in the realization
of cosmic consciousness.
Sri Aurobindo was acquitted at his
trial in 1909. A year later, following divine guidance, he withdrew from active
politics and went to Pondicherry to practice yoga and to concentrate on the elevation of Indian consciousness through
spiritual forces. He was by now less interested in the political independence of
India than in its spiritual liberation. He
said that India was the guardian of a
body of spiritual knowledge and experience, the living reality of which had been
lost under "the stress of alien impacts."
The spirit of this dharma had to be revitalized and breathed into the fabric of India's society.
In 1910 Sri Aurobindo met Paul Richards, a French diplomat who described
him as one of the greatest of divine men
in Asia. Four years later, on March 29,
1914, Sri Aurobindo met Richards' wife,
Mira, thirty-six, a long-time spiritual
seeker, who saw in him Krishna. Sri Aurobindo recognized in her the Mother,
the embodiment of shakti. The Richards'
departed for Japan in 1915, and in 1920
Mira Richards returned to Pondicherry to
begin a spiritual collaboration with Sri

43

Aurobindo. She became known as "the

Mother."
Sri Aurobindo's philosophy grew out
of his own spiritual experience. He saw
the evolution of earth in three distinct
stages: Matter, Life, and Mind. Mind can
only evolve so far, and then must transform into a higher principle. Beyond
Mind is Spirit, the Divine Consciousness,
organized as Truth-Consciousness or the
Supermind. In between the human mind
and Supermind are other planes of consciousness, including the Overmind. According to Sri Aurobindo, it is possible,
through rigorous spiritual discipline
(yoga), to have the Supermind descend to
the human mind, where its full power can
begin to work in nature: Thus the natural
world becomes spiritualized.
The ascent from mental to supramental consciousness occurs in what Sri
Aurobindo called the Triple Transformation: First one undergoes a spiritual
change and recognizes the Divine within;
then a higher light descends, expanding
consciousness to embrace the Divine in
the All; finally comes the transmutation
of ascent to Supermind and descent of the
supramental consciousness into one's entire being and nature.
For Sri Aurobindo the first stage in
the Triple Transfotmation occurred in
the Alipore jail. The second stage occurred on November 26, 1926, Sri Aurobindo's "Day of Siddhi" (day of spiritual victory), when the Overmind descended into him. Sri Aurobindo retired
into concentrated yoga. The Mother took
charge of his small number of disciples
and established an ashram.
For the next twenty-four years, Sri
Aurobindo practiced his yoga and wrote,
producing thirty volumes of writings and
correspondence. His Integral Yoga is a
synthesis of several other forms, chiefly,
Jhana, Karma, Bhakti, and Tantra Yogas
and the yoga of self-perfection. While
other forms of yoga are named according
to their objective and methods aimed at

44

liberating one part of being, Integral

Yoga is aimed at the liberation and perfection of the whole being, and takes up
all of nature for the process of transformation. The object is not liberation of the
individual (mukti) but fulfillment (sampatti) of the Will of God in Creation. In
developing Integral Yoga, Sri Aurobindo
drew on his interpretation of the Gita.
Also central to his system is the concept
of the Mother (shakti) as the focus for
transformation.
One must surrender
completely to the will and power of
shakti.
An ashram school was started in
1942. In 1950 Sri Aurobindo suffered
from kidney illness. Prior to his death on
December 5, 1950, he predicted that the
Supermind would descend through the
Mother. After death his body was placed
on view for five days and then buried on
the ashram grounds.
On February 26, 1956, the Mother
announced that the Supermind had descended through her, and would "enter
into a phase of realizing power in 1967."
As part of that phase, she founded Auroville on February 29, 1968, near the
Bay of Bengal. A community guided by
Sri Aurobindo's teachings, Auroville is
recognized by India as an independent
city state. Its charter states that it belongs
to nobody in particular, but to humanity
as a whole. It is intended to be a place of
unending education, the bridge between
past and future, and "a site of material
and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity," according to the charter. Automobiles are
prohibited. Crops are grown organically.
Aurovillians "must be a willing conservator of the Divine Consciousness," and are
expected not to use alcohol, tobacco, or
drugs, or engage in extramarital sex.
A great central city was planned, anchored by the Matrimandir, a giant
sphere put in place in 1971.
The Mother died on November 17,
1973, of heart failure in her room at the

Aurobindo, Sri (1872-1950)

Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry.

Following her death, internal and financial problems arose at Auroville. The government of India sent in an administrator
who remains to the present. The envisioned construction is not completed.
Sri Aurobindo was adamant that no
religion, sect, or school of followers grow
up around his philosophy, because that
would surely be the death of it. Religions
had failed, he said, because of their dogmas, rites, and institutional forms. In
1957 the Mother stated that the Supermind would usher in a new world in
which there would be no religions or
gods, only the expression of Divine Unity
in all life. See Yoga.
Sources: Robert McDermott, ed. and new
afterword. The Essential Aurobindo. Great

Barrington,
MA:
Inner
Traditions/
Lindisfarne Press, 1987; M. P. Pandit. Sri
Aurobindo and His Yoga. Wilmot, WI: Lotus Light Publications, 1987; John White,
ed. What Is Enlightenment? Exploring the
Goal of the Spiritual Path. Los Angeles:

Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1984.

Automatic writing
The act of writing while in a dissociated
or altered state of consciousness. Automatic writing sometimes produces astounding results that seem to be beyond
the ordinary knowledge or ability of the
writer. Many occultists say automatic
writing is the product of communication
with a discarnate being; psychical researchers generally believe it comes from
the writer's own subconscious mind, or
perhaps from information
obtained
through extrasensory perception (ESP).
Automatic writing is the most common form of automatism, or unconscious
muscular movement often attributed to
supernatural guidance. See Automatism.
Most automatic writers want either to
communicate with the dead or to contact

Automatic

writing

a highly evolved discarnate being who

will dispense wisdom.
In some cases automatic writing happens involuntarily, as in the case of Anna
Windsor. In 1860 Windsor, a hysteric
who suffered fits of delirium, began automatic writing with her right hand,
which she derisively called "Stump."
Stump had a personality of its own, writing out verses and prose while her left
hand did other things.
The writer usually is unaware of
what is being written. Some people experience a tingling sensation in the arms or
hands. Typically, automatic writing is far
more rapid than normal writing; as a
consequence many words are joined together. The script is larger and more expansive than the writer's own script, and
in some cases has duplicated the handwriting of the deceased person who has
been contacted. Automatic writers also
produce mirror script and write backwards, sometimes starting at the bottom
right corner and working up to the top
left.
Automatic writing was used a great
deal during the height of Spiritualism,
when mediums found it to be a better
means of communicating with the dead
than the laborious methods of rapping or
the planchette (the precursor of the
Ouija).
In the 1850s Judge John Worth Edmonds, an American Spiritualist, claimed
to receive written messages from the
sixteenth-century
English philosopher
Francis Bacon and the eighteenth-century
Swedish mystic Emanuel Sweden borg, or
"Sweedenborg," as the spirit signed his
name. Though the messages were uniformly bland, pompous, and lacking the
personalities of the deceased, Edmonds's
writings stimulated a small boom in automatic writing by others. One result was
a 150,000-word book credited to John
Quincy Adams, who allegedly communicated to Josiah Brigham through a medium, Joseph D. Siles. Siles's automatic

45

handwriting was virtually identical to the

shaky script of Adams in his later years.
The book comprised twelve messages
from Adams, dealing with his arrival in
heaven and his reception by such luminaries as Napoleon and Christ himself,
who assembled his twelve apostles to
honor Adams.
From the mid-nineteenth century
and early decades of the twentieth century, many people attempted automatic
writing as a way to communicate with
dead friends and relatives. Numerous literary works were produced through automatic writing from unknown discarnates who suddenly announced their
appearance. See Worth, Patience.
Before his death in 1901, British psychical researcher Frederic W. H. Myers
studied at least fifty cases of automatic
writing, most of which he considered uninteresting and lacking proof of spirit
communications. One of the more interesting cases was a person who used two
planchettes to write different messages simultaneously, a feat Myers felt would be
virtually impossible to fake. See Planchette.
Philosopher and psychologist William James looked upon automatic writing as a way of gaining access to levels of
the unconscious. In the late nineteenth
century, psychologists and psychiatrists
who shared the same view began using
automatic writing to explore mental disturbances in the unconscious mind. Since
then, automatic writing has helped children r{:veal internal conflicts they cannot
verbalize, has helped therapists establish
communication with the insane, and
sometimes has prompted disturbed criminals to reveal information that is helpful
in solving crimes.
Automatic writing continues to be
used in modern times in attempts to reach
the dead or discarnate beings. It was used
in the early twentieth century in the famous "psychic excavations" of Glastonbury, England. Automatic writing has pe-

46

riodic upswings of popularity, influenced

to a great extent by popular authors on
the occult.
Critics warn of dangers in automatic
writing. According to some, the writer is
vulnerable to harassment or possession
by demonic spirits and the evil-minded
dead. Some psychologists say the real
danger is in dredging up material from
the unconscious that is difficult to handle.
See Cross correspondences; Glastonbury;
Montgomery,
Ruth;
Roberts, Jane;
Smith, Helene; Super-ESP.
Sources: Slater Brown. The Heyday of Spiritualism. New York: Hawthorn Books,
1970; Alfred Douglas. Extrasensory Powers: A Century of Psychical Research. Lon-

don: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1976; Ivor

Grattan-Guinness. Psychical Research: A
Guide to Its History, Principles and Practices. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire,

England: The Aquarian Press, 1982; Stoker

Hunt. Ouija: The Most Dangerous Game.
New York: Harper & Row, 1985; James
H. Hyslop. Contact with the Other World.
New York: The Century Co., 1919; William James. "Notes on Automatic Writing." 1889. In Frederick Burkhardt, gen.
ed., and Fredson Bowers, text ed. The
Works of William James: Essays in Psychical Research. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1986; Anita Muhl. Automatic Writing. New York: Helix Press,
1963; Frederic W. H. Myers. Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death.

Vols. 1 and 2. 1903. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1954; J. B. Rhine and
Robert Brier, eds. Parapsychology Today.
New York: The Citadel Press, 1968; J. B.
Rhine and J. G. Pratt. Parapsychology:
Frontier Science of the Mind. Springfield,
IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1957; Ian Stevenson. "Some Comments on Automatic Writing." The Journal of the American Society
for Psychical Research 72, no. 4 (October
1978): 315-32.

Automatisms
Automatisms fall into two categories:
motor and sensory. Motor automatisms
are unconscious muscular movements

Automatic

writing

such as writing or painting, which seem

to be directed by another personality or
intelligence, usually believed to be discarnate, or by extrasensory guidance. Sensory automatisms are the products of
spontaneous inner visions and hearing.
Automatisms were the focus of much
study in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, as psychical researchers searched for evidence of survival after
death.
In motor automatisms the medium is
in a dissociated state of consciousness or
trance. In automatic writing the medium
may be aware of writing, but not of the
words being written. Various automatisms have been used to communicate
with the spirit world since ancient times.
Automatic speech, in which a medium
surrenders the vocal chords to an entity
or deity, has been used by oracles, prophets, and modern-day channelers.
During the height of Spiritualism,
motor automatisms were often seen as
spirit-directed. In more recent times, researchers have been more skeptical.
Many psychical researchers now believe
that the majority of automatisms are
the products of secondary personalities
who produce knowledge or information
the person has learned unconsciously,
or information obtained paranormally
through a super-ESP. A rare few cases
seem to be explainable only as spirit communications.
The most common motor automatism is automatic writing. Many people
try automatic writing in an effort to make
contact with entities, or to communicate
with friends and relatives who are dead.
See Automatic writing.
The second most common motor automatism is automatic painting. Numerous cases have been documented of people with little or no artistic training
suddenly being overcome by the desire to
dra\v or paint in distinctive, professional
styles. They feel guided by a spirit, and
may actually feel an invisible hand push-

Automatisms

ing theirs. In some cases the style is recognizable as that of a deceased artist.
One of the most famous automatic
painting cases is the Thomas-Gifford oils
of the early twentieth century. Robert
Swain Gifford was an American artist
who died suddenly on January 15, 1905.
Six months later Frederic Thompson, a
New York City engraver, was seized with
the urge to sketch and paint pictures. He
experienced visions of gnarled trees and
misty landscapes, favorite subjects of Gifford.
Thompson had previously met Gifford, but was not well acquainted with
him. When Thompson painted he felt he
was Gifford, though he did not know
Gifford was dead. Thompson would tell
his wife, "Gifford wants to sketch."
Sometimes he heard Gifford's voice telling him to finish the artist's work.
Thompson
produced
numerous
works, which reminded buyers of Gifford's style and sold at good prices. After
about two years, haunted by a recurring
vision of gnarled oak trees, he began to
worry that he was going insane. He met
Dr. James H. Hyslop, philosopher and
psychical researcher, who arranged a series of sittings with different mediums to
identify the personality responsible for
the art. The mediums, in trance, picked
up information about Gifford that was
coming through Thompson. Thompson,
reassured of his sanity, resumed his artistic work, locating the actual scenes he
saw in his visions and executing them on
canvas. Hyslop was convinced the source
of his inspiration was Gifford, and that
he had found a true case of spirit obsesSIon.

Automatic music composition has

also been claimed. An unusual case is that
of Rosemary Brown, a London woman
with limited musical ability, who in 1970
began to compose sophisticated works,
which she said came from the deceased
composers Liszt, Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, Schubert, Chopin, and Stravinsky.

47

Some works have been recorded. Music

critics acknowledge that the channeled
works follow the various styles of the
composers, but are not as good as should
be expected of such musical geniuses.
Dowsing is a type of motor automatism. An extrasensory guidance influences the movements of the rod held by a
dowser. See Dowsing.
Problems associated with motor automatisms include compulsion, obsession,
and a feeling of possession. The automatism may go out of control until a person
feels taken over by it. Some people who
experiment with automatic writing, inviting communication from any entity who
cares to answer, say they feel possessed
by demons who torment them mentally
and physically, even rape them. Such possession has not been proved conclusively;
some psychologists say the effects are created by paranoia, not demons. The effects
usually disappear in time, or after an exorcism.
Other types of motor automatisms
include impulsive behavior, such as deciding to do or not to do something at the
last minute without knowing why. Inhibitions and sudden physical incapacities
are also automatisms.
Sensory automatisms include apparitions, inspirations, hallucinations, and
dreams. Until English psychical researcher Edmund Gurney began research
in this area in 1882, hallucinations were
assumed to be due to physical disorders.
Gurney's research established that paranormal visions and sounds are often unrelated to disorders. Inspirations of genius appear in hallucinations to writers,
artists, scientists, and others. Apparitions
include those of the living, in which a
person is seen in two places at the same
time. Inner voices issue instructions,
sometimes in conjunction with motor automatisms. See Channeling; Cryptomnesia; Super-ESP.
Sources: Alfred Douglas. Extrasensory
Powers: A Century of Psychical Research.

48

London: Victor GOllancz Ltd., 1976; Ivor

Grattan-Guinness. Psychical Research: A
Guide to Its History, Principles and Practices. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire,

England: The Aquarian Press, 1982; Stoker

Hunt. Ouija: The Most Dangerous Game.
New York: Harper & Row, 1985; James
H. Hyslop. Contact with the Other World.
New York: The Century Co., 1919; F. W.
H. Myers. Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. Abridged ed. Edited
by Susy Smith. New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1961; J. B. Rhine and J. G.
Pratt. Parapsychology: Frontier Science of
the Mind. Springfield, IL: Charles C.
Thomas, 1957. J. B. Rhine and Robert
Brier, eds. Parapsychology Today. New
York: The Citadel Press, 1968; Ian Stevenson. "Some Comments on Automatic Writing." Journal of the American Society for
Psychical Research 72, no. 4 (October
1978): 315-32.

Avatar
In Hinduism a human incarnation of the
Divine who functions as a mediator between people and God. Avatar is a Sanskrit term literally meaning "descent."
The concept is expressed in the sacred
writings of the Ramayana and Mahabharata (the latter of which includes the
Bhagavad-Gita),
but is not present in the
Vedas or the Upanishads.
The avatars who appear in the epics
of the Ramayana and Mahabharata are
Rama and Krishna, incarnations of
Vishnu, the sky god and protector of the
universe. Vishnu is said to have had anywhere from ten to thirty-nine incarnations, all of whom appeared to save the
world in times of crisis. Rama and
Krishna are the most beloved and worshiped; Krishna is considered the most
perfect expression of the Divine. The potential number of avatars is countless.
Vishnu's final avatar will be Kali, who
will appear at the end of Kali Yuga, the
present era, and destroy the wicked and
usher in the new era of Maha Yuga. See
Kali Yuga.

Automatisms

Hindus accept Gautama Buddha as

an avatar.
The bhakti (devotional) movements
of Hinduism have often centered around
avatars, who are supposed to possess siddhis, psychic abilities and paranormal
powers, such as the ability to materialize
apports, levitate, bilocate, and the like.
Exceptional holy men in India are called
avatars. Ramakrishna was displeased by
the appellation, professing himself to be a
scholar. Sai Baba is called an avatar. See
Sai Baba. Compare to Bodhisattva.
The term "Avatar" also has been
made a registered trademark for a pricey,
self-described "proprietary technology"
consisting of training in consciousness development. The Avatar program was conceived around 1986 by Harry Palmer of
Elmira, New York, a Scientologist for
thirteen years who had become disillusioned with Scientology's teachings.
Palmer built the training around the concept that people experience and are what
they believe. The program is intended to
be an experiential re-engineering of consciousness to free people from their own
self-imposed limitations. Centers are located around the world.
Sources: Erlendur Haraldsson. Modern
Miracles: An Investigative Report on Psychic Phenomena Associated with Sathya Sai
Baba. New York: Fawcett Columbine,
1987; Solange Lemaitre. Ramakrishna and
the Vitality of Hinduism.
1959. Wood-

stock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1984;

K. M. Sen. Hinduism. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1961.

Avebury
The oldest megalithic site in Britain, and
perhaps the largest megalithic site in the
world. Avebury covers 28 1/2 acres six
miles west of Marlborough in Wiltshire,
southern England; its site includes the
modern village of Avebury. Larger and
more extensive than Stonehenge, it is said

Avebury

that more than a quarter of a million people could stand within the boundaries of
its circle. The henge was in active use berween 2600 B.C. and 1600 B.C., thus predating the Druids.
It is believed by some that the Avebury stones are repositories of Earth and
psychic energy, which may be detected by
clairvoyance and dowsing. See Leys. Such
energy may be responsible for paranormal phenomena that has long been reported at the site, including eerie small
figures seen flitting about the stones at
night and strange lights drifting and bobbing over the ground. See Earth lights.
Around World War I, a scene suggesting
retrocognition (seeing into the past) was
reported by a woman who saw the
sounds and lights of a fair in progress
among the stones. It had been at least
fifty years since a fair had taken place
there. See Retrocognition. In the late
1980s, Avebury became a major site of
the mysterious crop circles, geometric indentations made in fields, which defy explanation. See Crop circles.
The henge comprises a large, circular
ditch 1,200 feet wide and surrounded by
a fifteen-foot-high bank. Inside are rwo
or three smaller circles. The henge is intersected by four avenues, possibly causeways to give ancient users access to the
interior. The layout resembles a Celtic
cross.
Ringing the inner edge of the ditch
are the remains of the Great Stone Circle,
which once contained some one hundred
sandstone sarsens. Only rwenty-seven remain, due to destruction in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries by Puritans,
who smashed and burned the stones, and
by farmers, who wanted to clear the land.
The largest remaining stone is about
rwenty-five feet tall and weighs about
sixty tons. The stones alternate in shape
from pillars to diamonds.
No records survive attesting to the
original purpose and uses of the henge,
and excavations have yielded little in-

49

sight. The antiquarians John Aubrey and

William Stukeley took great interest in
Avebury in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, respectively. Stukeley
saw the henge as part of a larger sacred
pattern laid out over the entire landscape,
and theorized both Avebury and Stonehenge were sites of serpent worship. According to the most widely held modern
theory, Avebury was a settlement of the
Bronze Age Beaker Folk and most likely
was a burial site. The charter of King
Athelstan, dated in the tenth century,
does say burials were made there, and
burial remains have been found at the
base of four stones. The West Kennet
long barrow, located near the henge, is
said to be England's largest prehistoric
tomb.
Another nearby landmark, Windmill
Hill, bears an earthwork on top and may
have predated Avebury. This site may
have been a cattle market, trading post,
or ritual site, judging from the animal
bones excavated there. The purpose of
Silbury Hill, yet another nearby landmark and Europe's tallest artificial
mound, is unknown.
According to other theories, Avebury
was used for religious festivals in honor
of Goddess. The alternating shapes of the
stones suggest fertility rites. Tradition has
it that on Beltane (May Eve), a pagan fertility festival, village girls would sit on the

50

Devil's Chair, one of the huge stones, and

make a wish. It is also theorized that Avebury may have had astronomical purposes, as the avenues, stones, and other
features were aligned to the May Day
sunrise and the morning rise of Alpha
Centauri in November. An occult theory
. holds that Avebury was a psychic power
center, and that tapping the stones enabled communication with other megalithic sites. See Megaliths.
Sources: Janet and Colin Bard. Mysterious
Britain. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1978; Peter Lancaster Brown. Megaliths,
Myths, and Men. New York: Taplinger

Publishing Company, 1976; Aubrey Burl.

of Stone. New York: Ticknor &
Fields, 1979; Michael Dames. The Avebury
Cycle. London: Thames and Hudson,
1977; Paul Devereux. Places of Power.
London: Blandford, 1990; Rosemary Ellen
Guiley. The Encyclopedia of Witches and
Witchcraft. New York: Facts On File,
1989; Francis Hitching. Earth Magic. New
York: William Morrow, 1977; John Michell. The New View Over Atlantis. Rev. ed.
San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983; Jennifer Westwood, ed. The Atlas of Mysterious Places. New York: Weidenfeld &
Nicholson, 1987.
Rings

Ayurveda
See Behavioral medicine.

Avebury

B
Bacon, Francis
See Saint Germain.

Barbanell, Maurice
See Spiritualism.

Barrett, William
See Parapsychology; Society for Psychical
Research (SPR).

Behavioral medicine
Approaches to healing that are holistic in
nature and take into account the interrelations between mind, body, and spirit,
and between the human organism and the
environment. Non-Western healing systems, such as Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, have been based on a holistic foundation since ancient times; but Western
medicine has since the seventeenth cenrury been based on the Cartesian philosophy of dualism, the sepatation of mind
and body. Beginning in the 1960s, however, the broad humanistic movement
and various scientific researches have
provided impetus for the integration of
so-called alternative and conventional
medicines.
The term "behavioral medicine" is
preferred to "holism" and "holistic medicine." The term "holism" was coined

Bacon, Francis

from the Greek halos, "whole," in 1926

by Jan Smuts, a student of biology and
the first prime minister of South Africa,
in his book, Holism and Evolution. Several decades later Smuts's holistic perspective on biological evolution was expanded by psychologist Abraham H.
Maslow and others in defining human
nature and developing psychologies of
health and transcendence that treat the
human being as a whole organism and
not a collection of parts. See Psychology.
Maslow also recognized that suppression,
frustration, or denial of the "essential
core," or inner nature of a person, could
result in illness.
The humanistic movement, coupled
with a revival of interest in Eastern philosophy, brought renewed interest to holistic health in the 1960s. At about the
same time, scientific research began providing evidence of the mind-body link.
One product of thit research, psychoneuroimmunology (PNl), explores the collaboration between the mind, the brain, the
body's self-protection mechanisms, and
the immune system.
Among the significant research findings was the work of psychiatrist George
Solomon. In the 1960s he observed that
women with certain personality traitspassivity, long-suffering-succumbed
to
rheumatoid arthritis more quickly; and
that rats with tumor cell implants that
were put under stress died more quickly
than implanted rats not subjected to

51

stress. Solomon called the new field "psychoimmunology. "

In the 1970s another breakthrough
occurred. Psychologist Robert Ader discovered that rats could be conditioned to
depress their immune systems. Ader
tested his theory with immunologist
Nicholas Cohen and changed the term
psychoimmunology to "psychoneuroimmunology," to reflect the suspected role
of the nervous system in immunity.
In the late 1970s, neuroscientist
Karen Bulloch traced direct neurological
paths between the brain and the immune
system. Later research demonstrated that
the immune system produces chemicals
that feed information back to the brain.
PNI demonstrates empirically the
role that emotions have on physical
health; the body essentially is a mirror of
the mind. One well-known example of
the enormous power of the mind is the
experience of Norman Cousins, former
editor of the Saturday Review. Cousins
suffered from ankylosing spondylitis, a
degenerative condition in which the connective tissue of the spine disintegrates.
Doctors put his chances of recovery at 1
in 500. Cousins said he took himself off
conventional medication and substituted
massive doses of vitamin C and an emotional therapy of humor. He made a full
recovery.
Attitude modification, relaxation,
and imagery have been used increasingly
in the treatment of catastrophic illness
such as cancer. Research has shown that
imaging can increase the number of circulating white blood cells, and can also
increase the level of thymosin-alpha-1, a
hormone that benefits auxiliary white
blood cells (the so-called T helper cells),
which produces feelings of well-being.
Cancer patients who have used imagery
have shown dramatic improvements,
from significant shrinking of tumors to
complete disappearance of the disease.
Imagery is used to treat a wide variety of
health problems, from minor complaints

52

such as headaches and stomach aches to

serious diseases and disorders such as
heart disease, cancer, arthritis, and neurological illnesses. See Creative visualization; Imagery.
Research also has shown how emotions make a person more susceptible to
illness, especially cancer and heart disease. Most damaging are chronic or suppressed anger, fear, guilt, a lack of love of
life, and a deep inner conviction of being
unloved, unloving, or unlovable. Surgeon
Bernie S. Siegel, renowned for his alternative therapy with cancer patients, theorizes that all disease is ultimately related
to lack of love or to love that is only conditional. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist
and pioneer in research into the effects of
relaxation, believes the "Faith Factor," a
deep personal religious or philosophical
faith, can playa significant role in health.
See Aura; Biofeedback; Bodywork; Healing, faith and psychic; Music; Relaxation; Universal life force.
Herbert Benson with William
Proctor. Beyond the Relaxation Response.
New York: Times Books, 1984; Fritjof Capra. Uncommon Wisdom: Conversations
with Remarkable People. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988; David Gelman with
Mary Hager, et al. "Body & Soul." Newsweek (November 7, 1988): 88-97; Daniel
Goleman. "The Mind Over the Body."
New Realities 8, no. 4 (March/April 1988):
14-19; Richard Grossman. The Other
Medicines. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1985; Dora Kunz, compo Spiritual Aspects
of the Healing Arts. Wheaton, IL: The
Theosophical Publishing House, 1985;
Steven E. Locke and Douglas Colligan. The
Healer Within. New York: E. P. Dutton,
1986; Abraham H. Maslow. Toward a Psychology of Being. Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1962; George W. Meek, ed. Healers
and the Healing Process. Wheaton, IL: The
Theosophical Publishing House, 1977;
Robert Ornstein and David Sobel. The
Healing Brain. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1987; Martin L. Rossman. HealSources:

ing Yourself: A Step-by-Step

Program for

Behavioral

medicine

Better Health through Imagery. New York:

Pocket Books, 1987; Bernie S. Siegel. Love,
Medicine & Miracles. New York: Harper
& Row, 1986; Rob Wechsler. "A New Prescription: Mind Over Malady." Discover
(February 1987): 51-61.

Benedict, St. (also St. Benedict

of Nursia) (c. 480-c. 547)

Father of Western monastICiSm and
founder of the Benedictines, the oldest
Christian religious order in the West,
which greatly influenced the spread of
civilization in the Middle Ages. The only
source for documenting Benedict's life is
The Dialogues by Gregory the Great
(Gregory I), pope from 590-604.
Benedict was born c. 480 in the Sabine town of Nursia. He was sent to
Rome to be educated, but was so revolted
by the licentiousness of the city that he
and his nurse fled to Enfide, a village
about thirty miles away. After a time
Benedict then went to a remote place now
called Subiaco, where he encountered a
monk, Romanus, who led him to a cave.
Here, at about age fourteen, Benedict became a hermit, and spent three years living in the cave. His sanctity and alleged
miraculous powers began to attract followers. Benedict organized them into
twelve monasteries of twelve monks each,
and each under a prior. Benedict exercised supreme rule over all. The Subiaco
monastic community became a permanent settlement, but Benedict at some
point left abruptly, allegedly because another priest, Florentius, attempted to undermine him.
In about 525 Benedict went to
Monte Cassino and destroyed the temple
to Apollo at its top. In its place he established (c. 530) the first structures of a
monastery that would become the most
famous in the world, the birthplace of
Western monasticism. The monastery attracted a large following of disciples, as
well as church officials from Rome and

Capua, who came to consult Benedict for

his wisdom and prophetic powers.
At about this time, he probably
wrote his famous Regula Monachorum,
called the Rule, a monastic rule that became the standard for monastic living
throughout the Western world. The Rule
basically calls for a year of probation, a
vow of obedience to a single abbot or abbess, moderate asceticism, and prayer
and work ("Ora et labora" became a
motto of the Benedictines). Scholarship in
the twentieth century has discovered that
Benedict's rule was influenced by, and
passages were accommodated from, the
Rule of the Master, a monastic document
also dating from the sixth century but
which was not as spiritual, personal, and
broad as Benedict's Rule.
Benedict expanded his activities beyond the monastery to the surrounding
population, curing the sick, distributing
alms and food, and providing aid and
counseling. It is alleged that he raised the
dead on at least several occasions.
Benedict foretold his own death six
days in advance, and instructed his
monks to dig a grave. As soon as the task
was accomplished, he fell ill with fever
and deteriorated. In his final moments, he
stood, supported by monks, and died
with his hands raised in prayer.
Gregory the Great, in The Dialogues, Book Two, offers the following
description of one of Benedict's mystical
expenences:
In speaking of their hopes and longings, they [Benedict and the deacon Servandus] were able to taste in advance the
heavenly food that was not yet fully
theirs to enjoy .... In the dead of night
he [Benedict] suddenly beheld a flood of
light shining down from above more brilliant than the sun, and with it every trace
of darkness cleared away. Another remarkable sight followed. According to
his own description, the whole world was
gathered up before his eyes in what ap-

Benedict, St. (also St. Benedict of Nursia) (c. 480-c. 547)

53

peared to be a single ray of light. As he

gazed at all this dazzling display, he saw
the soul of Germanus, the bishop of
Capua, being carried by angels up to
heaven in a ball of fire.
In the same text, Gregory comments,
The light of holy contemplation enlarges and expands the mind in God until
it stands above the world. In fact, the
soul that sees Him rises even above itself,
and as it is drawn upward in His light, all
its inner powers unfold. Then when it
looks downward from above, it sees how
small everything really is that was beyond
its grasp before.
The Order of Saint Benedict (OSB) is
the oldest order of monks in the West;
for over five centuries it was the only monastic order in the West. During the Middle Ages Benedictines were called the
Black Monks, referring to the color of
their habit. There are Benedictine monasteries worldwide today in the Roman
Catholic and Anglican churches. In the
late 1980s there were 535 houses and
over 14,000 members of the Benedictines,
including Carthusians, Cistercians, Trappists, and other related orders.
Benedict's feast day is July 11 in the
Western church and March 14 in the
Eastern church.
Sources: John J. Delaney. Dictionary of
Saints. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1980; Vergilius Ferm, ed. The Encyclopedia of Religion. Secaucus, NJ: Poplar
Books, 1955; Gregory the Great. The Dialogues, Book Two. Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill, 1967; F. C. Happold. Mysticism: A
Study and an Anthology. Rev. ed. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin
Books, 1970; Robert Maynard Hutchins,
ed. Great Books of the Western World.
Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952;
Louis Kronenberger, ed. Atlantic Brief
Lives. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971; Michael Walsh, ed. Butler's Lives of the
Saints. Concise ed. San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1985.

54

Bermuda Triangle
A mysterious area in the Atlantic Ocean
where paranormal events are alleged to
occur. The Bermuda Triangle is bounded
by Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. It
is also called the Devil's Triangle, Limbo
of the Lost, Hoodoo Sea, Twilight Zone,
and Port of Missing Ships. Numerous
planes and ships have vanished there
without a trace. Most incidents reportedly have occurred in good weather or
near a landing site or port. Just before
disappearing crews have made radio contact indicating that nothing was amiss. In
rare instances missing ships have been
found, but without their crew or passengers.
The Bermuda Triangle was named in
1945, after the disappearance of six Navy
planes and their crews on December 5, a
sunny, calm day with ideal flying conditions. Prior to that scores of ships of all
sizes reportedly had vanished in the area.
Strange phenomena have been reported
since Christopher Columbus's voyage to
America. Columbus wrote in his logs that
his compass acted strangely, and that an
unexplained light emanated from the sea.
Other phenomena witnessed in the
area include bright lights or balls of fire;
a calm yet unnatural look to the ocean;
sudden red flares in the sky that appear
to be explosions; the turning of the sky
yellow, hazy, and foggy; and objects that
appear to be UFOs. Airplane crew members report sudden power failures,
compass-spinning, strong magnetic pulls
on planes toward the sea, and their inability to control the plane's altitude.
In the lore of fishermen, the Bermuda Triangle is inhabited by devils, demons, and monsters that kidnap ships.
Some scientists say unusual weather conditions are responsible. Other theories
propose that phenomena are caused by
alignments of the planets, time warps that
trap ships and planes, forces emanating
from the unknown ruins of Atlantis, or

Benedict, St. (also St. Benedict of Nursia) (c. 480-c. 547)

cosmic tractor beams sent from UFOs or

hidden sea beings to kidnap ships and
people.
Skeptics claim misleading information and contrived reporting have created
a false mystery, adding that most disappearances can be attributed to bad
weather, abandonment, or explainable
accidents. They say that incidents that occur in the Triangle are automatically considered mysteries because of the legends.
A similar ocean area said to be the
site of mysterious disappearances is the
Devil's Sea off the southeast coast of Japan. Some cases have been blamed on the
activity of an underwater volcano.
Sources: Charles Berlitz. The Bermuda
Triangle. New York: Avon Books, 1974;
Charles Berlitz. Without a Trace. New

York: Ballantine Books, 1977; Edgar

Cayce. Edgar Cayce on Atlantis. New
York: Warner Books, 1968; Adi-Kent
Thomas Jeffrey. They Dared the Devil's
Triangle. New York: Warner Books, 1975;
Lawrence David Kusche. The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Solved. New York: Warner
Books, 1975.

Bernard of Clairvaux

(1090-1153)
Christian saint, mystic, and doctor of the
Western church, known as Doctor Mellifluous, "The Honey-Mouthed Doctor,"
for the spiritual sweetness of his teachings. Bernard was born in Fontaines,
France, near Dijon, to a leading family of
the nobility. He excelled in his early studies, especially in literature, while at the
same time giving evidence of great piety.
At about the age of twenty-three he entered the reformed Benedictine community at Citeaux, to which he ,vas eventually followed by his father and five
brothers. In 1115 the abbot, St. Stephen
Harding, sent Bernard to found a new
daughter house that was to become famous as the Cistercian Abbey of Clairvaux.

Bernard

of Clairvaux

(1090-1153)

Though Bernard sought quiet and

solitude to contemplate, the needs of the
church, the orders of his superiors, and
the urgent pleas of rulers caused him to
spend much time in travels and controversies. Early in his career, when denounced to Rome for "meddling" in high
ecclesiastical affairs, he won over his accusers by explaining that he would like
nothing better than to retire to his monastery, but had been ordered to assist at
the synod of Troyes. He likewise found
himself called upon to judge the rival
claims of Innocent II and Anacletus II to
the papacy, and traveled widely to bring
others over to the side of Innocent. His
other activities included assisting at the
Second Lateran Council (1139), preaching the Second Crusade (1146), and
countering the theological errors of
Abelard (1139) and of Gilbert, bishop of
Poitiers (1147-1148). Worn out by his
labors, and distressed by the failure of the
Crusade, he died at Clairvaux on August
20, 1153. He was canonized by the Roman church in 1174, and formally declared a doctor of the church in 1830 by
Pope Pius VIII.
Despite his many activities, the real
center of Bernard's life was prayer and
contemplation:
from them he drew
strength for his labors and journeys and
inspiration for his writings. Bernard, like
all Christians, believed that the vision of
God and union with him was the end for
which humankind was created. This can
only be fully attained in the afterlife, but
Bernard and many others throughout the
ages have claimed an experience, even in
this life, of that vision and union. This
mystical experience, like the beatific vision of which it is a foretaste, is, in the
Christian view, a free gift of God; the
most that we can do is desire it and strive
to remove obstacles to it. The methods of
removing obstacles are the subject of ascetical and mystical theology. Many
Christians before Bernard had described
this mystical experience, but he was one

55

of the first to address himself to the theological understanding

of it, though not in
any systematic way.
Ascetical theology deals with groundwork of the spiritual life: the eradication
of vices, the cultivation of virtue, the attainment of detachment,
by which one
learns to give up one's own will and accept God's will for oneself. Bernard's
works in this field include De Gratia et
Libera Arbitrio (Of Grace and Free Will)
and De Gradibus Humilitatus
et Superbiae (Of the Steps of Humility and Pride).
Bernard's teaching is typical of the paradoxical Christian view of humankind,
simultaneously
affirming our dignity as
made in the image and likeness of God
(which image, for Bernard, consisted primarily in free will) and our need for humility as a creature-a
fallen creature, in
whom the likeness to God is obscured by
sm.
Bur for Bernard, as for the author of
the Johannine books (Fourth Gospel) of
the New Testament, the beginning, end,
and driving force of the whole mystery of
creation and redemption
is love: God's
love for humankind enabling humankind
to love God in return. In De Dilgendo
Deo (Of Loving God), Bernard presents
motives for loving God, both those that
all may acknowledge
(the gifts of creation) and those that compel Christians,
who believe that God became incarnate
and died to save them (the goods of redemption). Here, as elsewhere in his writings, the humanity of Christ has the central role.
Love is nurtured
by conversation;
and so in the four books De Consideratione (Of Meditation),
written for his
pupil who had become pope as Eugene
III, Bernard discusses meditation, or mental prayer, by which one converses with
God and may perhaps attain a vision of
God and union with him even in this life.
It is in the eighty-six Sermones super
Cantica Canticorum
(Sermons on the
Song of Songs) that Bernard eloquently

56

expounds on this vision and union, and

the desire for it. As many would do after
him, he sees these ancient Hebrew poems
as describing the union of God and the
soul as a mystical marriage.
Bernard
stresses that the mystical experience is,
precisely, an experience, and thus strictly
incommunicable,
only to be known by
one who has experienced it. Yet he is far
from any shallow emotionalism,
and the
work manifests a profound and precise
knowledge
of doctrinal
subtleties.
See
Mysticism; Prayer.
Sources: Bernard of Clairvaux. Opera Omnia. Joannis Mabillon, ed. In Migne's Patrologia Latina. Paris, 1854; Etienne Gilson. The Mystical
Theology
of Saint
Bernard. Translated by A. H. C. Downes.
New York: Sheed & Ward, 1940; Bruno
Scott James. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux:
An Essay in Biography. London: Hodder
& Stoughton, 1957; Ailbe J. Liddy, O.Cist.
Life and Teaching of Saint Bernard. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son Ltd., 1950; St. Bernard's Sermon on the Canticle of Canticles.
Translated by a priest of Mount Mellary.
Dublin: Browne and Nolan, Ltd., 1920;
Watkin Williams. The Mysticism of Saint
Bernard of Clairvaux.
London:
Burns
Oates & Washbourne, 1931.

Berry, Thomas
See Planetary

consciousness.

Besant, Annie
See Theosophy.

Betty Books
See White,

Stewart

Edward.

Bhagavad-Gita
See Hinduism;

Bernard

Yoga.

of Clairvaux

(1090-1153)

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

for Psychical Research 41, part 130 (1932-

See Alternative religious movements.

History

1933): 205-49;

Vivian Worthington. A

of Yoga. London: Routledge

&

Kegan Paul, 1982.

Bilocation
Bioenergetics
The appearance of an individual in two
distant places at once. It is not known
precisely what occurs in a bilocation, but
prevailing theory suggests that it is the
projection of a double. The double may
be perceived by others as a solid physical
form, or may appear ghostly. Typically,
the double acts strangely or mechanically,
and often does not speak or acknowledge
when others speak to it.
Bilocation is an uncommon but ancient phenomenon. It is said to be experienced, and even practiced by will, by
mystics, ecstatics, saints, monks and holy
persons, and magical adepts. Many
Christian saints and monks were famous
for bilocation, such as St. Anthony of
Padua, St. Ambrose of Milan, St. Severus
of Ravenna, and Padre Pio of Italy. In
1774 St. Alphonsus Maria de'Ligouri was
seen at the bedside of the dying Pope
Clement XIV, when in fact the saint was
confined to his cell in a location four
days' journey away.
Early psychical researchers, such as
Frederic W. H. Myers, one of the
founders of the Society for Psychical Research in England, collected and studied
reports of bilocation, but the phenomenon receives scant scientific attention in
modern times.
Spontaneous and involuntary bilocation sometimes presages or heralds the
death of the individual seen.
See Apparition; Out-of-body experience (OBE).
Sources: John Ferguson. An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mysticism and the Mystery
Religions. New York: Seabury Press, 1976;

Hornell Hart and Ella B. Hart. "Visions

and Apparitions Collectively and Reciprocally Perceived." Proceedings of the Society

Biofeedback

See Bodywork.

Biofeedback
The electronic measurement and presentation of information concerning physiological processes, such as brain-wave
rhythms, heart rate, blood pressure, skin
temperature, and muscle tension. The information then is used to control those
processes. Since the 1960s biofeedback
has been used in parapsychology in psi
testing, and in health care as an alternative treatment for various physical, behavior, and psychological disorders and
conditions. Biofeedback also helps one
achieve altered and mystical states of consciousness; it is sometimes called "electronic yoga."
Biofeedback is based on the principles that behavior can be changed by
making changes in environment, and that
by mentally recognizing a biological function, control may be gained over it. Initially, biofeedback was applied to brain
waves. Brain waves were discovered and
measured in 1924 by Hans Berger, but it
was not until the 1950s that Western attention was turned to the possibility of
producing certain brain waves at will. In
1958 researcher Joe Kamiya hypothesized
that subjects continuously fed data on
their brain waves might be able to regulate them. In experiments with college
students, Kamiya added a relay circuit to
an EEG machine so that a tone sounded
whenever alpha brain waves (corresponding to a state of relaxation) were generated. Students quickly learned to control
the tone. Kamiya went on to study the
brain waves of Zen meditators. By the

57

end of the 1960s, considerable

research
was being done on states of consciousness
and their corresponding
brain waves (see
Table of Brain-wave Patterns, below).
Early biofeedback
experiments
also
were done with laboratory
animals in
conjunction with a system of rewards and
punishment.
Notable is the work of Dr.
Neil E. Miller, who trained rats to alter
various involuntary
internal processes.
Dr. Herbert Benson trained monkeys to
lower their blood pressure. Benson and
other researchers then turned their attention to human subjects, studying and
electronically monitoring practitioners
of
Transcendental
Meditation,
who demonstrated how they could change their body
processes through meditation.

Table of Brain-wave Patterns

Brain waves are measured in hertz, or cycles
per second. There are four major stages of
brain-wave activity, ranging from beta, the
shortest and fastest, to delta, the longest and
slowest. At the borderlines between states,
brain waves usually show a mixture of two
patterns.
Pattern
Beta

Hertz

Alpha

8-13

Theta

Delta

58

13-26

4-8

0.5-4

Characteristics
Active, waking consciousness, eyes open
Eyes closed, body relaxed; also daydreaming
with eyes open. Average
person can maintain
awareness.
Deep relaxation, drowsiness; the hypnagogic
state before sleep. Average person cannot
maintain awareness;
meditators can, and
show smoothest waves
with quiet mind, body,
and emotions.
Sleep or unconsciousness

The Process of Biofeedback

To monitor various
physiological
processes, the body is attached by electrodes to the appropriate
device: electroencephalograph
(EEG) for brain waves,
the most common device used; electromyograph (EMG) for muscular tension;
plethysmograph
for blood volume; electrocardiograph
(EKG) for heart functions; galvanic skin response (GSR) for
skin temperature.
One process is monitored at a time. Feedback is given immediately by tones, beeps, lights, digits, needles moving on graphs, or light patterns
on a screen. The subject is taught relaxation exercises with breathing and visualization, similar to yoga techniques, and
observes the changes in the feedback. The
subject learns how to achieve desired results, such as lowered blood pressure or
an alpha-level state of consciousness. As
training
progresses
the subject learns
how to control physiological
processes
through thoughts and moods, or by shifting body position. Eventually, the subject
does not need electronic equipment
to
achieve results.
Early biofeedback training required
going to a clinic, where monitoring equipment was available. Technology advances
have produced
hand-held
biofeedback
units for home use, which monitor skin
moisture.

Biofeedback

and Psi

Biofeedback

can

teach

individuals

how to increase their alpha brain waves.

This is the altered state of consciousness
just below waking consciousness that is
attained in meditation and relaxation and
is associated with right-brain
activities
such as creativity and intuition. The alpha state is not necessary to achieve successful results in laboratory tests for psi,
but studies have shown that it is conducive to psi. Subjects who are trained in
biofeedback or meditation, and thus slip

Biofeedback

easily into an alpha state, tend to score

high in psi tests. Biofeedback is one of the
common induction methods used in tests
in which subjects are first put into altered
states. See Altered states of consciousness; Inspiration; Intuition; Meditation.
Biofeedback

and Mystical

States

Biofeedback has been shown to help

induce mystical states of awareness similar to those found in the practice of Sufism, Zen, yoga, and other spiritual disciplines. It leads to a mind-body unity
and "expanded self-unfolding," and enables the practitioner to exert control
over the states of awareness achieved. Experienced meditators generate long trains
of alpha waves, followed by deeper states
of theta waves, a brain-wave level at
which the average person becomes
drowsy and begins to drop into sleep. In
meditators, however, consciousness does
not diminish in the theta state. In Zen
this state is said to be "knowing" rather
than "thinking." At the lower end of
theta, just before delta waves, the state of
sleep, meditators become "conscious of
the unconscious."
In meditation experiments using biofeedback with college students in England, C. Maxwell Cade discovered a hierarchy of states of consciousness, each
with physiological correlations. State
Four is comparable to traditional meditation and the "relaxation response";
State Five and beyond are mystical levels.
At these stages Cade's subjects sounded
like mystics in their speech. Some wept
with joy; others, who had no demonstrable artistic talent, produced beautiful
drawings and ecstatic poetry.
Cade and others devised a "Mind
Mirror" device, which monitors muscle
tone, brain-wave cycles, and right- and
left-brain activity. The Mind Mirror
showed that in mystical states, the subjects experience new patterns of neural
activity that affect both hemispheres of

Biofeedback

the brain, as well as both parts of the limbic system and brain stem, thus indicating
that mystical states of awareness can be
induced by balancing right and left sides
of the brain. Biofeedback may be promising as a means to achieve that balance.
See Mystical experiences.

Biofeedback

and Health

Biofeedback demonstrates the connection between mind and body in

health, by teaching subjects to use relaxation and thought to control body processes. It is used to affect both the voluntary and involuntary nervous systems.
Biofeedback treats stress-related disorders, alcoholism, drug addiction, asthma,
neuromuscular disorders, chronic and migraine headaches, insomnia, poor circulation, back pain, and arthritis. In some
cases it can reduce the awareness of pain,
thus cutting or eliminating the need for
drugs. Children learn to use it as well as
adults. See Relaxation.
Biofeedback is used in "theta training," a means in psychotherapy to induce
a reverie state that will produce hypnagogic imagery. Induced imagery helps a
patient sort through "unfinished business" and is used in the treatment of psychosomatic illness, neuroses, anxiety, amnesia, and in emotional disturbances of
youths.
Perhaps one of the most important
applications of biofeedback lies in "body
consciousness," as part of humanistic
and trans personal psychologies and behavioral medicine. Body consciousness
strengthens the mind-body link, which in
turn influences the total psychophysiological well-being. See Behavioral medicine.
Sources: Herbert Benson, M.D. The Relaxation Response. New York: Avon Books,
1976; Herbert Benson, M.D. Your Maximum Mind. New York: Random House,
1987; Nona Coxhead. The Relevance of
Bliss: A Contemporary
Exploration
of

59

Mystic Experience.
London:
Wildwood
House, 1985; Hoyt L. Edge, Robert L.
Morris, John Palmer, and Joseph H. Rush.
Foundations of Parapsychology.
Bosron:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986; Mark
Golin. "The Biofeedback Way to Starve
Stress." Prevention (June 1987): 30-32;
Elmer and Alice Green. Beyond Biofeedback. New York: Delacourt Press, 1977;
Richard Grossman. The Other Medicines.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985; Frederick J. Heide. "Relaxation:
The Storm
Before the Calm."
Psychology
Today
(April 1985): 18-19; Charles Honorton,
R. Davidson, and P. Bindler. "Feedbackaugmented EEG Alpha, Shifts in Subjective
State, and ESP Card-Guessing
Performance." The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 65 (1971):
308-23; William G. Roll, Robert L. Morris, and J. D. Morris. Research in Parapsychology 1972. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow
Press, 1973; Charles T. Tart. States of Consciousness. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975;
"Warm Hands and Children's Migraines."
Psychology Today (December 1984): 71;
John White and James Fadiman, eds. Relax. New York: The Confucian
Press,
1976; John White, ed. Frontiers of Consciousness. New York: Avon Books, 1975;
Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook
of
Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold, 1977.

Bird
A nearly universal symbol of the soul.
Birds are messengers to the gods and carriers of souls to heaven. The ancient
Egyptians equated birds with the ba, or
soul; a hawk represented the soul of Horus and the pharaoh. The Hindus associate birds with higher states of being. The
Aztecs believed that the dead were reborn
as colibris, the birds of their patron god,
Huitzilopochtli.
In trance shamans assume the shape of birds in order to leave
the body and soar through the universe.
Among some Native Americans,
birds
personify the wind and rain.
In folklore, myth, and fairy tales
around the world, birds possess the abil-

60

ity to talk and offer guidance or collaboration to humans. Birds bring news and
are the omens of death, especially black
birds such as crows and nocturnal birds
such as owls.
Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung said birds
represent spirit, angels, supernatural
aid,
and thoughts and flights of fancy. In alchemy the bird represents forces in the
process of activation. Madame Helena P.
Blavatsky, cofounder of the Theosophical
Society, said birds are on an evolutionary
track to become devas, a type of exalted
beings. See Deva.
See Symbols; Compare to Horse.
Sources: H. P. Blavatsky. The Secret Doctrine. 1888. Pasadena, CA: Theosophical
University Press, 1977; J. E. Cirlot. A Dictionary of Symbols. New York: Philosophical Library, 1971; Mircea Eliade. Shamanism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1964; Ake Hultkrantz. The Religions
of the American Indians. 1967. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1979; Carl
G. Jung, ed. Man and His Symbols. 1964.
New
York:
Anchor
PresslDoubleday,
1988; Barbara G. Walker. The Woman's
Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983.

Black Elk, Nicholas

(1863-1950)
Oglala Sioux mystic and medicine man.
Bestowed with great powers of healing
and prophecy at an early age, he died
without realizing part of his great vision
to restore the wholeness and harmony of
his people.
Black Elk (Ekhaka Sapa) was born in
the Moon of the Popping Trees (December) 1863, on the Little Powder River, to
Black Elk, a medicine man, and Sees the
White Cow. His second cousin was Crazy
Horse.
At about age four, he began to hear
voices, which frightened him. At age five
he had his first vision, heralded by a kingbird that spoke to him. In the vision he

Biofeedback

saw two men coming toward him from

the clouds. When they drew close, they
wheeled about, turned into geese, and
vanished.
Black Elk's "great vision," in which
he was empowered by the Grandfathers,
or Powers of the World, occurred when
he was nine. He fell ill and passed into a
death-like coma for twelve days. The two
men came down from the clouds again,
bearing spears that flashed lightning. He
went out-of-body and was taken away by
them into the clouds. There he was
greeted by formations of horses at the
four quarters, and by the Grandfathers,
representing the four quarters, the sky,
and the earth. The Grandfathers took
him to the center of the world, showed
him the universe, and bestowed upon him
the tools that would give him the power
to heal and the power to destroy. He was
named Eagle Wing Stretches. The Grandfathers showed him the sacred hoop of
his people (representing their collective
soul or spiritual unity); in the center
bloomed a holy stick that was a tree. The
tree stood at a crossroads; one road, red,
\vas the sacred path and the other, black,
was the path of materialism and hardship.
The Power of the Earth revealed
himself to Black Elk as an old man, and
said that Black Elk would need great
power, for times of great trouble were
ahead. He was shown his people, starving
and in distress, their sacred hoop broken.
A voice told Black Elk that he had been
given the sacred stick and his nation's
hoop, and in the center of the hoop he
should set the stick and make it bloom
into a flowering tree. (The stick is the
equivalent of the World Tree.) Toward
the end of the vision, he stood on the
highest mountain - he later identified it
as Harney Peak in the Black Hills-and
saw the whole hoop of the world. "And
while I stood there I saw more than I can
tell and I understood more than I saw;
for I was seeing in a sacred manner the

Black Elk, Nicholas (1863-1950)

shapes of all things in the spirit, and the

shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being," he later related
(Black Elk Speaks, 1932). He saw the sacred hoop mended, and many sacred
hoops of all peoples joined together in
one circle, and one great flowering tree
sheltering all.
Black Elk told no one of his vision,
but his personality changed markedly; he
became like a withdrawn old man. He
continued to have visions, especially of
the two messenger-like men from the
clouds. He found he could understand
birds and animals. Whenever he had a
prophetic vision, he felt lifted out of himself.
In 1876 he had a vision of the Battle
of Little Big Horn a day before it occurred. His family joined Crazy Horse in
resisting the efforts of the United States
government to place them on a reservation. After Crazy Horse was killed by soldiers, Black Elk, his family, and others
retreated to Canada, where they joined
Sitting Bull. The harsh winters and lack
of food eventually drove them back to the
United States.
According to tradition medicine men
cannot use their power until they reenact
their vision for others to see. In Black
Elk's eighteenth summer, he began reenacting parts of his great vision. He became an effective healer. He described the
process as being a hole through which
"the power from the outer world" came
through.
In 1886 he joined Buffalo Bill Cody's
Wild West Show, thinking that if he
could see and understand the world of
the Wasichu (white man), he could fulfill
his great vision and help his people. He
spent three years in the show, and performed for Queen Victoria in London
during her Diamond Jubilee in 1897.
Back in the United States in 1889,
Black Elk found many of his people involved in the messianic Ghost Dance religion, which prophesied the demise of

61

the white race and the restoration of a

pristine world for Native Americans. See
Ghost Dance religion. He discovered that
the Ghost Dance fit his great vision and
he became an adherent. He performed
and then led the dance, went into trances,
and experienced visions out-of-body; in
one vision he was given instruction for
making the sacred shirts of the ghost
dancers.
The movement ended with the massacre at Wounded Knee Creek on December 29, 1890. Black Elk participated in
and advocated the fighting that followed;
but the leaders, seeing their people starving and facing great odds, surrendered.
Black Elk was among those sent to live
on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South
Dakota.
In 1930 American writer John G.
Neihardt sought to find an Indian who
had lived through the messianic period
who could retell the days firsthand. He
was sent to Black Elk in Manderson,
South Dakota. There the writer found a
dispirited old man who thought he could
salvage his great vision through Neihardt.
Black Elk gave his recollections in Sioux
(he spoke no English), and they were
translated by his son, Ben. The story,
augmented with the recollections of others whom Black Elk knew, were published as Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life
Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux

(1932).
Neihardt was among those who witnessed Black Elk's last trip to Harney
Peak to address the Six Grandfathers and
apologize for his failure to mend the sacred hoop. He said that if he had any of
his power left, the Thunder Beings of the
west would answer him with thunder and
rain. The trip took place during a
drought season under a clear blue sky.
Black Elk painted and dressed himself as
he had been in his great vision. In his address to the Grandfathers and the Great
Spirit, Black Elk expressed hope that
some little root of the central tree still

62

lived, and asked the Powers to nurture it.

Clouds gathered and a thin rain fell for a
few minutes.
Black Elk bestowed a sacred pipe on
Neihardt, who apparently failed to grasp
its mysteries. These Black Elk relayed in
1947 to Joseph Epes Brown, who published them in The Sacred Pipe: Black
Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the
Oglala Sioux (1953). Black Elk died on

August 17, 1950, at Manderson.

Later observers have felt that Black
Elk did fulfill his great vision, manifested
in the renewal of Native American interest in traditional ways.
Wallace Black Elk (b. 1921) is a Lakota Sioux medicine man who was acquainted with Black Elk and refers to him
as "grandfather," a term customarily applied to respectful relationships with an
older and wiser person. Wallace Black
Elk was instrumental in lobbying for passage of the American Indian Religious
Freedom Act of 1977. He lectures and
teaches on the sacred pipe and other Lakota medicine ways. See Mysticism; Sacred pipe; Shamanism.
Sources: Frederick J. Dockstader. Great
North American Indians: Profiles in Life
and Leadership. New York: Van Nostrand

Reinhold, 1977; Paula Gunn Allen. "American Indian Mysticism." Shaman's Drum
no. 14 (Mid-Fall 1988): 39-46; Joseph
Epes Brown. The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's
Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala
Sioux. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953; John G. Neihardt. Black
Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy
Man of the Oglala Sioux. 1932. New York:

Pocket Books, 1972; Shirley Nicholson,

Wheaton, IL: The
compo Shamanism.
Theosophical Publishing House, 1987.

Blake, William (1757-1827)

English mystic, poet, artist, and engraver
whose visionary art finds a contemporary
audience, but who was much misunder-

Black Elk, Nicholas

(1863-1950)

stood in his day. He experienced much

disappointment, which left him increasingly embittered and caused him to isolate himself from others.
William Blake was born in London
on November 28, 1757, where he lived
most of his life. From his early years, he
experienced remarkable visions of angels
and ghostly monks. As his spiritual
awareness developed, he saw and conversed with the angel Gabriel, the Virgin
Mary, and various historical figures.
As a teenager Blake read philosophy
and religion and wrote poems, but had
no formal schooling until his father sent
him to the Royal Academy to study art.
In 1772 he was apprenticed to an engraver, and began to make his living in
the trade at age twenty-two. At twentythree he had his first exhibit of original
paintings at the Royal Academy.
Blake was shaped by the prevailing
influences of his day, including the religious symbolism in Gothic art and architecture, and the writings of eighteenthcentury Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. He joined for a time the
Swedenborgian Church of the New Jerusalem in London. He considered Newtonian science to be superstitious nonsense,
and distinguished it from science in general.
In 1788 he developed a method of
engraving that enabled him to design illustrations and print words at the same
time. Blake called it "Illumined Printing"
and thought it would earn him enough
money to become an independent publisher, but he underestimated its expense.
Nevertheless, he employed it for nearly
all of his poetry over a hventy-year period.
Blake believed that the only reality
was imagination, and that imagination
turns nature inside out. In imagination
the external world changes perspective
and becomes part of the imagining human being. In this respect Blake led the
life of a contemplative, who turned in-

Blake,

William

(1757-1827)

ward to the deep center of his soul in order to find God.

The first of his poems to be published appeared when he was twenty-six.
About six years later (1789), he printed
Songs of Innocence, the first of his many
own works which he also engraved and
illustrated. His most famous poem, "The
Tyger," was part of his Songs of Experience (1794). His longer and even more
symbolic poems were written when he
was in his forties, including Milton
(1804-1808)
and Jerusalem
(18041820).
During his final four years of life,
Blake created two of his best known and
most mystical sets of illustrations, of the
biblical Book of Job, and of Dante's Divine Comedy. But even after a brilliant
and very prolific life, he was regarded by
his contemporaries primarily as an engraver of other people's designs; few appreciated or even knew of his original
works, and of those who praised his
engravings, even fewer knew also of his
poems.
Blake lived and died in poverty, in
large part due to his inability to compete
in the highly competitive field of engraving, and due to a general lack of appreciation of his vision. Recognition of his
genius grows each decade. His art communicates his vision universally, even if
his illustrations often do not conform to
popular images. Blake expressed his
unique and personal mystic vision, no
matter how "unreal" it seemed to others.
His inner vision used the senses but went
beyond them, and he found this vision to
be essential to personal integrity.
Sources: S. Foster Damon. A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbols of William
Blake. Boulder,
Shambhala Publica-

co:

tions, 1979; Northrop Frye, ed. and intro.

Selected Poetry and Prose of William
Blake. New York: Modern Library, 1953;
F. C. Happold. Mysticism: A Study and an
Anthology. Rev. ed. Harmondsworth, Mid-

dlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1970;

63

Maung Ba Han. William Blake: His Mysticism. 1924. Darby, PA: Folcroft, 1974;
Robert Maynard Hutchins, ed. Great
Books of the Western World. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952; Louis Kronenberger, ed. Atlantic Brief Lives. Boston:
Little, Brown, 1971.

Blavatsky, Madame Helena

Petrovna (1831-1891)
Russian-born mystic and cofounder of
the Theosophical Society. An outspoken
and controversial figure, Madame Helena
Petrovna Blavatsky-known
as HPBhelped to spread Eastern religious, philosophical, and occult ideas throughout the
West. She endeavored to give the study of
occultism an accepted, scientific, and
philosophical foundation.
HPB exhibited psychic gifts as a
small child, claiming an awareness of the
consciousness and voice of all objects, organic and inorganic, and the existence of
nonphysical beings.
Her father, Peter von Hahn, was in
the army. Her mother, Helena Andreyevna, wrote novels about socially

constricted Russian heroines, and was

called the George Sand of Russia. When
Helena Andreyevna died at age twentyeight, the eleven-year-old HPB and her
sister and brother went to live with their
maternal grandparents. Their grandmother, Helena Pavlovna de Fadeev, was
a princess of the Dolgorkurov family and
a famous botanist. Both women provided.
strong role models for HPB, attributes
she amplified with stubbornness, a fiery
temper, and unwillingness to conform to
society's expectations. At age seventeen,
to spite her governess, Helena married
Nikifor (also Nicephor) V. Blavatsky,
forty, but never consummated the marriage and abandoned him a few months
later.
From 1848 to 1858, HPB traveled
the world. She claimed to have entered
Tibet to study with the Masters for two
years. She returned to Russia in 1858,
only to leave again with Agardi Metrovich, an Italian opera singer. In 1871
Metrovich was killed in an explosion on
board a boat bound for Cairo. HPB went
on to Cairo, where she founded the Societe Spirite for occult phenomena along
with Emma Cutting (later Emma Coulomb). Dissatisfied customers, charging
fraud, closed the society.
HPB emigrated to New York in
1873, where she impressed others with
psychic feats. Throughout her career she
claimed to perform physical and mental
~ mediumship, levitation, out-of-body pro~ jection, telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudi~ ence, and clairsentience. These powers
~ were never proved or disproved, as she
~ never submitted to scientific tests-nor,
'
apparently, was she ever asked to do so.
~ Her own interests, however, were not in
the psychic powers themselves, but in the
f-'
laws and principles of nature that governed them.
In 1875 HPB received word that her
husband was dead. She married a Russian
peasant, Michael C. Betanelly, but later
learned that Blavatsky was still alive and

Madame Helena P. Blavatsky

64

Blake, William (1757-1827)

her legal spouse. Betanelly divorced her

for desertion in 1878. She never returned
to Blavatsky.
In 1874 HPB had met Colonel Henry
Steel Olcott, a lawyer, agricultural expert, and journalist who covered Spiritualist phenomena. They formed a lifelong
friendship. In September 1875 HPB and
Olcott founded the Theosophical Society
along with William Q. Judge, an American attorney, and others. See Theosophy.
HPB's first book, Isis Unveiled, appeared in 1877. In the preface she stated
that the book was "a plea for the recognition of the Hermetic philosophy, the
ancient universal wisdom." Isis Unveiled
outlines the basic precepts of the Masters
and the secret knowledge they were said
to protect. Its success outshone that of
the society, which by 1878 had nearly
folded.
In July 1878 HPB became the first
Russian woman to acquire US citizenship, a move she took to keep the English
in India from thinking she was a Russian
spy. HPB and Olcott left for India in December of that year to revive the society
and study Hindu and Buddhist religions.
In India HPB quickly gained supporters, including English journalist A. P.
Sinnett, statesman Allen O. Hume, and
various high-caste Indians and English officials. She helped Sinnett and Hume begin corresponding with the Masters Koot
Hoomi and Morya. Although the Masters' handwriting was different from
HPB's, critics asserted she \Hote the letters herself, but the charges were never
proved conclusively.
In 1882 HPB moved the society's international headquarters to an estate in
Adyar, near Madras, where she had a
shrine room constructed to allow the
Masters to manifest their communications. Her former colleague, Emma Cutting Coulomb, moved to Adyar to manage the household. Later Coulomb and
her husband were fired on charges of dishonest practices.

In 1884 HPB toured Europe with Olcott. While they were there the Coulombs
published letters, which they said were
written by HPB, that gave instructions for
the Masters' manifestations and for operation of the shrine through secret back
panels. The panels apparently had been
built by Coulomb in HPB's absence in order to ruin her reputation. In December
1884, Richard Hodgson of the Society of
Psychical Research (SPR) in London arrived at Adyar to investigate the phenomena there; by spring he had released a
scathing report alleging fraud and trickery by HPB and her associates. The report remained controversial for more
than one hundred years. In 1986 the SPR
published an article in its Journal stating that the report was prejudiced, that
Hodgson had ignored all evidence favorable to HPB and had not proved his case,
and that an apology was due.
Because of the controversy, Olcott
sent HPB to Europe in 1885. She eventually settled in Germany and continued
to work despite deteriorating health. By
1885 the French-born Swedish countess
Constance Wachtmeister had moved in
with HPB and remained with her while
she wrote her second book, The Secret
Doctrine (1888), her greatest work. It
outlines a scheme of evolution relating to
the universe (cosmogenesis) and humankind (anthropogenesis), and is based on
three premises: (1) Ultimate Reality as an
omnipresent, transcendent principle beyond the reach of thought; (2) the universality of the law of cycles throughout
nature; and (3) the identity of all souls
with the Universal Oversoul and their
journey through many degrees of intelligence by means of reincarnation, in accordance with "Cyclic and Karmic law."
The Secret Doctrine is said to be
largely based on an archaic manuscript,
The Book of Dyzan, which HPB interpreted. Parts of The Secret Doctrine purportedly were communicated to her by
the Mahatmas, who, she said, impressed

Blavatsky, Madame Helena Petrovna (1831-1891)

65

thoughts in her head, which she wrote

down. Critics, however, said she drew on
existing works.
By the end of 1889, HPB had written
two more books: The Key to Theosophy,
an introduction to theosophical thought
and philosophy; and The Voice of the Silence, a mystical and poetic work on the
path to enlightenment.
One of the reviewers of The Secret
activist Annie Wood Besant,
Doctrine,
had converted to Theosophy, and her
home became the headquarters of the
Theosophical Society in London. Besant,
known for her support of progressive
causes, brought another generation of liberal intellectuals into the society and became its president after Olcott's death in
1907.
By the end of 1890, HPB's health
had declined to the point where she could
not walk, and so traveled in what looked
like a giant perambulator. She suffered
from heart disease, Bright's disease of the
kidneys, and rheumatism, complicated by
influenza. She died at her home on May
8, 1891. Her body was cremated. Onethird of her ashes remained in Europe,
one-third went to America with William
Judge, and one-third went to India, where
Besant later scattered them in the Ganges
River. Theosophists commemorate her
death on May 8, called White Lotus Day.
Sources: Bruce F. Campbell. Ancient Wisdom Revived: A History of the Theosophical Movement. Berkeley: University of Cal-

ifornia Press, 1980; Robett S. Ellwood.

Eastern Spirituality in America. New York:

Paulist Press, 1987; Krysta Gibson. "The

Theosophical Society." The New Times
(November 1987): 1+; Marion Meade.
Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind
the Myth. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons,
1980; J. Gordon Melton. Encyclopedic
Handbook of Cults in America. New York

and London: Garland Publishing, 1986;

Howard Murphet. When Daylight Comes:
A Biography of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical
Publishing House, 1975; A. P. Sinnet. In-

66

Blavatsky,

cidents in the Life of Mme. Blavatsky. London: Redway, 1886; Lewis Spence. The Encyclopedia of the Occult. 1920. Reprint.
London: Bracken Books, 1988; H. Blavatsky
and
Her
Writings.
Pamphlet.

Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Society in

America, n.d.; Gertrude Marvin Williams.
Priestess of the Occult: Madame Blavatsky.

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946; Colin

Wilson, ed. Dark Dimensions: A Celebration of the Occult. New York: Everest
House, 1977.

Bodhisattva
In Buddhism an enlightened being who
postpones or renounces nirvana in order
to remain in the universe to give spiritual
guidance to all beings still caught in the
wheel of rebirth. Bodhisattvas (a Sanskrit
term for "enlightened being") generally
are less advanced than buddhas, but buddhas are sometimes referred to as bodhisattvas.
Bodhisattvas were an early concept
of the Mahayana school of Buddhism,
which recognizes two types of bodhisattvas: earthly and transcendent. The
other major Buddhist school, Theravada,
teaches self-enlightenment, and maintains
that once nirvana is reached, there remains no ego or karma to warrant rebirth
as a bodhisattva.
The earthly bodhisattva seeks buddhahood through attaining enlightenment
and service to others. Six paramitas
(virtues or perfections) must be acquired
and practiced: (1) generosity, or total
self-surrender; (2) morality; (3) patience;
(4) zeal, effort to overcome obstacles; (5)
meditation, constantly perfected; and (6)
wisdom, which cannot be obtained without first getting rid of attachment and repulsion. Practicing the paramitas helps
one to see the illusory nature of the self.
Many rebirths may be required to accomplish these.
Transcendent bodhisattvas have attained perfect wisdom and are free of rebirth. They manifest to lead others to en-

Madame

Helena Petrovna

(1831-1891)

lightenment, and are the objects of great

devotion. The most popular transcendent
bodhisattva of Mahayanists is Avalokitesvara, the spiritual son of Amitabha,
the Buddha of Meditation of infinite
light. Avalokitesvara was born from a
tear shed by Lord Buddha at sight of the
suffering in the world. Called "the compassionate," he is represented in female
form as Kuan-yin in China, the goddess
of mercy and protector of women, and
Kwannon in Japan, also goddess of
mercy.
Bodhisattvas also are part of the
Pure Land school of Buddhism, which
teaches that salvation is possible by faith
and good works. Bodhisattvas also are
recognized in Zen Buddhism.
The concept of the bodhisattva cuts
across all religious lines to include all
"spiritual warriors" and heroic beings
who are dedicated to compassion and service to others. Bodhisattva nature exists
in everyone. See Buddhism; Karma; Reincarnation. Compare to Avatar.
Sources: Robert Aitken. Taking the Path of
Zen. San Francisco: North Point Press,
1982; John Blofeld. The Tantric Mysticism
of Tibet. Boston: Shambhala Publications,
1987; The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion. Boston: Shambhala,
1989. Dainin Katagiri. Returning to Silence: Zen Practice in Daily Life. Boston:

Shambhala Publications, 1988; Yong

Choon Kim. Oriental Thought. Totowa,
NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1973; Maria
Leach, ed., and Jerome Fried, assoc. ed.
Funk 6- Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of
Folklore, Mythology,
and Legend. San

Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979; Maurice

Percheron. Buddha and Buddhism. 1956.
Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press,
1982; Alan W. Watts. The Way of Zen.
New York: Vintage Books, 1957.

bodywork, involving massage, physical

manipulation, movement, breathing, realignment of the energy field, and energy
transfer. These therapies assume the existence of a universal life force that affects
health, and the existence of a self-healing
capacity within everyone, which can be
stimulated by the therapy. See Universal
life force. Bodywork is often combined
with other therapies, including allopathic
(science-based) medicine.
Bodywork takes into account the
role of the mind and emotions in physical
health, and the organism's overall interaction with the environment and the universal life energies. Some therapies are
based on the belief that form influences
consciousness, and that the body can be
redesigned or refined to improve psychological and. spiritual growth.
Although many bodywork methods
are ancient, bodywork as a movement began around the late nineteenth to early
twentieth centuries, due in part to the
work of psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. In
1886 Freud published a paper on male
hysteria, a physical disorder, which Freud
demonstrated is largely psychological in
origin. The paper had a great impact
on one of Freud's followers, Wilhelm
Reich, who developed a therapy combining bodywork with psychoanalysis that
bears his name (see Reichian massage on
page 69).
Bodywork therapy involves a high
level of intuitive awareness on the part of
the therapist; psychic abilities sometimes
develop over the course of time. Patients
sometimes report psychological insights
and breakthroughs, as well as experiences
such as apparent past-life recall, clairvoyance, clairaudience, and so on.
Major Types of Bodywork

Bodywork
Health therapies that involve manipulation of the body and its bioelectrical energy field. There are numerous types of

Bodywork

Acupuncture
This ancient Chinese therapy, dating
to c. 3000 B.C., is based on the principle
that there is a nervous connection be-

67

Alexander Technique
A therapy of massage and manipulation combined with verbal instruction,
developed in the late nineteenth century
by F. Mathias Alexander, Australian
Shakespearean actor and monologist.
Massage of the neck enables energy to
flow up the spine to the head, which controls body movement. The "reconditioned" individual moves, thinks, works,
and speaks much better than before.

Bioenergetics

Acupuncture
tween the body's organs and the body's
surface. Needles are inserted under the
skin at various points to treat various
conditions by manipulating ch'i, the universallife force, which flows through the
body along energy pathways called meridians. Acupuncture is good for pain relief, and is also used to treat addictions.
In China it is used as an analgesic for surgery, and to treat conditions that normally require surgery in the West, such as
appendicitis.

Acupressure
Stimulation of the acupuncture
points by finger and hand pressure instead of with needles. Acupressure can be
self-administered and can provide relief
when acupuncture is not immediately
available, or where pain medication is not
desirable.

68

An outgrowth of the theories of

Wilhelm Reich developed by Alexander
Lowen, a psychiatrist and student of
Reich. According to Lowen repressed
emotions and desires affect physiology by
creating chronic muscular tension and a
loss of vibrancy. Lowen developed a
bodywork therapy of difficult postures,
muscle manipulations, and breathing
techniques, some of which can be painful.
The patient releases emotions by screaming, crying, and kicking. The bodywork is
combined with psychoanalysis of childhood experiences and dream imagery.

Chiropractic
The manipulation of the spine and
joints by hand to rebalance or repair the
body's neurological functions and restore
the body's energies. Its premise is that
poor posture, stress, accidents, and traumas produce abnormalities in the joints
and muscles, which may be corrected by
realigning the spine. Dr. George J. Goodheart developed chiropractic into applied
kinesiology, "the science of muscle activation," in which hurt muscles are
treated by work on their opposing, weak
muscles.

Feldenkrais Technique
Modern movement and posture therapy developed by the Russian-born Israeli, Moshe Feldenkrais, and based on
the ancient premise that the body is a
mirror of the mind. The Feldenkrais tech-

Bodywork

rnque arms to improve posture through

self-awareness of stance, gesture, and
movement, which in turn improves selfimage, vitality, and creativity.
Polarity
A therapy developed by Dr. Randolph Stone to balance the energy flow
within the body. Polarity therapy uses
gentle manipulations, exercise, diet (usually vegetarian), positive thoughts and attitudes, and love.
Reflexology
Ancient therapy of finger and thumb
pressure applied to the feet, the surfaces
of which correspond to various organs of
the body. The pressure stimulates the
flow of the universal life force. The origins of reflexology are not known, but it
was in use in ancient China, India, and
Egypt.
Reichian Massage
Wilhelm Reich's technique holds
that neuroses and most physical disorders
are caused by blockages in the flow of
emotional and sexual energy (orgone).
The blockages manifest as "body armor,"
defensive contractions of muscles that
run in horizontal bands across the eyes,
mouth and jaw, diaphragm, abdomen,
and pelvis. The therapist intuitively
senses where the greatest body armor is,
and uses forceful massage and other
techniques-such as eye movements, the
gag reflex, facial expressions, screaming,
kicking, and crying-to dissolve it. After the physical therapy comes psychoanalysis.
Reiki
An Oriental energy transfer therapy
in which the universal life force is channeled through a healer to the patient.
Reiki was developed in the late nineteenth century by Dr. Mikao Usui, Japa-

Bodywork

nese scholar and minister, allegedly upon

ancient Sanskrit texts. Different schools
presently exist.
Energy is transferred by touching
parts of the body and "brushing" the
aura in downward, fluttering movements.
Therapists may also employ visualization
of secret symbols.
Rolfing (also called
Structural Integration)
Modern physical therapy developed
by Swiss biochemist Ida Rolf. Rolfing
seeks to realign the human body in a
straight line. Misalignment causes thickened fascia, the connective tissue between
muscles and the sheaths of muscles,
which impair movement and posture.
The fascia is stretched in deep massage,
which at times can be quite painful.
Seiki-jutsu
A Japanese therapy of transferring
seiki, universal healing energy, to the patient through a healer. Seiki enters
through the crown at the point of the hair
whorl, where it travels down the spine to
the sacrum and fills the body. The therapist sometimes places the hands on top
of the head and the knee against the sacrum.
Shiatsu
A Japanese therapy of finger pressure, similar to acupressure, and massage,
which further stimulates and balances the
universal life force.
Therapeutic Touch
Modern energy transfer therapy developed by Dora van Gelder Kunz, a
clairvoyant and meditation teacher, and
Dolores Krieger, a nurse. The universal
life force is transmitted through touch,
holding the hands over the affected area
of the body, or brushing the patient's energy field with strokes of the hand. Scientific studies of Therapeutic Touch
show that it increases the oxygen-

69

carrying capaciry of red blood cells, lowers high temperatures,

and reduces restlessness. It is used in hospitals
and
hospices, and is particularly effective with
autonomic
nervous system, circulatory,
lymphatic and musculoskeletal
disorders,
and some mental disorders.

Touch for Health

A system developed by Dr. John F.
Thie, which combines applied kinesiology
for diagnosis and "acupressure touch," a
form of light acupressure, for treatment
of the musculoskeletal
system.
See Aura;
Behavioral
medicine;
Chakras;
Healing,
faith and psychic;

Yoga.
Sources: Sherry Suib Cohen. The Magic of
Touch. New York: Harper & Row, 1987;

i
~
Kathleen Fanslow-Brunjes, R.N., scans
woman's aura to sense areas that need
treatment with Therapeutic Touch.

In Therapeutic Touch the practitioner

channels energy to the patient through
the hands.

70

Kathleen A. Fanslow. "Therapeutic Touch:

A Healing Modaliry throughout
Life."
Topics in Clinical Nursing (July 1983): 7279; Moshe Feldenkrais. Awareness through
Movement. New York: Harper & Row,
1977; Winifred Gallagher. "The Healing
Touch." American Health (October 1988):
45-53; Richard Grossman. The Other
Medicines. Garden Ciry, NY: Doubleday,
1985; Dolores Krieger. The Therapeutic
Touch. New York: Prentice-Hall Press,
1979; Mirka Knaster. "Dolores Krieger's
Therapeutic Touch." East/West 19, no. 8
(August 1989): 54-59+; Lucinda Lidell
with Sara Thomas,
Carola
Beresford
Cooke, and Anthony Porter. Massage: The

Complete Step-by-Step Guide to Eastern

and Western Techniques. New York: Fireside Books, 1984; Janet Macrae. Therapeutic Touch: A Practical Guide. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1988; Robert Neubert.
"Reiki: The Radiance Technique."
New
Realities 7, no. 4 (March/April 1987): 1822; Maruti Seidman. A Guide to Polarity
Therapy. Rev. ed. North Hollywood, CA:
Newcastle Publications, 1986; Dr. Andrew
Stanway. Alternative Medicines: A Guide
to Natural Therapies. Rev. ed. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex,
Books, 1986.

England:

Penguin

Bodywork

Book test
A test for evidence of survival after death
that was originated in the early twentieth
century by English medium Gladys Osborne Leonard, and her spirit control,
Feda. It is possible that the test was suggested by Feda herself as proof of communication from the dead.
In the book test, a communicating
spirit, called a "communicator," delivers
a message to a living person through a
medium, specifying a book in a location
to which the medium has not had access.
The communicator gives the book's exact
location on a shelf, such as third from the
left on the top shelf, and specifies a page
number. The text on that page is to contain the message.
Leonard was very successful with
book tests, sometimes naming books that
were unknown to her sitters, but which
bore out personal messages as the communicating spirits claimed.
Book tests were common immediately before World War I and after, when
interest in communication with the dead
was at a high. The rate of success of the
tests was not high; in one analysis of 532
tests (1921), 17 percent were successful
and 19 percent approximately successful.
Slightly more than 38 percent were total
failures, with the remainder dubious or
nearly total failures. Nevertheless, many
successful book tests could not be explained in terms of telepathy between
medium and sitter, but seemed to be
paranormal. They are not, ho\vever, considered proof of sun'ival after death.
Nina Kulagina, Russian physical medium, demonstrated extraordinary success v.:ith book tests, by naming the first
letters of each paragraph of given pages
in a book chosen by random but not
opened. See Leonard, Gladys Osborne;
Mediumship; Newspaper test.
Sources: Alan Gauld. c\lediumship and Suruiual. London: William Heinemann Ltd.,
1982; Susy Smith. The Alediumship of lvIrs.

Buddhism

Leonard. New Hyde Park, NY: University

Books, 1964; Russell Targ and Keith
Harary. The Mind Race. New York: Villard Books, 1984.

Buckland, Raymond
See Witchcraft.

Buddhism
Religion of the "awakened one," based
on the teachings of the historical Buddha,
Shakyamuni ("Sage of the Sakyas"), born
Siddhartha Gautama (c. 566 B.c.-486
B.C.). Buddhism is one of the world's
great religions, although some argue that
it is a philosophy and not a religion. It
originated in India, where it died out after the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
and spread through Asia and eventually
to the West.
In Asia Buddhism is known as the
Buddha-Dhamma,
or the "eternal truth
of the Awakened One," referring to both

Buddha sculpture

71

the truth concerning Buddha and the

truth espoused by Buddha. In the view of
Buddhism, life is full of suffering and is
impermanent and without essence. Because of earthly cravings and ignorance,
the individual is caught on the wheel of
samsara, or rebirth. Only by overcoming
those conditions can the individual break
the cycle and attain nirvana, the merging
with Brahman, the Absolute.
There is no concept of an eternal, individual soul in Buddhism. The karmic
attributes that make up a personality,
called skandas, or "aggregates," scatter
upon death and recollect in rebirth to
form a new but transitory personality.
Buddhas, or "awakened ones," have
appeared throughout human history and
will continue to appear. According to
Buddhist tradition, at least twenty-four
Buddhas preceded Siddhartha Gautama
over a 120,OOO-year period. However,
there is no historical documentation of
their existence.

The Birth of Siddhartha

Gautama
Siddhartha
("He
who
accomplishes") Gautama (also spelled Gotama)
was born to the leaders of the noble
Sakya clan, who lived in a basin of the
Ganges River in India. He became known
as the Buddha ("the Awakened or Enlightened One"), the Savior of Humankind.
The legend surrounding the Buddha's birth, life, and teachings has a number of variations, and different dates of
his life are given. In China, for example,
he is believed to have been born in 947
B.C., and in Ceylon and Southeast Asia his
birth date is 543 B.C. Several centuries after his death at the age of eighty, legends
accorded him a miraculous birth parallel
to the immaculate conception of Christ.
According to legend Siddhartha
Gautama incarnated on earth because the

72

bodhisattva (compassionate one and future Buddha) Avalokitesvara looked

down from heaven and was moved by the
suffering of humans and even the plight
of the gods and demons. Intending to
save them all, he decided to send his
earthly reflection into the womb of
Maya, queen of King Shuddhodana, a
member of the kshatriya (warrior) class.
The king and queen had been married for
thirty-two months but had not consummated their marriage (in another version
they had abstained from intercourse for
months prior to the immaculate conception).
One night Maya experienced a
dream in which she was taken up into
heaven on a cloud and deposited at a palace. Avalokitesvara, in the form of a
white elephant with six tusks, approached her and painlessly pierced her
side with a tusk. In this fashion his
earthly reflection entered her womb. The
fetus was not nourished by the mother,
but fed by a drop of elixir taken from an
open lotus at the moment of his conception. Thus Gautama was not polluted by
human flesh.
Ten lunar months later, he was born
in the Lumbini gardens outside Kapilavatsu, the capital where the king and
queen resided. Maya took hold of a tree
branch and delivered the infant painlessly
from her right side. The birth was attended by the gods Brahma and Indra.
Maya placed the child on a white lotus. Gautama rose up and surveyed space
by glancing in the Ten Directions, then
took seven steps toward each of the four
cardinal points. He claimed rank as first
in the world and vowed to end birth, old
age, suffering, and death. He declared
this to be his final birth.
Seven days after his birth, Maya died
and rose into heaven. (Sudden death or
separation from mother is part of the
myth of the hero.) Gautama was raised
by Maya's sister, Mahaprajapati Gautami, who married the king.

Buddhism

Shuddhodana was soon visited by an

ascetic, who advised him of thirty-two
primary marks and eighty secondary
marks that would appear on the body of
the Buddha to identify him. These were
duly found upon the body of Gautama.

The Buddha's Enlightenment

As a youth Siddhartha excelled in
martial arts and in his studies, surpassing
the knowledge of his teachers. At age sixteen he married reluctantly but in accordance with custom. His father was relieved; for, according to prophecy, if his
son became an ascetic he would not take
the throne and continue the family rule.
The married life bored Gautama,
however, and four times he left his palace. The Four Meetings, as they are
called, marked the first stage in his spiritual development. Gautama encountered
an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and
a monk. From them he realized that old
age, suffering, and death are inescapable,
and salvation lies in religion. He resolved
to pursue religion and shortly went into
"the Great Retirement."
Fortunately, his son, Rahula, had
just been born, thus ensuring the continuation of his family line, so Gautama felt
free to leave. One night he slipped out of
the palace and went to a forest, where he
cut his hair, abandoned his royal clothing, and renounced all comforts. He was
twenty-nine.
His search for truth and knowledge
led him to hermits, yogis, and Brahmins,
with whom he studied. None, however,
provided the enlightenment he sought.
He acquired five disciples.
His awakening finally came when he
sat himself under a bodhi-tree (a fig tree,
also called bo-tree, and popularly called
pipal) and meditated. Mara, the god of
death and personification of evil (the approximate equivalent of the Devil), worried that if Gautama succeeded in liberating humanity there would be no one

Buddhism

left to tempt; he attacked Gautama with

an army of demons and the furies of the
elements. Failing to break his meditation,
Mara sent his three daughters, Lust, Restlessness, and Greed, but Gautama dismissed them with a glance.
After four weeks Gautama had his
awakening with his realization of the
Four Noble Truths: (1) Existence is suffering, and suffering is unavoidable; (2)
suffering is caused by desire; (3) the elimination of desire will bring suffering to an
end; and (4) there is a means to eliminate
desire and thus suffering. The latter is
called the Eightfold Path, also the Middle
Way, for Gautama the Buddha envisioned it as a middle road between the
extremes of asceticism and worldly life.
The Eightfold Path consists of right
speech, right conduct, right livelihood,
right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration, right views, and right intentions.
The Buddha spent seven days on this
awakening, then continued meditating
for another five weeks. In the sixth week,
he went to Lake Muchalinda, where
Mara hurled a furled rainstorm at him,
but he was protected by the snake spirit
of the lake, which spread its cobra hood
over him. His meditation was ended by
two monks who offered him food, which
he took in a bowl (now the begging bowl
of monks).
The Buddha never intended to enlighten the masses, whom he saw as
steeped in superstition and magic and
suppressed by the Brahmins. Instead he
sought to address the warrior class. In his
first sermon, called the "Sutra of Setting
in Motion the Wheel of Doctrine," he expounded upon the Four Noble Truths,
the law of karma, and the concept of anatta (no-self), which holds that there is
no permanent essence of anyone human
being, but a constantly changing collection of aggregates that come together
each time there is a rebirth. See Reincarnation.

73

The Buddha then spent forty-five

years evangelizing throughout northeastern India, to the displeasure of the Brahmins. His five disciples formed a growing
community of monks. At first the Buddha
refused to admit women to the community, saying that a religion of men will
last one thousand years, but a religion
that admits women will last only five
hundred years. He relented and allowed
his aunt (his stepmother) to join. (He
returned home after an absence of
thirty-five years and reconciled with his
family.)
Despite his desire to teach only the
elite, his teachings spread throughout the
masses and many sought to follow him.
The Buddha elaborated on the Four
Truths by giving five rules for everyday
life: (1) Be compassionate and respect the
lowliest form of life; (2) give and receive
freely, but never take anything that is not
given; (3) never, without exception, lie;
(4) avoid drugs and drink; and (5) respect
woman and commit no illicit and unnatural carnal act.
At age eighty the Buddha took a
meal with a lowly blacksmith, who inadvertently served him poisonous mushrooms, or, by some disputed accounts,
spoiled pork. The Buddha became ill and
knew he was about to die. Seated in a
lotus position, he gave his final instructions to his choice disciples, including
Ananda, his favorite, and Maitreya,
whom he said would be the next supreme
Buddha come to earth thousands of years
hence. The Buddha summarized his
teachings. When he was done, he lay
down on his right side and entered into
meditation; a heavenly music wafted
down from the sky. At some indeterminate moment, he passed into nirvana (later some Buddhists disagreed that he entered niryana, but instead yowed not to
until all beings had achieved it). The Buddha was later deified, first as a semidivine
being and then as a divine being.

74

The Spread of Buddhism

By the time of Christ, Buddhism was
declining in India. By the fifth century it
was being absorbed into Hinduism, and
by the twelfth century it no longer existed
as a viable force in India. It spread
throughout Asia, however, where it took
firm hold in the ensuing centuries, coexisting with or merging with indigenous
religions and philosophies, among them
the Confucianism and Taoism of China,
the Shintoism of Japan, and the Bon of
Tibet.
Various schools and sects have
emerged; the two major ones are Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism. Mahayana Buddhism holds that all have the
potential for enlightenment and emphasizes faith in the Buddha, love of humankind, compassion, charity, and altruism.
The Buddha is considered to be an eternal
being, an embodiment of absolute truth,
who occasionally takes human form.
Theravada Buddhism holds out salvation
to the monks and nuns who join the community, and prescribes a discipline for individual undertaking. The Buddha is regarded as a human teacher.
In Tibet Tantric Buddhism is called
Vajrayana, "the indestructible vehicle."
In mythology the vajra is the weapon of
Indra, the king of gods, and is made from
the bones of a rishi, an exalted yogi. As
the vajra has a magical nature, so does
Vajrayana. If practiced correctly Vajrayana is a Short Path to destruction of the
ego and to enlightenment. Incorrect practice imperils the practitioner. See DavidNee!, Alexandra.
The teachings of Vajrayana are supposed to be secret, passed orally from
guru to chela, or student. The emphasis is
on transmutation of the three poisonspassion, aggression, and ignorance-into
wisdom, rather than on destruction of
them to clear the path to enlightenment.
This emphasis lends comparison to West-

Buddhism

ern alchemy. See Alchemy. There is also

much use of complex symbology in meditation. See Mandala; Symbols. Empowerment comes with initiation. See Ritual.
Buddhism made few inroads in the

practlt10ners seldom desire to withdraw

from the world, and so Buddhism is integrated into daily life. See Meditation;
Milarepa; Mysticism; Yoga; Zen.

West until the nineteenth century, when

the Transcendentalists,
the Theosophical
Society, and others disseminated information about Eastern philosophies and religions. Following the World Parliament of
Religions in Chicago in 1893, authentic
Buddhist teachers began coming to the
West.

Sources: The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion. Boston: Shambhala,

1989; Rick Fields. How the Swans Came to
the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism
in America. Boulder, co: Shambhala Publications, 1981; Richard A. Gard, ed. Buddhism. New York: George Braziller, 1962;
Don Morreale, ed. Buddhist America: Centers, Retreats, Practices. Santa Fe, NM:
John Muir Publications,
1988; Geoffrey
Parrinder, ed. World Religions: From Ancient History to the Present. New York:
Facts On File, 1983; Maurice Percheron.
Buddha and Buddhism. 1956. Woodstock,
NY: The Overlook Press, 1982; Nancy
Wilson Ross. Buddhism: A Way of Life
and Thought. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1980.

The growth of Buddhism in the West

has necessitated adaptations to the Western culture. Asian Buddhism traditionally
is masculine, hierarchical, and authoritarian, practiced by monks \vho have withdrawn from the world and who are supported by followers. Western Buddhism,
particularly
in the United States, has
grown more democratic and open to the
full participation
of women.
Western

Buddhism

75

c
Caddy, Eileen
See Findhorn.

Caddy, Peter
See Findhorn.

Caduceus
An esoteric symbol of spiritual enlightenment and higher wisdom. The caduceus is
a wand entwined by two snakes and
topped by wings or a winged helmet. It
also is associated with healing, and has
been the emblem of physicians for centuries. The T shape of the caduceus is derived from the tau cross, a T-shaped cross
used in the ancient Egyptian and Mithraic
mysteries initiations.
In Greco-Roman mythology, the caduceus belongs to Hermes (Mercury), the
shrewd and swift messenger god who flies
as fleet as thought. Hermes carries his
magical wand when escorting souls to the
underworld. Originally, the wand was a
symbol of reconciliation of arguments.
According to legend, Hermes came upon
two snakes fighting and thrust his wand
between them. The snakes became entwined on the wand and remained attached to it.
The \vand is made of olive wood,
symbolic of peace and the continuity of

76

life. Its shaft represents power; the serpent represents wisdom or prudence; the
wings are diligence; and the helmet symbolizes high thoughts. Overall, the caduceus symbolizes immortality. With a
touch of his caduceus, Hermes could put
mortals to sleep or raise the dead. The
Romans viewed the caduceus as a symbol
of moral conduct and equilibrium.
The caduceus actually predates
Greco-Roman mythology, appearing in
Mesopotamian cultures around 2600 B.C.,
where its serpents signified a god who
cured illness. The association of the caduceus with medicine and health was
passed from the Middle East to the Greek
culture. In ancient India the caduceus appeared in temples as a symbol of the four
elements: the wand (earth), the serpents
(fire and water), and the wings (air).
In Hindu and Buddhist esoteric
teachings, the caduceus represents the
transformation of spiritual consciousness
through the vehicles of the body's pranic
energy system. The wand is the spine, or
Bramadanda ("stick of Brahma"), and
the serpents are the kundalini force, or
serpent-power, which resides in the earth.
The kundalini rises up through the ida
and pingla nervous channels along the
spine, entwines around the six major
chakras of the body, and flowers with
wings at the crown chakra. The wings
signify the rise of the consciousness
through higher planes of awareness, the
result of the flow of kundalini.

Caddy, Eileen

In Freemasonry
the caduceus represents the harmony and balance between
negative and positive forces, the fixed and
the volatile, the continuity of life and the
decay of life. See Chakra; Kundalini.
Sources: ]. E. Cirlot. A Dictionary of Symbols. New York: Philosophical
Library,
1971; Manly P. Hall. The Secret Teachings
of All Ages. 1928. Reprint. Los Angeles:
The Philosophic Research Society, 1977;
Edith Hamilton. kfythology.
New York:
New American Library, 1940; C. W. Leadbeater. The Chakras. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1927; New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology. New
ed. New York: Crescent Books, 1968; Anthony S. Mercatante.
Encyclopedia
of
World lvfythology and Legend. French's
Forest, Australia:
Child & Associates,
1988; Samuel H. Sandweiss. Sai Baba: The
Holy Man and the Psychiatrist. San Diego,
CA: Birth Day Publishing, 1975; Arthur
Edward Waite. A New Encyclopedia of
Freemasonry. Combined ed. New York:
Weathervane Books, 1970.

Cagliostro, Count Alessandro

(1743-1795)
A friend and successor of Comte de Saint
Germain,
Cagliostro
was a glamorous
figure in the royal courts of Europe,
where he reputedly practiced magic, psychic healing, alchemy, scrying, and occult
arts. Some historians label him a fraud
and fake, while others say his psychic and
occult gifts were genuine, and that he was
a generous man who tried to help the
poor.
His real name is often given as Guiseppe Balsamo, born in 1743 in Palermo
to a poor Sicilian family. Balsamo was a
real person, but his identity as Cagliostro
is disputed.
According
to legend the
young
Cagliostro
was a street-smart
child, and learned early how to turn his
natural psychic talent for precognition
imo a lucrative fortune-telling
business.

Cagliostro,

Count Alessandro

(1743-1795)

Cagliostro
At twenty-three he went to Malta, determined to make a name and fortune for
himself, and was initiated into the Order
of the Knights of Malta, where he studied
alchemy, the Kabbalah, and other occult
secrets. He changed his name to Count
Alessandro
Cagliostro,
borrowing
the
surname from his godmother.
Later he
joined the Freemasons in England, which
had a great influence on his beliefs. See
Freemasonry.
Cagliostro
spent most of his adult
life as a nomad among royalty in Europe,
England, and Russia. In Rome he met
and married Lorenza Feliciani, who became his partner in various occult ventures, such as crystal-gazing,
healing by
laying on of hands, conjuring spirits, and
predicting ,vinning lottery numbers. They
also sold magic potions, the elixir of
life, and the philosopher's
stone. They
held seances, transmuted
metals, practiced necromancy,
cast out demons, and
hypnotized people. Cagliostro's
accurate
fortune-telling
gifts led to a new name:
"The Divine Cagliostro."
Spectacular success invariably breeds
resentment, and Cagliostro fell out of favor with the medical community and the
Catholic church. In 1875 he and his wife
were victimized

in an infamous

fraud, the

77

"Queen's Necklace Affair." The two

were set up by Countess de Lamotte, who
swindled 1.6 million francs for a diamond necklace-ostensibly
for Marie
Antoinette-and accused them of stealing
the necklace.
Cagliostro and Lorenza were among
those jailed and tried for the fraud. According to legend Cagliostro won freedom for himself and his wife by telling a
fantastic story of his life. He had been
raised in Medina, Arabia, by a man, AIthotas, who taught him his occult knowledge. He explained his wealth as coming
from the Cherif of Mecca, who mysteriously set up open bank accounts for him
wherever he went. He denied being a
three-hundred-year-old Roscrucian, and
said he had prophesied that the Countess
de Lamotte was a dangerous woman.
Cagliostro and Lorenza went to England, where he predicted the French
Revolution. But a London newspaper
published an expose of Cagliostro's true
personal history, which destroyed his glittering reputation.
Humiliated, he and his wife went to
Rome, where Cagliostro attempted to
create an "Egyptian Freemasonry" order.
The church had him arrested and thrown
in jail for eighteen months of questioning
at the hands of the Inquisition. He was
found guilty of "impiety, heresy, and
crimes against the church" and was sentenced to death on April 7, 1791.
Lorenza was sentenced to life imprisonment in a convent in Rome, where she is
believed to have died in 1794.
Pope Pius VI commuted Cagliostro's
sentence to life imprisonment. He was
sent to San Leo, where he spent four
years in solitary confinement in a subterranean cell. Shortly after being moved to
a cell above ground, he died, allegedly of
apoplexy, on March 6, 1795. Rumors
that he lived and miraculously escaped
persisted for years in Europe, Russia, and
America. See Saint Germain; Smith,
Helene.

78

Sources: David Carroll. The Magic Makers.

New York: Arbor House, 1974; Manly P.

Hall. The Secret Teachings of All Ages.
1928. Los Angeles: The Philosophical Research Society, 1977; Charles Mackay,
L.L.D. Extraordinary Popular Delusions
and the Madness of Crowds. 1852. Reprint. New York: L. C. Page, 1932; Kurt
Seligmann. The History of Magic and the
Occult. New York: Pantheon Books, 1948;
Colin Wilson. The Occult. New York: Vintage Books, 1971.

Calumet
See Sacred pipe.

Campbell, Joseph (1904-1987)

Mythologist, scholar, writer, editor, and
teacher. Born March 26, 1904, in New
York City, the young Campbell was fascinated with Native American legends,
whetting his unending appetite for understanding myths and humankind. He traveled in Europe before attending Columbia University, where he earned a
bachelor's degree in 1925 and a master's
degree in English and comparative literature in 1927. As a member of the track
team, he was one of the fastest runners of
the half-mile in the world. He also was a
jazz musician, playing the saxophone,
guitar, and ukulele.
In 1927 he returned to Europe for
postgraduate study in Arthurian romances at the universities of Paris and
Munich. He was influenced greatly by the
contemporary European art of the day,
and continued his appreciation of contemporary art for the rest of his life.
While in Europe Campbell began his unending study of author Thomas Mann,
and psychiatrists Sigmund Freud and
Carl Jung. He was especially caught up in
the writings of James Joyce (1882-1941)
because of Joyce's use of mythological
themes to express modern visions.
In 1934, after returning to the
United States, Campbell rented a house in

Cagliostro,

Count Alessandro

(1743-1795)

~
~
~
~
~
~
~
Joseph Campbell
Woodstock, New York, for $20 a year.
There he spent the next four years reading the classics of many world cultures.
During this time he became convinced of
the universal parallels between myth,
dreams, and art. He thereafter often drew
upon Jung's archetypes of the collective
unconscious, as well as ethnologist Adolf
Bastian's concept of "elementary ideas."
Campbell believed that Bastian was the
first scientist to show that the world's
mythologies, ritual practices, folk traditions, and major religions share certain
symbolic themes, motifs, and patterns of
behavior. Campbell spent much of his life
documenting and explaining these key
notions.
The same year he moved to Woodstock, Campbell began teaching at Sarah
Lawrence College in Bronxville, New
York, where he remained for thirty-eight
years. He was Professor Emeritus until
his death in 1987.
In 1938 Campbell married one of his
former students, Jean Erdman, who graduated from Sarah Lawrence that same

Campbell, Joseph (1904-1987)

year. Erdman danced with Martha Graham and later became a distinguished
choreographer and artist.
The importance of Joyce in Campbell's early life is illustrated by Jean Erdman's recollection that during the early
years of their marriage she would be on
one of Joseph's arms, and a copy of
Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939) would be
under his other arm. Campbell's first
book, coauthored with Henry Morton
Robinson, was A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (1944). References to Finnegans Wake appear thereafter throughout
Campbell's work.
In 1942 Campbell signed a contract
with Simon and Schuster for $750 to
write a "self-help book." The publisher
envisioned merely an updated Bullfinch's
Mythology, but Campbell wrote instead
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1948),
a truly original masterpiece, which broke
new ground for scholars in many disciplines. The book established him as a
world authority in mythology. The work
presents a definitive study of the archetype of all myth: a single hero and a single journey-pattern, which emerges from
behind many different versions. After describing various examples of myth-telling
in this book, Campbell observes, "It will
be always the one, shape-shifting yet marvelously constant story that we find, together with a challengingly persistent
suggestion of more remaining to be experienced than will ever be known or
told." The work quickly won Campbell
exceptional praise and soon became a
classic in the field. His fame and reputation could be justified by this work alone.
In the four-volume series The Masks
of God (1959-1968), Campbell presents
his study of mythologies. He groups them
as either Primitive, Oriental, Occidental,
or Creative.
In 1969 Campbell wrote the script
for a film, Stairways to the Mayan Gods.
In it he anticipates the concepts concerning the ascent and decline of Mayan In-

79

dians of Mexico and Central America,

which he was to develop in his magnum
opus, The Way of the Animal Powers:
Historical Atlas of World Mythology
(1983).
He probes the connections between
myths and human behavior in Myths to
Live By (1973), and presents the imagery
of dreams in The Mythical Image (1974).
In The Inner Reaches of Outer Space
(1984), Campbell presents a concise
statement of the basic premises of his mythology and approach to comparative religions. Finally, the most comprehensive
of Campbell's work is the elegant publication of The Way of the Animal Powers.
Campbell's writings often seek and
find patterns amid the details of a specialized topic, such as in Erotic Irony and
Mythic Forms in the Art of Thomas
Mann (1973). But he also illustrates
broad truths with many specifics, such as
in The Inner Reaches of Outer Space. Always, however, his consistent theme is
the saying he often quoted from the Vedas: "Truth is one, the sages speak of it
by many names." This concept even motivated him in his other major contributions to scholarship, such as completing
and editing four posthumously published
works of Heinrich Zimmer (1890-1943),
the great Indologist and Sanskrit scholar,
whom Campbell referred to as "my
guru." The Zimmer works included The
Art of Indian Asia, in two volumes, and
Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and
Civilization. The King and the CorpseTales of the Soul's Conquest of Evil, also
by Zimmer, was edited by Campbell and
published in 1948.
Campbell also edited anthologies, including one of basic Jung writings entitled A Portable Jung (1971), in which he
presents a concise biographical sketch on
Jung and an authoritative outline of
Jung's life and works. Even more significant were the six volumes of Papers
from the Eranos Yearbooks. These important papers were originally published

80

in thirty-five volumes in several languages

from 1934 to 1966. Many of the world's
most notable scholars participated in the
series, among them Erich Neumann,
Gilles Quispel, Mircea Eliade, and Carl
G. Jung. The volumes are entitled by their
thematic subjects: Spirit and Nature, The
Mysteries, Man and Time, Spiritual Disciplines, Man and Transformation, and
The Mystic Vision.
The film A Hero's Journey: The
World of Joseph Campbell included biographical material on Campbell as well as
an introduction to his main themes. But
Campbell's leitmotifs (especially "Truth
is one" and "Follow your bliss") came
across even more effectively in the popular PBS television program The Power of
Myth, a series of interviews with Campbell by journalist Bill Moyers during
1985 and 1986. The main topic is myth,
but religion in general and Christianity in
particular are also thematic. Only six of
the twenty-four hours of interviews were
included in the PBS series. The PBS series
was published as a book by the same title, which quickly became a bestseller.
The TV series and book contributed
much to the popularization of Campbell
and his works. The Moyers interviews
were done mostly at the ranch of Campbell's friend, filmmaker George Lucas.
Campbell's concept of the Hero's Journey
was the inspiration for the very successful
Star Wars film trilogy by Lucas, as well
as many other significant artifacts in contemporary popular culture.
Along with Campbell's obvious
sources, such as Jung, Joyce, and Zimmer, he also called frequently upon more
obscure influences, such as the Gnostic
Gospel of Thomas, to which he referred
often, starting soon after its discovery in
1948. No matter what source he called
upon, at least one of his leitmotifs would
usually emerge.
When asked by Moyers to comment
on his idea of following one's bliss, Campbell explained how he came to it while

Campbell, Joseph (1904-1987)

considering three terms for the transcendent in Sanskrit: one means "being," a
second means "full consciousness," and
the third means "rapture." He recalled,
"I don't know whether my consciousness
is full consciousness or not, I don't know
whether my being is proper being or not,
but I do know where my rapture is. Let
me hang on to rapture, and that will
bring me both being and full consciousness, and it works."
During the last twelve years of Campbell's life he had several dialogues with
friend and radio talk show host Michael
Toms, which Campbell referred to as
"religious experiences." Nine of them
were published in 1988 as the book An
Open Life: Joseph Campbell in Conversation with Michael Toms, with a fore-

word by Jean Erdman. Toms wrote a

brief life of Campbell as the introduction to the book, in which he especially
notes how Campbell's own life was "rich
with examples of the mythic lore he so
dearly loved to recount, especially in its
seemingly small synchronicities," which
Toms appropriately inventories. These
included "chance" meetings with J.
Krishnamurti, Adelle Davis, John Steinbeck, and biologist Ed Ricketts.
Campbell received the Hofstra Distinguished Scholar Award, and the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award
for Contribution to Creative Literature;
was a president of the American Society
for the Study of Religion; and was a director of the Society for the Arts, Religion, and Contemporary Culture. In
1985 he was granted the medal of honor
of the National Arts Club; and in 1986
he received the Honorary Doctorate of
Humane Letters from Sarah Lawrence.
The Joseph Campbell Chair in Comparative Mythology was established at
Sarah Lawrence in 1988. At the ceremony honoring him, a colleague, John
Grim, observed that "in Joseph Campbell's final work, time appears to spiral,
to interweave with space revealing a new

Campbell,

Joseph

(1904-1987)

perspective for seeing the diverse faces of

the universe."
Campbell called upon anthropology,
archaeology, biology, literature, ecumenical theology, philology, philosophy,
comparative religions, art history, Jungian psychology, and popular culture to
evolve his unique mythology. He evolved
new insights in mythology by bringing
humanistic values and universal spiritual
experiences to the best of modern science
and art. He died at age eighty-three on
October 31, 1987, at his home in Honolulu, Hawaii, after a brief illness. See
Mythology.
Sources: Joseph Campbell. The Inner
Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth
and as Religion. New York: Harper &
Row, 1988; Joseph Campbell, ed. Papers
from the Eranos Yearbooks. Bollingen Se-

ries 30. Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1968; Joseph Campbell. The Hero
with a Thousand Faces. 1949. New York:
World Publishing Company, 1970; Joseph
Campbell. The Way of the Animal Powers:
Historical

Atlas

of

World

Mythology.

1983. London: Times Books, 1988; Joseph

Campbell, ed. Myth, Dreams, and Religion.
Dallas: Spring Publications, 1970; Joseph
Campbell. Erotic Irony and Mythic Forms
in the Art of Thomas Mann. San Francisco:
Robert Briggs Associates, 1973; Joseph
Campbell with Bill Moyers. The Power of
Myth. New York: Doubleday, 1988; Jo
(sic) Campbell. Stairways to the Mayan
Gods. Film script. Cos Cob, CT: The Hartley Film Foundation, 1969-70; John M.
Maher and Dennis Briggs, eds. An Open
Life: Joseph Campbell in Conversation
with Michael Toms. Burdett, NY: Larson
Publications, 1988; Robert A. Segal. Joseph
Campbell: An Introduction.
New York:

Garland Publishing, 1987; "Joseph Campbell: Making the Bones of Folklore Sing."
Sarah Lawrence (Spring-Summer 1988):
13-15; "Thus Spake Zoroaster: An Interview with Joseph Campbell." Omni (December 1988): 143-44.

81

Castaneda, Carlos (b. 1925?)

Anthropologist and author of a number
of books purported to be his true experiences learning lessons about the nagual
(ordinary) and tonal (extraordinary)
worlds from a Yaqui sorcerer. Little is
known about Carlos Castaneda, who
keeps himself out of the public eye. Critics have charged his accounts of his experiences are fictitious, or at best "faction."
In interviews Castaneda has given
deliberately false information about himself, warning interviewers he would do
so. According to immigration and other
records, he was born Carlos Cesar Arana
Castaneda on December 25, 1925, in Cajamarca, Peru. He came to the United
States in 1951. From 1955 to 1959, he
was a prepsychology student at Los Angeles City College. He enrolled at the
University of California at Los Angeles
and switched to anthropology. His intent,
he has said, was to enter graduate school
and become an academic, and he thought
his success would be guaranteed if he
published a paper first. He decided to research ethnobotany, or psychotropic
plants used by sorcerers.
In 1960, on his research trip to Mexico, he was directed to don Juan Matus,
an elderly Yaqui said to possess the
knowledge Castaneda sought. He met
don Juan in an Arizona bus depot near
the border. After numerous visits over a
year, don Juan then announced that he
was in fact a brujo, or sorcerer, who had
learned his art from a diablero, a sorcerer
with evil powers and the ability to shapeshift. In 1961 don Juan took Castaneda
on as an apprentice, and introduced him
to another sorcerer, don Genaro Flores, a
Mazatec Indian, who also would serve as
his tutor. Castaneda first had to learn
how to see nonordinary reality- "stopping the world" -which he did with the
help of peyote (called "Mescalito" by don
Juan), datura (Jimson weed), and Psilo-

82

cybe mexicana mushrooms. His apprenticeship lasted from 1961 to 1965, when
he decided to terminate it.
Castaneda's experiences became the
subject of his first book, The Teachings
of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge
(1968), the forward of which says, "This
book is both ethnography and allegory."
The book was accepted as his master's
thesis, and became an underground bestseller. In 1968 Castaneda returned to
Mexico to show the book to don Juan,
and began a second apprenticeship,
which lasted until 1971. His second
book, A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan, appeared in
1971. His third book, Journey to Ixtlan:
The Lessons of Don Juan (1972), in
which Castaneda acquires a coyote sorcerer's companion, was accepted as his
doctoral dissertation. In Tales of Power
(1974), Castaneda parted ways with dons
Juan and Genaro. Together they jump off
a cliff into an abyss, and Castaneda experiences the "two inherent realms of all
creation, the tonal and the nagual."
Forces compel Castaneda to return to
Mexico, however, and in The Second
Ring of Power (1974), he discovers he
has been drawn by nine other apprentices
of don Juan, five women and four men,
who expect him to take don Juan's place
as teacher. One of the women, dofia
Soledad, turns her powers against Castaneda and engages in a fierce battle of
sorcery. Castaneda's adventures continued for at least another four books.
Many reviews of his books have
been favorable, yet there has been much
debate as to whether or not the books are
documented fact, are embellished fact,
or are entirely fiction. Whether or not
don Juan exists is unknown, as there is
no evidence of him outside of Castaneda's writing. The name may be a pseudonym. Critics have pointed to the absence of Yaqui terms and evidence of
culture in don Juan's conversation and
habits. According to Castaneda don Juan

Castaneda, Carlos (b. 1925?)

was born in 1891 and was part of the

diaspora of Yaquis all over Mexico, becoming
a nomad.
Critics
also have
pointed to The Third Eye (1956), an alleged autobiographical
account of a Tibetan lama, T. Lobsang Rampa, who
proved to be an Englishman. Castaneda
has stated that it is "inconceivable"
that
he could concoct such a person as don
Juan, and that he was only a reporter.
Castaneda criticized Timothy Leary
for having naive views that psychedelic
drugs alone have the power to alter the
world. Castaneda said that to alter the
world something else, such as sorcery, is
required. Drugs comprised only the initial
phase of his apprenticeship;
don Juan
later taught him to achieve the same results without drugs. See Drugs in mystical
and psychic experiences. Compare to Andrews, Lynn V.
Sources: Carlos Castaneda. The Teachings
of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge.
Kew York: Simon & Schuster, 1968; Carlos Castaneda. A Separate Reality: Further
Conuersations with Don Juan. New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1971; Carlos Castaneda. Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of
Don Juan. New York: Simon & Schuster,
1972; Carlos Castaneda. Tales of Power.
Kew York: Simon & Schuster, 1974; Carlos Ca'taneda. The Second Ring of Power.
Kew York: Simon & Schuster, 1977; Timothy Leary. Flashbacks: An Autobiography. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1983;
Daniel Noel, ed. Seeing Castaneda: Reactions to the "Don Juan" Writing of Carlos
Castaneda. New York: G. P. Putnam's
Sons, 1976; Leslie A. Shepard, ed. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. 2d
ed. Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1984.

Cayce, Edgar (1877-1945)

American
psychic
renowned
for his
trance readings in which he diagnosed illness and prescribed remedies. Called "the
sleeping prophet," Edgar Cayce practiced
absent healing for forty-three years, help-

Cayce, Edgar (1877-1945)

Edgar Cayce
ing to cure people from all over the
world. He never went beyond grammar
school and never studied medicine, but
from an unconscious state he could prescribe drugs and treatments
that were
said to be accurate in more than 90 percent of his cases.
Cayce was born on March 18, 1877,
in Hopkinsville,
Kentucky. He had psychic powers from an early age, including
the ability to see nonphysical beings (who
were his childhood companions) and the
auras of others.
His curative powers came to light in
1898 when he was twenty-one and working as a salesman. He suffered a persistent hoarse throat and intermittent laryngitis, which resisted medical treatment
and forced him to give up his job. As a
last resort, he enlisted the aid of a hypnotist, who provided temporary relief. He
was then hypnotized by Al Layne, who
asked him to describe, while in trance,
the cause of his affliction and a cure.
Cayce did so, and at the end of the ses-

83

sion had his voice back. Layne suggested

diagnosing others in the same way. Cayce
was dubious but agreed to try. He began
giving readings on March 31, 1901.
On June 17, 1903, he married Gertrude Evans. They had two sons, Edgar
Evans and Hugh Lynn.
Cayce's success with readings was so
great that thousands began to seek him
out for help. Though he knew nothing of
medicine, he was able accurately to diagnose conditions and prescribe remedies.
He could read for anyone anywhere in
the world - he needed only a name and
address. Cayce was able to put himself
into a self-induced hypnotic trance, during which he would give the person a
"reading" of his or her condition. Cayce's
prescribed treatments involved aspects of
physiology, biology, chemistry, and anatomy. His ability to name parts of the
body astounded practitioners.
In 1911 he made his first reference in
a reading to karma as a cause of physical
ailment, and from then on many of his
readings concerned karma. He attributed
various ailments and conditions to harmful deeds or passions in past lives. In
readings he sometimes spoke about the
fabled civilizations of Lemuria and Atlantis, and how the latter's inhabitants had
misused their technological power. See
Atlantis; Lemuria. He came to believe in
reincarnation. According to information
given in his readings, some of his own
past lives included one as one of the first
celestial beings to descend to earth prior
to Adam and Eve; as an Atlantean; as
Ra-Ta, a high priest in Egypt 10,600
years ago; as a Persian ruler; as a Trojan
warrior; as Lucius of Cyrene, mentioned
in the New Testament as a minor disciple
of Jesus; and various other lives. He believed he had acquired his scientific
knowledge from a former life as a chemist in Grecian Troy. See Reincarnation.
Cayce's readings were dismissed by
the medical community at large because
of his lack of formal training. Neverthe-

84

less, he did gain the support of hundreds

of medical practitioners. Over the course
of his life, he gave approximately 30,000
readings, which continue to be studied
and interpreted.
Cayce and his family moved to Virginia Beach, Virginia, where in 1928 he
established the beginnings of the Association for Research and Enlightenment
(ARE), founded in 1931. See Association
for Research and Enlightenment. He
worked quietly throughout the 1930s,
giving an average of two readings a day.
He had vivid dreams that seemed to contain past-life and prophetic information.
He prophesied the Second Coming of
Christ in 1998, accompanied by cataclysmic earth changes.
In 1943 Thomas Sugrue's biography
of Cayce, There Is a River, was published, which greatly increased the demand for his help. In response he increased his readings to four to six a day,
giving 1,385 readings between June 1943
and June 1944. Even at that pace, his
mail was backlogged three to four years.
In August 1944 he collapsed from exhaustion. His own readings had warned
him that if he attempted more than two
readings per day, he would disintegrate,
yet Cayce was too moved by the suffering
of others to cut back. Following his collapse he went into the mountains near
Roanoke, Virginia, to recuperate, returning home in November 1944. On January
1, 1945, he told friends he would be
"healed" on January 5, and they took it
to mean his death. He died peacefully
on January 3, 1945, at the age of
sixty-seven. Gertrude died the following
April 1.
The ARE now is under the direction
of Hugh Lynn's son, Charles Thomas
Cayce.

Methods and Philosophy

When Cayce gave a reading, he simply lay down and relaxed; his objective

Cayce, Edgar (1877-1945)

mind became inactive and his unconscious took over. He believed that each
cell had a consciousness of its own, and
during a reading he was able to see every
gland, organ, blood vessel, nerve, and tissue inside a body. The cells communicated with his unconscious and told him
what was troubling them.
His diagnosis would then be based
upon a variety of causative factors. Glandular conditions could cause many problems; so could childhood bumps and
bruises, which produced lesions that later
caused disturbances. Karmic conditions
(spiritual heredity) also could predispose
a body to certain weaknesses.
Cayce viewed the body as one interconnected network of organs and tissues;
when something was wrong with one
part, the whole network became disturbed. This disturbance was due to the
body not properly assimilating what it
needed to maintain its natural equilibrIum.
Healing could take place only
through natural channels in order to restore the natural equilibrium. Cayce's
prescribed treatments were a unique combination of osteopathy, chiropractic therapy, electrical procedures, vibrations,
massage, therapeutic baths, manipulation, foods and diet, medicinal compounds, drugs, herbs, tonics, exercises,
and rest. Most treatments were intended
to be implemented under the professional
guidance of a medical practitioner.
The chief difference between Cayce's
suggested treatments and those of the
medical community was that Cayce
sought to heal the whole body by treating
the causes rather than the symptoms of a
patient's problem.
The individual patient, hO\vever,
played a key role in healing because it
was first necessary to have faith in a
higher power's ability to heal. Cayce believed that as a Christian, God gave him
the power to cure as a gift to help other
people. But it would not be he, Cayce,

Cayc~

Edgar (1877-1945)

who would affect the change in an individual's condition; the patient would use
his or her own positive attitudes to influence the outcome. The patient had to
view the reading with hope and prayer
rather than perceive it as a freak event or
last resort. The reading had to be a spiritual event, with results that were not
only physical, but mental and spiritual as
well. "Mind is the builder," Cayce was
fond of saying.
The right attitude also was necessary
in order to successfully follow treatment
procedures. The body, with its delicate
chemistry and nervous impulses, responded to commands from the mind,
and what the mind chose and held before
itself either quickened the body or let it
go slack to psychic impulses.
Cayce believed that everyone has a
natural psychic ability, and such phenomena as dreams and premonitions are expressions of that ability. He said that psychic ability is merely an extension of faith
and love, and that psychic perception and
psychokinesis (PK) are higher forms of
creativity. Everything has its fields with
complex patterns of vibration. When
fields of the human psyche are set into
motion within a given field, psychic perception or PK takes place.
Cayce said that if the mind and will
are directed toward shared creativity,
then resources will be drawn from the
soul to yield helpful psychic impulses
needed for those tasks. A person who has
purity of heart and enduring love toward
others will always have a ready supply of
psychic energy available.

Cayce Organizations
In addition to the ARE, three organizations have grown up around Cayce's
work. The oldest, chartered in 1930, is
Atlantic University in Virginia Beach, a
formal educational program offering a
master's degree in transpersonal studies.
The Edgar Cayce Foundation, also at Vir-

85

gmla Beach, was chartered in 1948 to

provide permanent custodial ownership
for the Cayce readings and their supporting documentation. The foundation's primary roles are publishing, information
management, and applied research. The
Harold J. Reilly School of Massotherapy,
under the auspices of Atlantic University,
opened in 1986, offering a diploma program certified by the Commonwealth of
Virginia in massage, hydrotherapy, diet,
and preventive health care practices
based on the Cayce readings. See Altered
states of consciousness; Healing, faith
and psychic; Psi.
Sources: Mary Ellen Carter. My Years with
Edgar Cayce. New York: Warner, 1974;
W. H. Church. Many Happy Returns: The
Lives of Edgar Cayce. San Francisco:

Harper & Row, 1984; Rosemary Ellen

Guiley. Tales of Reincarnation. New York:
Pocket Books, 1989; Nicholas Regush. The
Human Aura. New York: Berkely, 1974;
Jess Stearn. Edgar Cayce- The Sleeping
Prophet. New York: Bantam Books, 1968;
Thomas Sugrue. There Is a River. Rev. ed.
Virginia Beach, VA: ARE Press, 1973;
Edgar Cayce Foundation, Virginia Beach,
VA.

Chakras
In yoga vortices that penetrate the body
and the body's aura, through which various energies, including the universal life
force, are received, transformed, and distributed. Chakras are believed to play a
vital role in physical, mental, and emotional health and in spiritual development. They are invisible to ordinary sight
but may be perceived clairvoyantly. Some
people say they can activate the chakras
to whirl faster and can direct the flow of
energy through them.
Chakra
is Sanskrit for "wheel."
Chakras are said to be shaped like multicolored lotus petals or spoked wheels
that whirl at various speeds as they process energy. Chakras are described in
Hindu and Buddhist yogic literature.
There are differences between the two

86

systems, and in various Western descriptions of the chakras.

There is no accepted scientific evidence that the chakras exist; until recently, they were dismissed by Western
medicine. They have been increasingly acknowledged, along with the acupuncture
meridians and other Eastern systems, in
alternative treatments. Evidence for the
existence of chakras, albeit controversial,
has been presented by Hiroshi Motoyama
of Japan, who hypothesized that if an enlightened person could influence the
chakras, the energy output would be
measurable. Using a lead-lined recording
booth, Motoyama measured the energy
field opposite various chakras which subjects claimed to have awakened, usually
through years of meditation. He found
that the energy levels at those areas were
significantly greater than over the same
areas of control subjects.
The health of chakras is diagnosed
by clairvoyance, by energy scans with the
hands, and by dowsing with a pendulum.
Clairvoyants say that health disturbances
often manifest in the aura, and thus in the
chakras, months and sometimes years before they manifest in the physical body.
There are seven major chakras and
hundreds of minor ones. In the aura the
etheric, astral, and mental bodies are said
to each have seven major chakras. The
seven major etheric centers, which are
most directly concerned with physical
health, lie along the spinal column. Each
is associated with a major endocrine
gland, a major nerve plexus, a physiological function, and a psychic function. The
higher the position along the spinal column, the more complex the chakra and
the higher its functions.
The chakras are connected to each
other and to the body through the nadis,
channels of subtle energy. There are thousands of nadis, of which three are the
most important. The sushumna, the central channel, originates at the base of the
spine and rises to the medulla oblongata
at the base of the brain; it processes en-

Cayc~ Edgar (1877-1945)

ENDOCRINE GLANDS

CHAKRA SYSTEM

The chakra system

ergy coming in from the etheric field. The

ida and pingala also extend from the base
of the spine to the brow and end at the
left and right nostrils. They crisscross the
sushumna in a spiral that resembles the
shape of a caduceus. See Caduceus. They
wrap around, but do not penetrate, the
chakras, and are concerned '.vith the outflow of energy.
The universal life force is said to enter the aura through the chakra at the top
of the head, and is filtered down to the
other chakras, each of which transforms
the energy into usable form for the functions it governs. When kundalini is
aroused, it rises up the chakra system
through the sushumna. See Kundalini;
Universal life force.
Each chakra has its own coloration,
number of petal "spokes," and speed of
vibration. When the chakras are balanced
and healthy, their colors are clear and luminous and their rotation is smooth. In

Chakras

poor health they become cloudy and irregular or sluggish in rotation. Chakras
that are blocked are believed to adversely
influence the body functions they govern.
In alternative healing there are techniques
for clearing chakra blockages and stimulating rotation.
In Laya Yoga, the yoga of concentration upon the chakras and the nadis,
each chakra has its own dominant and
subdominant mantra sounds and complex symbologies of geometric shapes,
sexual symbols of lingam and yoni, and
letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. Combinations of mantras (chants), pranayama
(breath control), and visualizations are
employed in Laya Yoga to cleanse and
balance the chakras, and to raise the kundalini. See Yoga.
The seven major etheric chakras are
the root, the sacral, the solar plexus, the
heart, the throat, the brow, and the
crown:
1. The root (muladhara) is located at
the base of the spine and is the seat
of kundalini. It is concerned with
self-preservation, one's animal nature, taste, and smell. It is the least
complex of the seven centers, divided
by only four spokes. It is orange-red
in color.
2. The sacral (svadhisthana) lies near
the genitals and governs sexuality
and reproduction. It has six spokes
and is primarily red. In some systems
the root chakra is ascribed reproductive functions, and the sacral chakra
is overlooked in favor of the spleen
chakra, a rosy pink and yellow sun
with six spokes located halfway between the pubis and navel. It influences overall health and in particular
governs digestion and functions of
the liver, pancreas, and spleen. The
spleen chakra is seen as minor in
other systems.
3. The solar plexus (manipurna) rests
just above the navel. It has ten

87

4.

S.

6.

7.

88

spokes and is predominantly green

and light red. It is associated with
the emotions, and is the point where
astral energy enters the etheric field.
The solar plexus affects the adrenals,
pancreas, liver, and stomach. Most
trance mediums work through this
chakra.
The heart (anahata) has twelve glowing golden petals and is located midway between the shoulder blades, in
the center of the chest. It governs the
thymus gland and influences immunity to disease. It is linked to higher consciousness and unc'onditional
love.
The throat (visuddha) is a sixteenspoke wheel of silvery blue that is
associated with creativity and selfexpression and the search for truth.
It is prominent in musicians, singers,
composers, and public speakers. This
chakra also influences the thyroid
and parathyroid glands and metabolism, and is associated with certain
states of expanded consciousness.
The bro~ (ajna), located between
the eyebrows, is called the third eye
for its influence over psychic sense
and spiritual enlightenment. It has
ninety-six spokes, half of which radiate a yellow-rose color and half of
which radiate blue and purple. This
chakra is associated with the pituitary gland, the pineal gland, intelligence, intuition, and psychic powers,
called siddhis in Hindu yoga.
The crown (sahasrara) whirls just
above the top of the head. Its 972
spokes radiate a glowing purple, the
most spiritual of colors. It is not associated with any glands, but reveals
the individual's level of conscious evolution. The crown cannot be activated until all the other chakras are
refined and balanced; when activated it brings supreme enlightenment and cosmic consciousness.
While other chakras rotate in slight

depressions, the crown chakra whirls

in a dome. In religious art deities,
saints, and mystics are portrayed
with radiant crown chakras in the
form of halos or domed headdresses.
See Aura; Bodywork; Healing, faith
and psychic.
Sources: Barbara Ann Brennan. Hands of
Light: A Guide to Healing through the Human Energy Field. 1987. New York: Bantam Books, 1988; Richard Gerber. Vibrational Medicine. Santa Fe, NM: Bear &
Co., 1988; Bernard Gunther. Energy Ecstasy and Your Seven Vital Chakras. North

Hollywood, CA: Newcastle Publishing,

1983; Shafica Karagulla and Dora van
Gelder Kunz. The Chakras and the Human
Energy Fields. Wheaton, IL: :rhe Theosophical Publishing Co., 1989; C. W. Leadbeater. The Chakras. 1927. Wheaton, IL:
The Theosophical Publishing Co., 1980;
Vivian Worthington. A History of Yoga.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

Channeling
A form of mediumship in which information is communicated from a source perceived to be different from the conscious
self. Sources are identified variously as
nonphysical beings, angels, nature spirits,
totem or guardian spirits, deities, demons, extraterrestrials, spirits of the
dead, and the Higher Self. Channeling is
done in a dissociated or altered state of
consciousness. As mediums hip it has existed in virtually all cultures throughout
history and has gone through cycles of
acceptance and rejection. As a New Age
phenomenon, channeling has almost exclusively focused on the delivery of religious or spiritual information allegedly
obtained from spiritual sources, such as
highly evolved and nonphysical entities
(who usually have exotic names), angels,
Jesus, God, and the Virgin Mary.

Historical Overview
The desire to communicate with
nonworldly beings is perhaps as old as

Chakras

humanity itself. In prehistoric and primitive cultures, designated individuals-a

priest, shaman, oracle, or person of similar function - had the privilege and responsibility of seeking out the wisdom of
these beings and delivering it to the
masses. See Shamanism.
Communicating with gods in trance
was a highly developed art among the
priestly class of the ancient Egyptians.
The ancient Greeks had their oracles. The
early Chinese, Tibetans, Japanese, Indians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Celts
channeled discarnate spirits or deities.
The prophets, saints, and holy men and
women of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam received divine guidance that took
the form of channeling. See Oracle;
Prophecy.
Other forms of channeling have included divination and healing, performed
by wizards, wise women, witches, soothsayers, and the like; and possession, in
which an entity seizes control of an individual. Such cases usually are seen as demonic, and were prevalent during the
Middle Ages. It is argued by some that
possession is not true channeling because
it is involuntary.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Spiritualism gained a large following with its emphasis on survival of death
and the purported abilities of mediums to
contact the spirits of the dead. See Mediumship; Seance; Spiritualism. During the
same era, Madame Helena P. Blavatsky,
cofounder of the Theosophical Society,
claimed to channel the wisdom of various
Tibetan adepts. See Blavatsky, Madame
Helena P.; Theosophy.
In the wake of the decline of Spiritualism, channeled works were produced,
but channeling itself did not regain widespread attention in the West until the late
1960s and early 1970s, when Jane Roberts began publishing her Seth books. See
Roberts, Jane. Roberts inaugurated a resurgence of channeling of higher entities,
rather than spirits of the dead, whose lu-

Channeling

minaries have included Jach Pursel (Lazaris), JZ Knight (Ramtha), Pat Rodegast
(Emmanuel), Elizabeth Clare Prophet
(Saint Germain), and others. Popular interest in channeling was further fueled in
the 1980s by actress Shirley MacLaine,
whose spiritual odyssey was aided by
California channeler Kevin Ryerson. Undoubtedly, many frauds filled the field, as
they had done during the peak of Spiritualism. By the late 1980s, the channeling
explosion was over, though popular interest remained.

The Process of Channeling

Channeling can be spontaneous or
induced. The channeler has no control
over spontaneous channeling, which may
involve falling into sudden trance states
or lapses of consciousness. Many channelers begin with spontaneous episodes,
then learn to control the process and to
induce it. Induction methods vary, and
include meditation, prayer, self-hypnosis,
fasting, chanting, dancing, sleep deprivation, breathing techniques, smoking
herbs, or taking hallucinogenic drugs. See
Altered states of consciousness.
Mental channeling is the mediation
of thoughts, words, images, and emotions, and is accomplished in a variety of
ways. In full trance the channeler's personality becomes displaced, and another
entity or personality takes temporary
possession, using a voice and gestures different from those of the channeler. See
Direct-voice mediumship. The channeler
is unaware of what is said or done and
may have no recollection upon regaining
normal consciousness. Jane Roberts's
channeling of Seth was of this type. Mental channeling also is done in a light
trance or dissociated state, in which the
channeler is partially or fully aware of the
process. The channeler's voice mayor
may not change; or he or she may communicate via automatic writing, a planchette, Ouija board, or similar device.

89

Mental channeling is also accomplished

through sleep and dreams.
Physical channeling involves physical
effects, such as psychic or spiritual healing, psychokinesis, and materializations.
Physical mediumship was popular in the
early days of Spiritualism for producing
such effects as apports, ectoplasm, levitation, and so on.
In its most liberal interpretation,
channeling also includes the processes of
imagination, intuition, inspiration, and
premonition. See Inspiration; Intuition;
Premonition; Spirit guide.
Channelers receive channeled information in a variety of ways. In addition
to the direct use of vocal chords mentioned above, information comes clairaudiently, in visions, or in the form of
thoughts in words or images, or in feelmgs.

In cases where individuals have not

exhibited mediumistic ability since childhood, channeling usually occurs as a
breakthrough during the process of spiritual development or psychic experimentation. Jane Roberts's interaction with
Seth began with a Ouija board, for example, while Jach Pursel, Pat Rodegast,
Kevin Ryerson, and others had their
breakthroughs after meditation experience.
Rodegast, who lives in Connecticut,
began practicing Transcendental Meditation twice a day in 1972. She began to
experience inner visions, which she feared
were hallucinations. Like many others
who are initially frightened by the phenomena of spiritual unfoldment, Rodegast sought therapy and also joined a
spiritual community in her effort to understand what was happening to her. After about two years of alternately resisting and accepting the inner visions, she
then clairvoyantly perceived a being of
golden light who identified himself as
Emmanuel.
Ryerson's channeling spontaneously
began in the 1970s, six months after he

90

joined a meditation group organized

around the study of Edgar Cayce teachings. It took him another six months to
learn how to control the process. Various
entities speak through him, including an
Essene named John; an Irish pickpocket
named McPherson, and a West Indian
named Obadiah. When Shirley MacLaine
filmed the television miniseries based on
her book Out on a Limb, Ryerson not
only played himself, but so did his entities, who recreated a channeling session
he had done with MacLaine during her
spiritual search.

Theories on Channeled Sources

Various theories have been put forward to explain the channeling phenomenon. The simplest and most basic explanation is that the channeled sources are
who-or what-they
say they are. Ancient channelers believed they were indeed invoking specific spirits of the dead,
deities, or nature or animal spirits. This
view also is held by Spiritualist mediums,
who believe they communicate with the
dead, and remains prevalent in societies
where channeled information is routinely
sought for prophecy, healing, divination,
and advice. New Age opinions on the
sources are more divided, with some individuals taking channeled sources at
their face value and others believing in
theories advanced by psychologists.
Psychiatrist Sigmund Freud was
highly skeptical of channeling. He believed it to be wish fulfillment, the emergence of material that had been repressed
in the conscious mind. Psychiatrist Carl
G. Jung offered two possible explanations: (1) the channeled entities came
from complexes that had become repressed and separated from waking consciousness, including the Shadow, the
least evolved aspect of a person; or (2)
they represented archetypes accessed in
the collective unconscious, the shared ra-

Channeling

cial memories residing deep within all human beings. In keeping with Jung's view,
Ametican psychologist Jean Houston
calls channeled entities "goddings," or
personae of the Self. Some channelers believe they are calling upon their own
Higher Self, a level of wisdom not normally accessed in waking consciousness.
The Higher Self also has been called the
"ovetsoul" and "superconscious."
There is evidence to support the notion that channeled entities are part of the
channeler. Studies of mediums undertaken in the first part of the twentieth
century show that many spirit controls
had characteristics remarkably similar to
the mediums themselves. Eileen J. Garrett
believed her controls were part of her
own self, but most mediums believe controls to be separate, external entities.
They have contended that the process of
channeling forces the entities to filter
through their human hosts in order to
communicate.
Some psychologists believe channeling is pathological in origin, and is symptomatic of multiple personality disorder.
In multiple personality cases, individuals
are host to two or more personalities,
each of which has its own identity, memories, beliefs, and history. However, the
individual usually has little or no control
over the personalities. Mediums and
channels, on the other hand, control the
access of the channeled entities and generally lead otherwise normal lives.
Still other theories related to the
channeled-entity-as-self idea hold that
human consciousness is far more complex than believed. Thus each individual
may actually have multiple consciousnesses of varying levels of sophistication;
only a few individuals, however, become
aware of these and gain access to them.
Or channeling may be but one part of a
universal Mind to which all consciousnesses in creation are connected.

Channeling

The Future of Channeling

Champions of channeling see practical applications, such as spiritual and personal counseling, divination, forecasting
the future, and delving into the past.
These "applied psi" functions have all
been undertaken at various times by psychics with mixed results. Generally, psychically obtained information is too fragmentary or inaccurate to be useful or
reliable, though many success stories exist. However, William H. Kautz, founder
and director of the Center for Applied Intuition in California, claims that in more
than five hundred channelings examined,
few inaccuracies occurred; the key is the
posing and motivation of the questions
asked of the channeled source. See Applied psi; Psychic archaeology; Psychic
criminology.
One pitfall of the New Age wave of
higher entity channeling is the tendency
among many individuals to have blind
faith in the channeled material, simply
because it reportedly comes from a more
highly evolved being. Various guidelines
have emerged for evaluating channels.
One positive outgrowth of the channeling phenomenon is the encouragement
for individuals to develop their own connections to a source of higher wisdom,
especially through intuition. In that regard channeling moves from the theatrical arena of an anointed few to the everyday routine of all people. See Findhorn; Knight, JZ; Montgomery, Ruth;
Pursel, Jach.
Sources: Roger Anderson. "Channeling."
Parapsychology
Review 19, no. 5 (Sep-

tember/October 1988): 6-9; William E.

Geist. "Spiritual Chic: Gaining Success
with Channeling." The New York Times
(May 30, 1987): B1; William H. Kautz.
"Channeling: Mediumship Comes of Age."
Applied Psi (]anuaryIFebruary 1987): 3-8;
William H. Kautz and Melanie Branon.
Channeling: The Intuitive Connection. San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987; Jon
Klima. Channeling: Investigations on Re-

91

cetvmg Information from Paranormal

Sources. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher,
1987; Katharine Lowry. "Channelers."
Omni (October 1987): 47-50+; Suzanne
Kluss Malkin. "Confessions of a Former
Channeler." New Realities 10, no. 1
(September/October 1989): 25-31; Corrinne McLaughlin. "Evaluating Psychic
Guidance and Channeling." Venture Inward 4, no. 1 (JanuaryIFebruary 1988):
36-39+; Pat Rodegast and Judith Stanton,
compo Emmanuel's Book: A Manual for
Living Comfortably in the Cosmos. 1985.
New York: Bantam Books, 1987; David
Spangler. Channeling in the New Age.
Booklet. Issaquah, WA: Morningtown
Press, 1988; Alan Vaughan. "Channeling."
New Realities (JanuaryIFebruary 1987):
43-47.

Chanting
The continuous recitation of a mantra,
sutra, word, or phrase as part of meditation or a religious or magical rite, which
helps one achieve an altered state of consciousness, ecstasy, communion with the
Divine, or summon psychical power for
magical, exorcism, or healing purposes.
Chanting is done in rhythm, sometimes in cantillation (musical modulations), which creates a pattern of energy
and power. Yogis emphasize developing a
beautiful voice and cadence in chanting.
In some schools of Zen Buddhism, sutras
are chanted in a monotone, with the
voice trailing off at the end of the chant.
Chanting is an ancient, universal
practice, and is often done in conjunction
with drumming, hand-clapping, dancing,
or the fingering of beads on a rosary. Rosaries are 'Nidely used in chanting in Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity. Group chanting, accompanied by
dancing, hand-clapping, or drumming,
is considered more effective in raising
consciousness because the energies and
movement of many people are united,
which facilitates achievement of the ob-

92

jective. Group chanting is sometimes

done to the point of exhaustion.
In all of the major religions, the most
powerful chants are the names of God,
which are limitless. According to the
Vedic scriptures, the chanting of the
name of God creates a transcendental
sound that awakens spiritual consciousness, and liberates one from ego and the
material plane. The Vedas say that chanting the name of the Lord is the only
means to spiritual progress in the Kali
Yuga age of quarrel and hypocrisy, which
began five thousand years ago and will
last 432,000 years. The Krishnas incorporate the name of the Lord in a sixteenword maha-mantra, which they also believe will help liberate them from
reincarnation:
"Hare
Krishna Hare
KrishnalKrishna
KrishnalHare
Hare/
Hare Rama Hare Rama/Rama Rama/
Hare Hare." The mantra is chanted in
kirtana, a group activity accompanied by
hand-clapping and musical instruments,
or in japa, private meditation with a rosary.
Various Hindu and Buddha chants
use Om, which represents Brahman, the
Absolute Followers of the Pure Land sect,
the largest Buddhist order in Japan, chant
the name Buddha to help liberate them
from reincarnation, thus enabling them
to join Buddha in the Pure Land of spirit.
Followers of Islam chant the ninetynine names of Allah, called "the Beautiful
Names." In Christianity the chanting of
the name of Jesus in prayer was recommended by Diadochus of Photice in the
middle of the fifth century, and by John
Climacus in the early seventh century.
This became the "Jesus Prayer," or "Lord
Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on
me." Christian chants include four Western forms, Gregorian, Gallican, Mozarabic, and Ambrosian; three Eastern forms,
Byzantine, Syrian, and Armenian; and
Coptic and Ethiopian chants of northern
Africa. Jewish cantillation consists of biblical texts.

Channeling

Chanting is part of tribal society rituals to raise psychic power, pay tribute to
deities, appease supernatural powers, exorcise demons, control the weather, ensure success in hunt and war, bring blessings of prosperity and fecundity, and
accompany funeral and initiation rites. In
Vodoun thousands of chants exist to accompany rites, composed in various African dialects and Haitian Creole, a blend
of French, English, and Spanish. Shamans
chant "power songs" as they dance.
Words vary according to individuals, but
melodies and rhythms are handed down
in tribes through generations. The Navajo chant elaborate myths as part of curing rituals, which also include sand painting. The long texts must be chanted
perfectly, or they are rendered invalid or
result in the disease they are intended to
cure.
Witches and Pagans combine chanting and dancing to raise a group psychic
energy field called a "cone of power,"
which is released to effect magic. The
chants may be names of Goddess or the
Horned God, or phrases relative to spells.
See Cone of power.
In magic the success of a conjuration
or spell depends heavily upon the sound
vibrations created by chanting, a belief
that dates back thousands of years. The
ancient Egyptians were aware of the
power of sound upon people, and reasoned that the same power could be applied to tap into the occult forces of the
universe. The magician believes that the
rhythmic chanting of magic words and
names of God sends out waves of energy,
which helps the magician reach a state of
frenzy and summon his or her inner
power. See Mantra.
Sources: Margot Adler. Drawing Down the
Moon. Rev. ed. Boston: Beacon Press,
1986; Richard Cavendish. The Black Arts.
New York: Perigee Books, 1967; Chant
and Be Happy: The Power of Mantra Meditation. Based on the teachings of A. C.

Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Los An-

Chantways

geles: The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust,

1983; John Ferguson. An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mysticism and the Mystery Religions. New York: Seabury Press, 1976;
Michael Harner. The Way of the Shaman.

New York: Bantam Books, 1986; Bruce

of Demons.
Kapferer. A Celebration
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
1983; Maria Leach, ed., and Jerome Fried,
assoc. ed. Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979;
Ormond McGill. The Mysticism and Magic
of India. Cranbury, NJ: A. S. Barnes &
Co., 1977; Milo Rigaud. Secrets of Voodoo. San Francisco: City Lights Books,
1985; Starhawk. The Spiral Dance. San

Francisco: Harper

& Row, 1979.

Chantways
Curing ceremonies of Native Americans
of the Southwest, especially the Navajo,
who practice the art in its highest form.
Chantways last from one to nine days
and invoke supernatural powers to cure
physical and psychical ailments. They involve lengthy and precise chants or songs,
prayers, dancing, purifications, rattling,
medicinal herbs, and sand paintings,
which are colored paintings on dry
ground of religious and mythical symbols
pertaining to the cure. Chantways have
largely retained their importance. Some
Navajo will not accept conventional medical treatment without an accompanying
chantway.
The principle behind chantways is
the belief that disease or bad luck result
from an imbalance in the delicate harmony of the cosmos. Imbalances can be
caused only by human beings. The chantway restores the harmony. According to
Navajo mythology, the ceremonial instructions for chantways were given to
the Dinneh ("the People," as the Navajo
call themselves) by the Holy Ones, who
were never seen by human eyes, through
intermediary spirits such as the Wind
People. The very first apprentices spent

93

seven days and seven nights in purification and instruction. They were told that
the sand paintings had to be done on
Mother Earth, so that the sacred knowledge could be had by all who needed it.
The first chantway to be witnessed by a
Caucasian was reported in 1891.
In a nine-day chantway, the first four
days involve cleansing and invitations to
the Supernaturals to appear, followed by
four days during which they arrive, and a
final day of curing. The chant is a lengthy
reenactment from mythology concerning
the mortal hero or god who first received
the ceremony. The text must be chanted
precisely and without error, otherwise it
is invalidated. Serious errors in the chant
may cause the hatathli, or chanter, to fall
ill with the same affliction he is trying to
cure. The chanter usually is a man who
volunteers for the job, and spends years
learning chants before he is allowed to
practice. Typically, he learns one great
rite and a few lesser ones, plus the Blessing Way, which concludes every ceremony.
The arrival of the Supernaturals is
marked by the sand painting, which also
must be done with great precision within
a single day's time. Each chantway has
perhaps a hundred or more illustrations,
of which the chanter or patient chooses
four. They are drawn in the five sacred
colors of white, red, black, yellow, and
blue. The Supernaturals are depicted by
figures that are elongated, perhaps to indicate their power and nonworldly origin. The figures may be arranged at the
cardinal points of the painting, and may
be accompanied by sacred animals or
plants. Some paintings include the sun or
moon, or Father Sky and Mother Earth
representations.
The sand painting is empowered
with a sprinkling of pollen and the placement of sacred feathers and items from a
medicine bundle. The patient then sits on
the painting and the painted earth is
pressed against his or her body, especially

94

the ailing parts, thus making the patient

one with the Supernaturals and sharing
their power. The sickness falls from the
patient as the earth falls back to the
ground. At the conclusion of the ceremony, before the sun sets, the painting is
erased with a sacred feather staff and the
sand is carried away and disposed of.
There are no permanent copies of
sand paintings. Reproductions sold for
the tourist trade are executed with deliberate errors so that the power is preserved
for the actual ceremonies. The designs
have been woven in rugs-which are not
used in the ceremonies-and
painted
on boards.
The Navajo are believed to have
learned the art of sand painting from
the Pueblo, who went to live with the Navajo after the Great Pueblo Revolt against
the Spanish in 1680. The Pueblo's sandpainting rituals are on a smaller scale;
paintings remain several days after the
cure before they are destroyed. Sand
painting ceremonies also are done by the
Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Gros Ventre of
the Plains.
Sources: Eugene Baatoslanii Joe and Mark
Bahti. Navajo Sandpainting Art. Tucson,

AZ: Treasure Chest Publications, 1978;

Maria Leach, ed., and Jerome Fried, assoc.
ed. Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary
of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend. San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979; Franc J.
Newcomb and Gladys Reichard. Sandpaintings

of the Navajo

Shooting

Chant.

New York: Dover Publications, 1975;

Ruth M. Underhill. Red Man's Religion.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1965.

Charismatic renewal
Charismatic renewal, also called "neoPentecostalism," refers to the movement
in the 1960s and 1970s to reestablish a
personal, more joyously expressive communion with God and emphasize the gifts
of the Holy Spirit.

Chantways

In contrast to so-called classic Pentecostalism, which is sectarian in nature,

the charismatic movement emphasized renewal of faith in the established denominations, including Catholicism. While
Pentecostalism appealed mainly to lowerclass whites and African-Americans from
the South, charismatic renewal spread
through the mainly white middle- and
upper-middle-class churches, giving the
movement greater respectability and acceptance by church authorities. Predominantly African-American denominations
did not experience the same wave of renewal, as their worship services had always included joyous singing, dancing,
spontaneity, and evidence of the Holy
Spirit.
The word "charismatic" comes from
the Greek words charismata or charisms,
meaning "spiritual gifts." Speaking in unknown tongues was only one of the gifts
bestowed by the Holy Spirit on the early
Christians; others included wisdom,
knowledge, faith, healing, the ability to
work miracles, prophecy, the ability to
discern spirits, speaking in tongues, and
the interpretation of tongues. Classic Pentecostals believe that tongues signify the
reception of the Holy Spirit, although
many charismatic leaders came to regard
tongues as only one possible sign. Above
all else charismatic renewal represented
an immediate, life-transforming experience.
Until the 1950s Pentecostalism actively isolated itself from other Christian
denominations, believing it had the correct approach and decrying the liberal,
ecumenical position of the World Council
of Churches (WCC). By the end of that
decade, however, South African Pentecostal leader David J. du Plessis began bridging the gap, approaching the WCC and
working to integrate the various denominations. Du Plessis was "disfellowshiped" from the Assemblies of God in
1962 for his work with the WCe. Other
efforts at ecumenical accommodation

Charismatic renewal

were put forth by the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International (FGBMFI), a Pentecostal worship group
founded by Armenian-American Demos
Shakarian, a California dairyman and
millionaire.
Since speaking in tongues and healing gifts were looked upon by many people as sideshow events, not Christian
worship, those in the mainline churches
who had received the Holy Spirit kept it
to themselves. The first traditional minister to declare his experience was Dennis
Bennett, a successful pastor of St. Marks
Episcopal church in Van Nuys, California. His quiet revolution in 1960 split the
congregation, and Bennett was removed
to an inner-city parish in Seattle, Washington, where he continued to preach
charismatic renewal.
In 1963 divinity students and faculty
at Yale University began speaking in
tongues, and the first Catholic Pentecostal prayer meeting was held in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, at Duquesne University in
1966. Many Catholics embraced charismatic renewal as a breath of fresh air in
what some viewed as out-of-date orthodoxy, as the movement spread to the University of Michigan and the University of
Notre Dame. The Michigan group at Ann
Arbor founded an ecumenical group
called the "Word of God" and published
a periodical entitled New Covenant,
which served as a clearinghouse for renewal information. Little by little the
movement grew into a cause: a revolt
against entrenched theology.
In his book The New Charismatics
II, Richard Quebedeaux attributes the
success of the movement with Western
society's rediscovery of the supernatural
and the occult. He notes that in an age
fascinated by psychics, astrology, neardeath experiences, and prophecy, Pentecostal phenomena such as healing,
tongues, and exorcism would have great
appeal. To psychical researcher James H.
Hyslop, such Christian events were oc-

95

cult; to him healing miracles, casting out

devils, and Christ's divination skills and
resurrection proved the survival of the
soul and the psychic nature of Christianity.
In 1969 Roman Catholic bishops in
the United States moved cautiously to incorporate charismatic renewal. Noting
that charismatics showed greater zeal for
prayer, praise, worship, and scripture,
Pope Paul VI blessed the movement in
1973 and presided over a charismatic
mass in 1975. Not every cleric was won
over, however; Episcopalian bishop
James A. Pike denounced charismatic renewal as a new heresy. See Glossolalia;
Pentecostals.
Sources: Keith Crim, general ed. Abingdon
Dictionary of Living Religions. Nashville:

Abingdon Press, 1981; W. J. Hollenweger.

The Pentecostals: The Charismatic Movement in the Churches. Minneapolis: Augs-

burg Publishing House, 1972; James H.

Hyslop. "Christianity and Psychic Research." The J oumal of the American Society for Psychical Research 10, no. 5 (May
1916): 253-74; Richard Quebedeaux. The
New
Charismatics
II. San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1983; John Sherrill. They
Speak with Other Tongues. New York:
McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1964.

Ch'i
See Universal life force.

poetry as a child. When he was about

twelve years old, his parents died. He was
taken in by relatives at the Sri Aurobindo
ashram in Pondicherry, India. See Aurobindo, Sri.
About two years later at Pondicherry, Chinmoy had an intense spiritual
awakening in which he attained nirvikalpa samadhi (Sanskrit for "changeless
samadhi"), the highest, transcendent state
of consciousness in Hindu mysticism.
Nirvikalpa samadhi is the realization of
"I am Brahman" and is a union with
Brahman, the Absolute, in which there is
no subject-object. Chinmoy's experience
included a past-life memory of having
had the same awakening in a previous
life.
For the next twenty years, Chinmoy
pursued a spiritual study at Pondicherry.
In 1964 he felt summoned to teach in the
West and went to live in New York. He
soon spread his teachings elsewhere in the
world.
Chinmoy has taught Raja Yoga,
in which consciousness is controlled
through meditation. He has conducted
meditation sessions at the United Nations. He plays a number of musical instruments, and performs at some of his
public appearances.
Chinmoy has published more than
forty books, many of them collections of
his numerous lectures, as well as volumes
of poetry. See Meditation; Yoga.
Sources: J. Gordon Melton, Jerome Clark,
and Aidan A. Kelly. New Age Almanac.

Ch'i Kung
See Qi Gong.

Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1991; Leslie

Shepard, ed. Encyclopedia of Occultism
and Parapsychology. 2d ed. Detroit: Gale
Research Co., 1984.

Chinmoy, Sri (b. 1931)

Chiropractic

Hindu mystic with a significant following

in the West, especially the United States.
He was born Chinmoy Kumar
Ghose ("Sri" is an honorific he acquired
later) on August 27, 1931, in Chittagong,
India. He displayed a talent for music and

See Bodywork.

96

Christianity
See Christology; Jesus of Nazareth; Mysticism, Christian.

Charismatic

renewal

Christian Science
See Church of Christ, Scientist.

Christology
Doctrines and theories of the meaning of
the belief in Christ (Jesus of Nazareth).
The various Christological debates are often about subtle theological distinctions
of academic interest, but sometimes also
address issues with significant consequences. Typically, how a religious group
thinks of Christ will greatly influence its
psychology, anthropology, mythology,
liturgy, and philosophy.
Most Christologies are based on the
New Testament, and in particular the
Gospel books of Matthew, Mark, and
Luke, though some look to the Old Testament in the promises and prophecies
that anticipated the coming of the Messiah. A number of Christologies also call
upon extra-theological
and secular
sources.
The first Christo logy was developed
by Paul, one of Jesus' twelve apostles.
Paul conceived of Jesus as the Christ, a
preexistent divine being who had descended into man to save humankind
from the powers of law, sin, and death.
The resurrected Christ was raised up to
sit at the right hand of God, and would
return at some point in the future to
judge humankind.
Since the time of Paul, innumerable
Christologies have been conceived. They
are complex and their history has been
fraught with controversy. Early Christologies focused on Jesus as the incarnation
of Logos (God or the Ultimate Reality)
and not as the historical man. Christological controversies of the Patristic Age
(which concerns the lives, writings, and
doctrines of the Fathers of Christianity)
usually focus on the questioning of the
(full) humanity and/or (full) divinity of
Jesus. These included Gnosticism as the

Christolog)'

The crncifixion of Jesus

major Christian deviation in the second
century, from which evolved Docetism,
which held that Christ only appeared to
be human. Arianism denied that the divinity of Jesus preexisted as the Son of
God. Apollinarianism held that preexisting divinity replaced the human spirit of
the human Jesus. The church denounced
such teachings as heresies, usually by
statements from formal councils. In reaction to such misunderstanding of Jesus'
humanity, Nestorianism nearly denied
the unity of God and humanity within his
person. The Council of Chalcedon in 451
established Christ as one person with two
unified natures; the concept held sway
until the Enlightenment.
Christologies of the Middle Ages,
Renaissance, and Reformation placed
great emphasis on the meaning of Christ's
passion and crucifixion. During the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, Jesus came to be regarded as a moral
teacher; and in the nineteenth century interest returned to the historical Jesus.

97

More modern Christologies examine

both the historical Jesus and Jesus as the
absolute bringer of salvation and, in his
death, the definitive Word of God. Some
modern Christologies start "from below"
rather than "from above," finding Jesus
first to be truly human, and then discovering his divinity in and through his humanity.
Seminal works in contemporary
Christology include those of Karl Barth,
Oscar Cullman, Karl Rahner, Edward
Schillebeeckx, George H. Tavard, and
Paul Tilich. Rahner's A New Christo logy
(1980) is seen by some as an indispensable reference for all modern Christologies
In progress.
Lively debates center on the "dilution" of Christian orthodoxy by liberal
theologians in America. Michael Dummet
at Oxford points to an apparent consensus among teachers of Catholic theology
in American seminaries that Jesus died
without believing that he was Christ of
the Son of God; that he knew nothing of
the Trinity; that he knew from his mother
who his natural father was; that he
taught the imminent arrival of a messianic figure called the Son of Man but
never claimed that this was himself. They
are teaching, Dummet observes, that
when Jesus died, his body remained in the
tomb and decomposed there.
Newer Christologies indicate less
emphasis on biblical sources and more
importance being given to scientific, psychological, and social considerations.
Modern Christologies undoubtedly will
respond to the renewed interest in mythology, such as developed by Joseph
Campbell. See Campbell, Joseph; Mythology.
Unorthodox Christologies include
ecumenical efforts that attempt to place
Jesus in a context with other religions,
especially concerning the question of the
dual natures of divinity and humanity. A
unique approach to Christology that is
the most compatible with New Age ecu-

98

menism is that in The Coming of the Cosmic Christ (1988) by the prolific Dominican priest, Matthew Fox. The author
argues for focus on the "Cosmic Christ,"
a living Christ who can bring about a living cosmology. See Creation spirituality.
Sources: Glenn F. Chestnut. Images of
Christ: An Introduction
to Christology.

San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984; Ian

Davie. Jesus Purusha. West Stockbridge,
MA: Inner Traditions/Lindisfarne Press,
1985; Stephen T. Davis, ed. Encountering
Jesus: A Debate on Christology. Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox, 1988; Matthew Fox. The Coming of the Cosmic
Christ. San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1988; Geddes MacGregor. Gnosis: A Renaissance in Christian Thought. Wheaton,
IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1979;
David L. Miller. Christs. New York:
Seabury Press, 1981; Karl Rahner and
Wilhelm Thusing. A New Christology.
New York: Crossroad/Seabury Press, 1980.

Church of All Worlds

Neo-Pagan church, which aided the
growth of neo-Pagan and Witchcraft religions throughout America and influenced the inclusion of environmental consciousness as part of neo-Paganism.
The Church of All Worlds (CAW)
was founded by Tim Zell (who later
changed his name to Otter G'Zell and
then Otter Zell) and a group of friends
who were students at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. The group had
taken its inspiration from psychologist
Abraham Maslow's concepts of selfactualization; the ideas of author Ayn
Rand; and, chiefly, Robert A. Heinlein's
bestselling novel, Stranger in a Strange
Land (1961), about a human being raised
by Martians who returns to Earth and establishes the Church of All Worlds and
preaches "grokking" (deeply understanding) the divinity in others.
Zell's CAW filed for incorporation
in 1967 and was formally chartered on

Christo logy

March 4, 1968, thus becoming the first

neo-Pagan church to be federally recognized. The state of Missouri, however, refused to recognize it until 1971 because
of its lack of dogma concerning God, the
hereafter, the fate of souls, heaven and
hell, sin and punishment, and other questions of concern to mainstream religion.
The early CAW followed Heinlein's
fictional model and organized itself into
nests. There were nine circles of advancement, each named after a planet. One
progressed by passing study courses and
undertaking psychic training. The process
was intended to be ongoing. CAW's
dogma was that it had no dogma; its basic belief was lack of belief. The only sin
in the eyes of the church was hypocrisy,
and the only crime was interfering with
another. The unofficial goal of CAW was
to achieve union with all consciousness.
Zell expressed impatience with religions
that emphasized personal salvation,
which he considered insignificant.
By 1970 CAW's focus had shifted to
ecology and environmentalism. Inspired
by Teilhard de Chardin and his own visions, Zell conceived of a Gaia hypothesis
independently of British scientist James
Lovelock. Zell initially used the term
"Terrebia" and later changed it to
"Gaea," an alternate spelling of Gaia. See
Planetary consciousness.
Zell's emphasis on environmental activism created dissension in the church,
and some of the original founders split
off. The CAW formed alliances with
other neo-Pagan groups, aimed at achieving "eco-psychic potential," but these
were short-lived.
By 1974 nests were established in
more than a dozen states throughout the
United States. The same year Zell married
his second wife, Morning Glory (born Diana Moore). In 1976 continued dissension in the mother nest led the Zells to
leave CAW and St. Louis. After a period
of traveling and various residences, they
settled in Ukiah, California, in 1985.

Church of All Worlds

Zell's departure effectively shattered

the CAW, which declined significantly by
1978. The mother nest eventually disbanded. A few nests remained in other
cities, including Chicago and Atlanta. By
1988 CAW had all but ceased to exist
outside of Ukiah.
In 1988 the Zells announced a revamped church structure and plans to restore CAW as a national church. The
nine circles of advancement were redefined. The highest level is held by Otter
Zell, who has achieved the Eighth Circle; no one has ever achieved the Ninth
Circle.
The CAW views itself as a spiritual
and physical eclectic mother for the celebration of life and Nature. According to
Zell, its purpose is to weave evolutionary
theologies into daily life so that people
can both understand and assist worldwide changes, such as a greater ecological
conscIOusness.
CAW recognizes the Earth Mother
Goddess and the Horned God, who represent the plant and animal kingdoms, respectively. It is dedicated to celebrating
life and maximizing human potential. It
celebrates the eight seasonal festivals recognized throughout neo-Paganism and
Witchcraft.
CAW administers several subsidiaries: The Ecosophical Research Association (ERA) was founded in 1977 by
Morning Glory Zell to research arcane
lore and legends. For the ERA's first project, the Zells created unicorns from baby
goats by surgically manipulating the budding horn tissue to grow together as a
single central horn. In 1984 they leased
four unicorns to Ringling Brothers/
Barnum and Bailey Circus. Another ERA
project was to research mermaid legends
off the coast of New Guinea.
Nemeton, a neo-Pagan networking
organization
founded
by Gwydion
Penderrwen and Alison Harlow, merged
with the CAW in 1978. Nemeton includes Forever Forests, an organization

99

devoted to tree-planting and reforestation, and Annwfn, a fifty-five-acre tract

in Mendocino County, California, which
CAW operates as a wilderness retreat.
Lifeways is a teaching order founded
and directed by Anodea Judith, president
of CAW since 1986. It provides instruction on healing, bodywork, magic, psychic development, dance, ritual, music
and, religion.
The Holy Order of Mother Earth
(HOME) is a group of individuals dedicated to magical living and working with
the land. See Neo-Paganism; Witchcraft.
Sources: Margot Adler. Drawing Down the
Moon. Rev. ed. Boston: Beacon Press,
1986; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft. New

York: Facts On File, 1989; Anodea Judith.

"Church of All Worlds: Who Are We;
Where Are We Going; and How Will We
Get There?" Green Egg 21, no. 81 (Beltane
1988): 15; Otter G'Zell. "'It was 20 Years
Ago Today ... n, Green Egg 21, no. 81
(Beltane 1988): 2; Church of All Worlds,
Ukiah, CA.

Church of Christ, Scientist

(Christian Science)
The second-largest Christian denomination founded in the United States, Christian Science stresses the healing aspects of
Christian ministry. Central to this process
is the idea that the human being is a spiritual image of God, and as such does not
suffer sin, disease, or death. Through
prayer and the realization that evil is not
real, people can be healed through the
power of God.
Christian Science was founded by
Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy
(1821-1910). She was raised in a Calvinist home in Bow, New Hampshire, and
spent much of her early life as an invalid.
She married George Washington Glover
in 1843; he died in 1844. She delivered
George Washington Glover, Jr., after his

100

father's death. Her invalidism prevented

her from caring for the baby, and she allowed his doting nurse to adopt him. She
married Dr. Daniel Patterson, a dentist,
in 1853, but divorced him twenty years
later.
Eddy pursued various cures and
treatments. In 1862 she obtained relief
from magnetic mental healer Phineas
Parkhurst Quimby, and spent several
months studying his techniques. She left
Quimby after suffering a relapse, convinced that the only true healing comes
from God.
In 1866 she experienced a miraculous healing. Near death with severe internal injuries due to a fall on icy pavement, Eddy turned to the Bible and read
Matthew 9:1-8, in which Jesus tells a
paralytic man to "take up your bed and
go home." Eddy realized that disease was
an illusion that could be overcome, and
suddenly recovered.
She spent the next three years studying the Bible and discovering she could
heal others. Beginning in 1870 she attempted to impart her newfound wisdom
to anyone who would listen, which immediately brought her ridicule and persecution. Students gathered, however, and
Eddy began teaching the principles of
what she called Christian Science: that
there is no death of the spiritual human
being, that God is the healer, that there is
no such person as the Devil, that heaven
and hell are not places, and that there is
no life in matter. She officially dropped
Quimby's practice of head manipulation
from Christian Science practice in May
1872; she said that there was no healing
agent, either of mind or magnetic force,
but only the unity with God, which left
no room for disease. To Eddy Jesus was
not a deity; he was a man who had expressed the idea of Christian healing.
Resistance by traditional churches to
integrate her ideas into orthodox Christian worship forced Eddy to establish her
own religion, and the first services were

Church of All Worlds

held June 6, 1875. On October 30 of the

same year, she published Science and
Health with Key to the Scriptures to clarify the spiritual meanings of scripture as
they relate to healing and Christian Science. The book went through various
publishers and revisions, as Eddy was
never satisfied with the final result. At her
death the texts were frozen as authoritative, along with the later Manual of the
Mother Church.
In 1876 she formed the Christian
Science Association for students residing
in Massachusetts. On January 1, 1877,
she married her third husband, Asa
Gilbert Eddy, who became the first person to use "Christian Science practitioner" as his profession.
On August 23, 1879, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts granted a charter to incorporate the First Church of
Christ, Scientist, in Boston; and the Massachusetts Metaphysical College for the
instruction of Christian Science practitioners opened in 1881. Eddy became the
church's first pastor, although she later
renounced the ministry, saying Christian
Science was to follow the Bible and Science and Health, not a person. The first
issue of the Journal of Christian Science
appeared in 1883, and the National
Christian Scientists Association for nonMassachusetts residents organized in
1886.
No sooner had the structure been
crafted than Eddy began tearing it down
amid controversy and recrimination. In
1889 she dissolved the church, college,
and Christian Science Association; the
church did not reorganize until 1892.
Eddy endured intense criticism, with
some reporters branding her a witch and
occultist. Julius Dresser, who had introduced her to Quimby, began teaching
mental healing, called the New Thought
Movement, with his wife, Annetta, in
1883. He accused Eddy of stealing and
debasing Quimby's procedures, which
she vehemently denied. Followers of the

Mary Baker Eddy

New Thought Movement still mark Eddy
as a plagiarist, although Quimby's son,
George, gave her credit for Christian Science, saying he wouldn't want his father
connected with the religion.
Former students sued her for fraud,
while she countersued by claiming these
students had practiced "malicious animal
magnetism" against her and her organization. Asa Eddy had died in 1882, the
victim, Eddy believed, of "mental malpractice," or psychic attack. See Psychic
attack.
Eddy's reported obsession with mental malpractice fueled speculation about
Christian Science as occultism. Eddy apparently did not believe that even her
Science and Health with Key to the
Scriptures fully explained the spiritual
meanings she wished to impart. Such wisdom was gained through often-secret lessons taught by a trained instructor. Eddy
explicitly claimed that the end result of
Christian Science knowledge was the
power to heal, and she feared those people who would use the power to impart
evil instead. Such ideas of secrecy, supersensory knowledge, and healing power
form traditional definitions of occult
practice. Eddy's philosophy corresponded

Church of Christ, Scientist (Christian Science)

101

closely to that of eighteenth-century

Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg,
who postulated that a spiritual imbalance
causes a material imbalance, or disease,
which the mind can cure.
Despite controversy Christian Science continued to attract believers, and
Eddy reestablished the First Church of
Christ, Scientist, on September 23, 1892.
She served as the first pastor, but later
declared that Christian Science churches
would have no pastor, only the Bible and
Science and Health. Eddy remained controversial for the remainder of her life.
She founded the Christian Science Monitor newspaper in 1908. At the time of her
death on December 3, 1910, in Chestnut
Hill, Massachusetts, she had approximately 100,000 followers.
Following her death Adam H.
Dickey, her private secretary and a chairman of the board of directors of the
Mother Church, charged that she had
been killed by "mental murder," psychic
attack, and malicious thoughts directed
against her by her enemies. Aware of
these attacks, she had attempted to ward
them off by instructing her staff in protective mental exercises. She reportedly
claimed to be working in a level of consciousness that would mean instant death
to ~ny who crossed her. Dickey's claims
greatly embarrassed church officials.
Eddy's simple organization, with no
ordained clergy or hierarchy, remains in
place as Christian Science in modern
times. Services are led by the First
Reader, who reads from the King James
Version of the Bible, and by the Second
Reader, who reads the explanatory passages from Eddy's book.
As the Mother Church, the Boston
church grants charters
to branch
churches worldwide under the authority
of the board of directors. Each branch is
responsible for operating a reading room
to make Christian Science literature available to the public. The board of directors
has complete authority over theological

102

matters and church governance, based

upon The Manual of the Mother Church,
written by Eddy.
Christian Science, along with Pentecostalism and the charismatic renewal
movement, has brought new interest in
the idea of Christian healing, the most attractive concept of Mary Baker Eddy's
philosophy. Except for childbirth Christian Scientists do not use traditional medical services or medicines. Court decisions
have put Christian Science practitioners
on a par with conventional medical professionals, allowing patients to deduct
costs of consultations as they would medical expenses. Debate still arises over
whether Christian Science parents can
withhold medical care from children, but
the testimonials of complete cures further
the church's strength.
Christian Science involves much
more than faith healing. It emphasizes a
total spiritual discipline of Bible study
and prayer.
Some critics call Christian Science a
cult, citing use of an extra-biblical source
of authority, veneration of a human
teacher to the point of infallibility, devaluation of Jesus Christ as Lord, and a denial of the doctrine of salvation by grace
alone. Eddy, a devout Christian, would
have been the first to refute that label.
Her intention, as stated in the Manual,
was a return to "primitive Christianity
and its lost element of healing." See Healing, faith and psychic.
Sources: Norman Beasley. The Cross and
the Crown: The History of Christian Science. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce,
1952; Keith Crim, general ed. Abingdon
Dictionary of Living Religions. Nashville:

Abingdon Press, 1981; John Godwin, ed.

The Occult in America. New York: Doubleday, 1982; Anthony A. Hoekema. The
Four Major Cults. Grand Rapids: William
B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1963; J. Gordon Melton. Encyclopedic Handbook of
Cults in America. New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1986.

Church

of Christ, Scientist

(Christian

Science)

Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, the (Mormonism)

Largest and most successful Christian denomination founded in the United States.
Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints claims
a worldwide membership of over 4 million believers. In the United States it is
strongest in the Rocky Mountain states.
The church began with the divine
revelations of Joseph Smith, Jr. (18051844), the son of poor Vermont farmers
and laborers, Joseph Smith and Lucy
Mack Smith. Smith was a youth when his
family moved to Manchester, Oneida
County (now Ontario County), western
New York. During the nineteenth century, Oneida County was inflamed by
one religious movement after anotherfrom Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists; from great revival preachers like
Charles Grandison Finney; and from
groups like the Oneida Perfectionists,
Millerites, and Spiritualists. So many
ideas caught fire in the area that locals
called it the Burned-Over District.
By 1820 to 1821, another revival
was in progress among the Presbyterians,
Methodists, and Baptists, with fire-andbrimstone preachers of each sect exhorting sinners to confess and avoid the religious lies of the other two groups. Most
of the Smith family had become Presbyterian, but young Smith could not make
up his mind. He prayed for divine guidance to select the one church that was
right.
According to Smith's own account in
The Pearl of Great Price, a pillar of light
descended from the heavens, bringing
two Personages, ostensibly God the Father and one whom he called "my Beloved Son." These Personages told Smith
to choose no existing denomination, for
they were all wrong, and he would be
shown the true church.
Smith was reviled and persecuted for

Angel Moroni delivering the plates

of the Book of Mormon to Joseph
Smith, Jr.

his visions, but they did not stop. On the

night of September 21 to 22, 1823,
Smith's room was filled with a brilliant
white light revealing an angel, Moroni,
who appeared as a messenger from God.
Moroni told Smith that he had helped
write, then bury, a history written on
gold plates by his father Mormon of an
ancient people descended from Israel who
had lived and died in America. He told
Smith that Christ had appeared to these
people after the resurrection, establishing
the church, but knowledge of the gospel
had been lost in a great fratricidal war.
God had chosen Smith to retrieve these
plates, translate their stories with the accompanying seer stones, and resurrect the
church to prepare for the latter days (before the Second Coming).
Moroni appeared to Smith three
times that night and again the next day.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the (Mormonism)

103

Drawing of one of the gold plates,

which Smith said was written in
Egyptian, Chaldiac (Chaldaic), and
Assyric (Assyrian)

The angel revealed the plates' hiding

place-a hill outside Manchester called
Cumorah - but forbade Smith to dig up
the plates until four years from that date.
Smith did as he was told, and on September 22, 1827, retrieved the golden plates,
the seer stones (called the Urim and
Thummim), and the breastplate upon
which they were fastened.
Smith created a sensation when he
brought home the plates, which were covered with Egyptian-like hieroglyphics. To
avoid harassment Smith and his new
wife, Emma, went to Harmony, Pennsylvania, to translate the plates. He was assisted first by Martin Harris, a farmer,
who lost the first 116 pages, and then by
Oliver Cowdery, an itinerant schoolteacher. Smith would put the stones in his
hat and pull the hat around his face to
simulate darkness. Then a character
would appear, as if on parchment, accompanied by the English translation.

104

Smith would read the translation to Cowdery, who wrote it down, then another
character would appear in the hat. The
Book of Mormon was published in
March 1830. Moroni supposedly reclaimed the plates and stones, with many
of the plates still sealed.
By December 1830 Smith had translated the Book of Moses from divine revelation and he later added the Book of
Abraham, reportedly from an ancient papyrus Smith found with a mummy in
1835. These two books, along with
Smith's recollections of his revelations
and the Saints' Articles of Faith, appeared
in The Pearl of Great Price around 1842.
On May 15, 1829, Smith and Cowdery prayed in the woods for guidance
about the sacrament of baptism. Suddenly, a holy messenger, whom they later
determined was John the Baptist, appeared and conferred upon them the
Priesthood of Aaron: an ordination, lost
for centuries, which gave the men authority to preach the gospel of repentance and
baptize by immersion. Smith would be
First Elder and Cowdery Second Elder,
and each was commanded to baptize and
ordain the other. Not long after the apostles Peter, James, and John appeared,
conferring the higher Melchizedek Priesthood, allowing them to lay on hands and
perform healing miracles. These revelations established a well-defined apostolic
priesthood similar to that of the Catholic
church.
Smith organized the Church of Christ
on April 6, 1830. The name changed to
Church of the Latter-day Saints in 1834,
finally becoming the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1838. In
October 1830 Mormon missionaries
went to Kirtland, Ohio, to establish the
first Zion and site of the first temple.
One of the Saints' earliest thorny
theological problems was the salvation of
those already dead. If the true power to
ordain and perform sacraments had been
lost since the days of the apostles until

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the (Mormonism)

conferred upon Smith and Cowdery, earlier generations were damned through no
fault of their own. To guarantee the
dead's salvation, the Saints baptized them
in secret temple ceremonies, leaving the
dead free to choose salvation for themselves. Mormons keep extensive genealogical records to document the existence
of past relatives so that they may be baptized.
Opposition from Kirtland residents
forced the Mormons to move on in 1837
and 1838 to Independence, Missourithe "true Zion," according to Smith. A
temple was begun there also, but the Missouri group suffered terrible persecution.
During the winter of 1839 to 1840, the
Mormons moved again, this time to
Commerce, Illinois.
Within a very short time, Commerce,
renamed Nauvoo by Smith, was the biggest city in Illinois. (Although Smith alleged that nauvoo means "beautiful plantation" in Hebrew, no such word exists
in that language.) Smith had the support
and backing of the state's biggest financiers and politicians, and the Mormons
began their third temple. Smith solidified
his power as the Saints' prophet and
leader, receiving revelations that he gathered in the Doctrines and Covenants.
One of these was the Order of Enoch,
which called for all Saints to consecrate
their wealth for the common good and
redistribution. But the most important
doctrine was the Order of Abraham, revealed by Smith on July 12, 1843.
This new order would establish marriage as a "new and everlasting covenant." Smith conceived of heaven as three
states of glory: the celestial, for those
who kept Gospel laws and ordinances,
eventually returning to God the Father;
the terrestrial, for those who did not
accept Christ but were nonetheless good
and honorable; and the telestial, for the
rest of the sinners who still would be received by the Holy Ghost. Within these
states of glory were an infinite number of

new worlds to be governed by godly

Mormon men. Like Christ-designated
the one who had fulfilled all of God's
ordinances-any
man could eventually
attain godhood. But these heavenly prizes
would be awarded only to those who
were married-sealed for all eternity-on
earth by a properly ordained Mormon
priest. And in order to populate the spirit
world, Mormon men must populate the
earthly one-and that necessitated more
than one wife. Such was the birth of polygamy among the Saints.
Not everyone in the church or Nauvoo knew about Smith's polygamist revelations, but they did know that his ego
thirsted after power and women. In 1844
Smith declared his candidacy for President of the United States, meanwhile selecting a secret Council of Fifty within the
church as his erstwhile cabinet. News of
the moves leaked to an opposition newspaper, and Smith reacted by destroying
the press. Smith and his brother Hyrum
were arrested for treason and held in jail
in Carthage, where an angry mob assassinated them both on June 27, 1844.
Even after his death, several Mormon
women entered into "celestial marriage"
with Joseph Smith's spirit.

Mormonism after Smith

After much turmoil and efforts by
former Campbellite Sidney Rigdon to assume control of the church, the members selected Smith's confidante Brigham
Young. Forced to move yet again, Young
led the Saints to a "Zion in the Wilderness" in the Utah Territory, which he
called the State of Deseret. Quoted as
saying, "This is the place," when the
Mormons reached Salt Lake in 1848,
Young rebuilt the church into a thriving
and powerful organization, serving as its
leader for thirty years.
Young officially announced the
Mormon practice of polygamy to a
shocked world in 1852 (Young himself

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the (Mormonism)

105

had twenty-eight wives), immediately encountering government harassment and

persecution. By 1862 Congress passed the
first antipolygamy laws, giving them real
teeth in 1882 with the passage of the Edmunds Act disenfranchising all polygamists. In the face of such pressure, First
President Wilford Woodruff announced
the church's official discouragement of
polygamy in 1890. In 1904 a revelation told members that anyone practicing
plural marriage would be excommunicated.
Mormon men dominate the authoritarian church organization, patterned after the Old Testament. Any man who
lives according to God's laws can be ordained into the Aaronic priesthood, although the church is officially run by the
General Authorities, headed by the first
president. Smith said that God appointed
him to receive all revelations for the
church until God appoints a successor;
with the selection of Brigham Young, the
office of first president has been designated as the official receiver of church
revelations, although any Mormon may
receive divine messages. Revelations contradicting church authority are seen as diabolically inspired.
The temple ceremonies of eternal
marriage and baptism of the dead are extremely secret, and no Gentile (nonMormon) may enter the temple. The rituals are believed to resemble Masonic
rites, for Smith was a member of the
Nauvoo Masons and incorporated Masonic symbols-the square and compass,
the beehive, and the all-seeing eye-into
Mormon practice. See Freemasonry.
The original church has splintered
into many other groups. The largest is the
Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, organized in 1853.
Members, who do not call themselves
..\10rmons, assert that Joseph Smith never
taught polygamy (a position unsupported
by the facts). Joseph Smith III accepted the presidency of the Reorganized

106

Church in 1860, and later presidents have

all been Smith descendants.
Sources: Daniel Cohen. The Spirit of the
Lord: Revivalism in America. New York:

Four Winds Press, 1975; Keith Crim, genetal ed. Abingdon Dictionary of Living Religions. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1981;
John Godwin, ed. The Occult in America.
New York: Doubleday, 1982; Klaus J.
Hansen. Mormonism and the American
Experience. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1981; J. Gordon Melton.
Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America. New York: Garland Publishing, 1986;
Jan Shipps. Mormonism: The Story of a
New Religious Tradition. Urbana, IL: Uni-

versity of Illinois Press, 1985; Joseph

Smith, Jr., trans. The Book of Mormon.
Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints, 1986; Joseph Smith,
Jr. The Pearl of Great Price. Salt Lake City:
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, 1972.

Church of Scientology
Religious organization founded by L.
(Lafayette) Ron Hubbard in 1953, an expansion of his earlier concept of Dianetics. Scientology offers a number of
techniques and disciplines to help the individual overcome negative effects of the
present and previous lives, a process
called "auditing" in order to become
"clear." According to Scientology if all
people were "clear," the world would be
free from drugs, war, pollution, crime,
mental illness, and other ills. Scientology
has been the focus of numerous controversies and disputes with various governments, and vigorously defends itself
against critics.
Hubbard (1911-1986) was born in
Tilden, Nebraska. He studied civil engineering at George Washington University
in 1931 and 1932, and shortly thereafter
began a successful career as a writer. He
received the most notice for his works of
science fiction.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day

Saints, the (Mormonism)

During World War II, Hubbard

served in the Navy and was wounded in
the South Pacific. After the war he formulated what he called Dianetics, from
the Greek for "thought," a new approach
to mental health with psychoanalytic elements. He founded the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation in Elizabeth,
New Jersey. His first writings on Dianetics, published in 1948, attracted some
support, perhaps most important of
which came from John Campbell, writer
and editor of Astounding Science Fiction
magazine. Hubbard's book Dianetics:
The Modern Science of Mental Health,
published in 1950, attracted a wide audience, and helped spur the formation of
Dianetics branches around the United
States.
Central to Dianetics is the theory of
"engrams," which are traumatic shocks
or psychic scars suffered in the womb or
early childhood; they are said to be the
cause of all psychosomatic and mental illnesses, for they create programmed responses in a "reactive" mind. They have
been compared to psychiatrist Sigmund
Freud's theory of repressed desires and
psychiatrist Carl G. Jung's theory of complexes. Engrams are eliminated by auditing, a sort of psychoanalytic process in
which the individual, with the help of an
auditor, recalls minute details of his or
her life. The auditor helps the individual
erase the engram. Progress is assessed in
stages, from "release" to "preclear" to
"clear." Those who attain the latter are
said to experience such benefits as improved IQ and eyesight, more energy,
greater immunity to illness, and faster recovery from injuries.
After an initial fast start, Dianetics
soon began to lose momentum. Hubbard,
however, was already evolving it into Scientology, which has a much greater and
cosmic scope, and which proved to be
more enduring and popular. Scientology,
a therapeutic system with a spiritual dimension that acknowledges reincarnation

Church of Scientology

and extraterrestrial life, seeks to raise humankind to a higher level of consciousness. Engrams from past lives must
also be erased in order to achieve an
even higher level of clear, "Operating
Thetan." Thetans are the eternal essences
of immortal celestial beings who existed
long ago, who through the course of experimenting with life in the flesh became
trapped as human beings. To become an
Operating Thetan, one must clear the engrams of the present life and the past lives
of the Thetan, and recover awareness of
the celestial origin. Hubbard augmented
the auditing process with a device called
the "electropsychometer," or "E-meter,"
a kind of polygraph that would tell an
auditor when an individual might not be
honest.
In 1952 Hubbard founded the Hubbard Association of Scientologists, which
was renamed the Hubbard Association of
Scientologists International. In 1953 he
incorporated the Church of Scientology;
and in 1955 he established the Founding
Church of Scientology as an unincorporated, independent church. Scientology
has since spread throughout the world.
In 1958 the Internal Revenue Service
revoked the church's tax-exempt status.
Over thirty years later, the church remains in litigation to reinstate it. In 1963
the Food and Drug Administration seized
some E-meters, claiming they had been
used in the diagnosis of disease. In 1969
Hubbard won a victory from the US
Court of Appeals that auditing was a central practice to the church, akin to confession in the Catholic church. The
E-meters were returned.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Scientology faced more criticisms and government problems in the United States, Great
Britain, and Australia. It was denounced
by some as a cult, and began to undertake vigorous legal defenses. In the late
1970s, the FBI began an investigation
concerning allegations that Scientologists
were stealing government documents that

107

portrayed Scientology in an unflattering

light-a project called Operation Snow
White.
On July 8, 1977, FBI agents raided
Church of Scientology offices in Washington, DC, and Los Angeles and seized
48,149 documents. On August 15, 1978
nine Scientologists, including Hubbard's
wife, Mary Sue, were indicted on twentyeight counts of conspiring to steal government documents, theft of government
documents, burglarizing government offices, intercepting government communications, harboring a fugitive, making
false declarations before a grand jury,
and conspiring to obstruct justice. All
nine pleaded not guilty and went to trial.
On October 26, 1979, the nine were
found guilty on one count each of the indictment, and sentenced to fines and
prison terms of one to five years. The defendants said they would appeal on the
grounds that the evidence used against
them had been obtained illegally. About
one month later, the appellate court released to the media the Scientology documents that had been seized by the FBI.
Early in 1980 Hubbard dropped out
of public view, but continued to issue
communications to his organization. He
died on January 24, 1986. The official
cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage, though no autopsy was performed
for religious reasons. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean.
After the trial, Scientology began
softening its image with an emphasis on
its message and Hubbard's prolific writings. While the primary focus of Scientology is on helping individuals become
"clear," worship services are held at all
churches and missions, and a number of
religious holidays are observed. The International headquarters are in Los Angeles.
Sources: David G. Bromley and Anson D.
Schupe, Jr. Strange Gods: The Great American Cult Scare. Boston: Beacon Press,

108

1981; John Godwin. Occult America. New

York: Doubleday, 1972; L. Ron Hubbard.
Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental
Health. 1950. Los Angeles: Bridge Publications, 1984; J. Gordon Melton. Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America. New

York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1986; Russell Miller. Bare-Faced Messiah: The True
Story of L. Ron Hubbard. New York:
Henry Holt, and Co., 1987.

Church Universal and

Triumphant, the
(Summit Lighthouse)
See Alternative religious movements.

Circle
Symbol of oneness, completion, perfection, the cosmos, eternity, and the sun. In
psychology the circle symbolizes the Self,
the totality of the psyche. A feminine
symbol, the circle appears in sacred art
and architecture and plays an important
role in various religious and magical rites.
Many sacred dances are performed in circles. In Islam listeners gather in mosques
around teachers in circles called halqahs.
In ritual a circle demarcates a holy
space that protects one from negative
forces on the outside and facilitates communion with spirits and deities. Within
the circle one may ritually achieve transcendent levels of consciousness. Among
Native North Americans, circles are
known to have great medicine power. See
Medicine wheels.
In folk medicine lore, circles drawn
around the beds of the sick and of new
mothers protect them against demons.
Seances customarily are conducted
around a circular table; participants often
hold hands. See Seance.
In ceremonial magic magicians draw
a magic circle around themselves to protect them from the demons and spirits
they conjure. See Magic. To step outside

Church of Scientology

the circle during a ritual, or even to cross

the boundary with an arm or leg, is to
invite magical disaster. See Crowley,
Aleister.
In neo-Pagan Witchcraft, or Wicca,
all worship and magical rites are conducted within a circle, which provides a
sacred and purified space and acts as a
gateway to the gods. The Witches' circle
symbolizes wholeness, the creation of the
cosmos, the womb of Mother Earth, and
the Wheel of Rebirth, which is the continuing cycle of the seasons in birthdeath-rebirth. See Witchcraft.
Sacred circles are constructed or
drawn according to ritual, and are purified and consecrated. If the circles are
temporary, they are ritually disassembled.
If they are permanent, their sacred power
is periodically ritually renewed. See Lotus; Mandala; Megaliths; Stonehenge.
Sources: J. E. Cirlot. A Dictionary of Symbols. New York: Philosophical Library,
1971; Cyril Glasse. The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam. San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1989; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The
Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft.

New York: Facts On File, 1989; Carl G.

Jung, ed. Man and His Symbols. 1964.
New York: Anchor PresslDoubleday,
1988; Barbara G. Walker. The Woman's
Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects.

San Francisco: Harper

& Row, 1988.

Clairaudience
The hearing of sounds, music, and voices
not audible to normal hearing. The term
comes from French for "clear hearing."
Clairaudience often is intermingled with
other basic psychic perceptions of clairvoyance, "clear seeing," and clairsentience, or "clear sensing." In yoga it is a
siddhi, and is experienced when the fifth
chakra, located at the throat, is activated.
See Siddhis.
Clair audience often is experienced in
the dream state and related stages of con-

Clairaudience

sciousness. A clairvoyant dream may feature a message whispered by an unknown

voice. It is common to hear clairaudient
voices and sounds in the hypnagogic and
hypnapompic states, which border sleep.
It also occurs in past-life recalls of all
types, including spontaneous, meditational, waking, and hypnotic regression.
The sounds and voices seem like voiceovers to the imaged memories.
Clair audience is a phenomenon of
mystical and trance experiences. Oracles,
shamans, priests, prophets, mystics, adepts, saints, and other holy persons
throughout history have been guided by
clairaudient voices. The voices have been
perceived as those of angels, God, spirits
of the dead, spirit guides, and the formless Divine Force, the All That Is, sometimes called "The Voice of the Eternal Silence."
Clairaudience often manifests as an
inner sound, or an inner voice that is
clearly distinguishable from one's own inner voice. A person may recognize it as
the voice of a dead relative. The voice
may be unknown, but interpreted as coming from a certain spiritual source. Many
people who have a sense of their spirit
guides identify the inner voices belonging
to them. In a more highly developed sense
of clairaudience, a person experiences
sound as external. Those who travel to
the astral plane claim to hear many
sounds, not all of them pleasant, due to
some of the unfriendly elemental spirits
that populate the plane.
The ancient Greeks believed that daimons, intermediate spirits between human beings and the gods, whispered advice in the ears of men. Good daimons
acted like guardian spirits, while evil daimons led people astray. Socrates claimed
to be guided by a daimon throughout his
life, speaking up at times of crisis. When
Socrates was sentenced to death in Athens, he chose to stay and accept the sentence because his daimon did not advise
him to flee the city.

109

The Bible tells of numerous

clairau-

dient experiences
in which God sends
messages to prophets and kings. For example, King Solomon is described hearing the voice of the Lord telling him he
has been given a wise and discerning
mind, and none like him shall ever come
after him. The boy Samuel hears his name
called and thinks it is the priest Eli; later
he realizes it is the Lord.
Clairaudience has occurred regularly
to great men and women in history, and
to highly creative individuals. See Inspiration. At age thirteen Joan of Arc began
to see visions and hear the voices of the
angels Michael, Margaret, and Catherine,
her spirit guides. In the eighteenth century, English poet William Cowper heard
voices giving him advance notice of all
important
events in his life. In the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the mesmerists observed that magnetized subjects experienced
clairaudience, particularly the voices of the dead,
along with other psychic phenomena.
Messages from the dead, received by a
medium clairaudiently,
became an integral part of many Spiritualist seances.
Clairaudience
frequently
occurs in
psychic readings. A psychic may hear
voices, music, or sounds relating to a person's past or present. It manifests in times
of crisis, as when one sees and hears a
loved one in trouble. Shamans use clairaudience in a trance state to communicate
with spirit helpers and guardian spirits.
Not all clairaudient experiences are
meaningful and to be taken seriously. The
inner voice may be cultivated through diligent
meditation
and
awareness
of
dreams.
Clairaudient
voices differ from the
disembodied
voices sometimes heard at
seances and in poltergeist cases, which
are considered
collective
apparitional
phenomena.
See
Hypnagogic/hypnapompic states; Possession.
SOl/rces: Slater Brown. The Heyday of Spiritualism. New York: Hawthorn
Books,

110

1970; W. E. Butler. How to Develop Clairvoyance. 2d ed. New York: Samuel Weiser,
1979; Arthur Ford in collaboration with
Marguerite
Harmon
Bro. Nothing
So
Strange: The Autobiography
of Arthur
Ford, New York: Harper & Brothers,
1958; Michael Harner. The Way of the
Shaman. New York: Bantam, 1986; Craig
Junjulas. Psychic Tarot. Dobbs Ferry, NY:
Morgan & Morgan, 1985; C. W. Leadbeater. The Chakras. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1927; Ormond
McGill. The Mysticism and Magic of India.
Cranbury, NJ: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1977;
Ian Stevenson. "Are Poltergeists Living or
Are They Dead?" The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 66, no.
3 (July 1972): 233-52; Joan Windsor. The
Inner Eye: Your Dreams Can Make You
Psychic. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1985.

Clairsentience
A superphysical
sense perception that is
one of the primary tools of a psychic.
"Clairsentience"
is derived from French
for "clear sensing," and was brought into
popular usage during the late eighteenth
century by the followers of Franz Anton
Mesmer, who developed the practice of
animal magnetism.
See Mesmer, Franz
Anton.
Clairsentience
involves the psychic
perception
of smell, taste, touch, emotions, and physical sensations that contribute to an overall psychic and intuitive
impression. Depending on the psychic's
individual
techniques,
the perceptions
may register internally or externally.
Clairsentience is used in conjunction
with clairvoyance, or "clear vision," and
clairaudience,
or "clear hearing." Many
people experience clair sentience without
being aware of it. They may discuss the
fleeting impressions and flashes as imagination. Like other psychic perceptions,
clairsentience is tied closely to the intuition and gut feelings.
One of the earliest and most important laboratory
experiments
involving

Clairaudience

clairsentience took place between 1920

and 1922 at the University of Groningen,
the Netherlands. A psychically gifted student named van Dam was tested in psi
guessing games. The experimenters also
attempted to telepathically transmit colors, tastes, feelings, and moods. Van Dam
participated in a total of 589 trials and
scored impressive results.
Some parapsychologists and psychical researchers consider "clairsentience"
an archaic term, but it continues to be
used by practicing psychics. See Empathy.
Sources: W. E. Butler. How to Develop
Clairvoyance. 2d ed. New York: Samuel
Weiser, 1979; Craig Junjulas. Psychic
Tarot. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Morgan & Morgan, 1985; Edgar D. Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science. Edited

by John White. New York: Paragon Books,

1974; Sybo A. Schouten and Edward F.
Kelly. "On the Experiments of Brugmans,
Heymans, and Weinberg." European Journal of Parapsychology 2, no. 3 (November
1978): 247-90; Joan Windsor. The Inner
Eye: Your Dreams Can Make You Psychic.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985.

Clairvoyance
The perception of current objects, events,
or people that may not be discerned
through the normal senses. Clairvoyance,
from the French for "clear seeing," is a
common psychic experience. The seeing
may manifest in internal or external visions, or a sensing of images. Clairvoyance overlaps with other psychic faculties
and phenomena, such as clairaudience,
clairsentience, telepathy, precognition,
retrocognition, psychometry, and remote
vIewmg.
Clairvoyance appears to be a general
ability among humans, and it also appears to exist in animals. Research in this
area, which is largely limited to anecdotal
case studies, has been highly controversial. See Animal psi.
Clairvoyance has been acknowledged, used, and cultivated since ancient

Clairvoyance

times. Prophets, fortune-tellers, shamans,

wizards, witches, cunning men and
women, and seers of all kinds through all
ages have employed clairvoyance. Many
have been born with clairvoyance as a
natural gift; others have consciously developed it through training. Egyptian and
Greek priests used herbal mixtures to induce temporary clairvoyance, especially
in training and initiating novices. The
Pythia oracle at Delphi in ancient Greece
also induced clairvoyance for prophetic
visions, using smoke inhaled from burning laurel leaves. Other ancients discovered clairvoyance-inducing
properties
from certain natural springs and wells.
Shamans induce clairvoyance through ecstatic dancing, chanting, and drumming,
and sometimes with the help of hallucinogens. The ecstatic ritual dance to
achieve clear vision has been used by
many cultures throughout history, including the ancient Egyptians, Hindus, and
Sufis. In yoga clairvoyance results from
the opening of the sixth chakra, located
between the brows, which is called the
"third eye." Clairvoyance is one of many
psychic by-products, called siddhis, of yogic spiritual development.
Clairvoyance is experienced in different ways and degrees. In its simplest
form, clairvoyance is the internal seeing
of symbolic images, which must be interpreted according to a person's own system of meanings. In its highest form,
clairvoyance is the viewing of nonphysical planes, the astral, etheric, and spiritual worlds and the beings that inhabit
them, and the auric fields surrounding all
things in nature. Most clairvoyant experiences fall between the two.
Lawrence LeShan, American psychologist, defines reality as being divided
into two kinds, "sensory reality" and
"clairvoyant reality." Sensory reality is
normal, everyday life, flowing in realtime, perceived with the five senses. Clairvoyant reality is lifted out of this track to
a place where time is illusory, judgments

111

impossible, and all things are perceived as

interconnected.
Various terms have been put forth to
describe different states of clairvoyance:
X-ray clairvoyance: The ability to
see through opaque objects such as
envelopes, containers, and walls to
perceive what lies within or beyond.
Medical clairvoyance: The ability to
see disease and illness in the human
body, either by reading the aura or
seeing the body as transparent.
Edgar Cayce, one of the most famous of all medical clairvoyants,
viewed the Akashic Records on the
astral plane to obtain information,
including remedies and cures.
Traveling clairvoyance: The ability
to see current events, people, and
objects that are far away. See Remote viewing.
Spatial clairvoyance: Vision that
transcends space and time. Another
term for this is traveling clairvoyance, but it also relates to precognitive clairvoyance, or visions of the
future, and retrocognitive clairvoyance, or visions of the past. This
type of clairvoyance is employed by
shamans, diviners, and psychics who
work in applied psi fields such as
psychic archaeology and psychic
crime detection.
Dream clairvoyance: The dreaming
of an event that is happening simultaneously. Dream clairvoyance may
be combined with precognition,
which is especially helpful and instructive in all matters in personal
life, as an early warning system.
Astral clairvoyance: Perception of
the astral and etheric planes, and the
elementals, demons, devas, and other
beings that inhabit them. It is also
the perception of the aura and auric
colors, thought-forms, and other
partial manifestations of thought.

112

This is another level of vision used

by shamans, yogis, and adepts.
Spiritual clairvoyance: Vision of the
higher planes and angelic beings; a
mystical state of being and knowing.

Clairvoyance and Western

Science
Although adepts and nature-oriented
societies have taken clairvoyance for
granted for thousands of years, Western
science has not. The first scientific efforts
to study clairvoyance came during the
days of mesmerism in the early nineteenth
century, when magnetized subjects displayed clairvoyance and other psychic
phenomena. In the 1830s Alphonse Cahagnet, a French magnetist and follower
of eighteenth-century Swedish mystic
Emanuel Swedenborg, a great clairvoyant
who could peer into the spiritual realm,
systematically studied a young woman
named Adele Magnot. In magnetic trance
Magnot experienced clairvoyant visions
of the spirit world, seeing and conversing
with the dead. She was able to describe
their features, characteristics, and the
clothing they wore at the end of their
lives. She heard them clairaudiently, and
relayed their messages to the living. At
first Magnot saw her own relatives, then
was able to see the dead relatives of
strangers who provided only names. The
accuracy of her readings was verified by
many and recorded by Cahagnet.
In the 1870s another Frenchman,
Professor Charles Richet, began testing
for clairvoyance by asking subjects to
guess cards concealed in envelopes. In
1889 some of his outstanding work was
done with a medium known as Leonie B.,
whom he hypnotized. Richet's work was
taken a great deal further in the 1930s by
American parapsychologist J. B. Rhine,
who used a special deck of symbol cards
to conduct thousands of tests for both
clairvoyance and telepathy. See ESP
cards.

Clairvoyance

In the decades since, impressive evidence has been accumulated to support

the existence of clairvoyance. In parapsychology it is considered one of three
classes of psychic perception, along with
telepathy and precognition; there is ml:lCh
overlap among the three. While many scientists acknowledge that the capacity for
clairvoyance seems to exist through the
general human population and in animals, others disagree, contending clairvoyance does not exist or is merely a
form of telepathy.

W. Leadbeater. The Chakras. Wheaton, IL:

Theosophical Publishing House, 1927;
Robert R. Leichtman, M.D., and Carl
Japikse. Active Meditation: The Western
Tradition. Columbus, OH: Ariel Press,
1982; Lawrence LeShan. The Medium, the

Development and Direction of

Clairvoyance

The Inner Eye: Your Dreams Can Make

You
Psychic.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

Psychics and occultists say virtually

anyone can develop the clairvoyant faculty with the proper training, such as
through scrying exercises of gazing into
mirrors, specula, crystal balls, flame, and
shiny objects; yoga exercises to stimulate
the third-eye chakra; and auric sight exercises of gazing at magnets in the dark.
This assertion has not been borne out in
the laboratory, however. Most likely, the
clairvoyant faculty may be enhanced
through development of one's spiritual
consciousness, which facilitates use of the
sixth sense. See Clairaudience; Clairsentience.
Sources: Slater Brown. The Heyday of Spiritualism. New Yotk: Hawthorn Books,
1970; W. E. Butler. How to Develop Clairvoyance. 2d ed. New York: Samuel Weiser,
1979; Alfred Douglas. Extrasensory Powers: A Century of Psychical Research. Lon-

don: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1976; Arthur

Ford in collaboration with Marguerite Harmon Bro. Nothing So Strange: The Autobiography of Arthur Ford. New York:
Harper & Brothers, 1958; Manly P. Hall.
1928. Reprint. The Secret Teachings of All
Ages. Los Angeles: The Philosophic Research Society, 1977; Michael Harner. The
Way of the Shaman. New York: Bantam,
1986; Craig Junjulas. Psychic Tarot. Dobbs
Ferry, NY: Morgan & Morgan, 1985; C.

Cloud dissolving

(also cloud busting)

Mystic, and the Physicist: Toward a General Theory of the Paranormal. New York:
Viking Press, 1974; Ormond McGill. The
Mysticism and Magic of India. Cranbury,

NJ: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1977; Edgar D.

Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge
for Science. Edited by John White. New
York: Paragon Books, 1974; Russell Targ
and Keith Harary. The Mind Race. New
York: Villard Books, 1984; Joan Windsor.
Prentice-Hall, 1985.

Cloud dissolving (also

cloud busting)
An alleged feat of psychokinesis (PK) in
which clouds are made to disappear by
concentration of thought and will. Tests
and observations of cloud dissolving have
never been conclusive. It is most likely
that the clouds dissipate of their own accord.
Skeptics point out that fair-weather
cumulus clouds, once formed, usually disappear on their own within fifteen to
twenty minutes, and are replaced by
similar-looking clouds off to one side.
Hence an untrained observer could "dissolve" a cloud and then assume, because
the rest of the sky appeared the same,
that the cloud was actually gone.
This explanation, however, does not
explain the ancient phenomenon of
weather control-bringing
the sun or
making it rain-as performed by shamans in various cultures around the
world. The shaman enters an ecstatic
trance, through dancing, chanting, drumming, rattling, and sometimes ingestion
of hallucinogenic drugs, and takes a magical flight to the sky or spirit world to
communicate with spirits and deities and

113

bring about the desired changes in

weather. Similarly, various Indian tribes
have rain dance ceremonies. In such cultures human beings are viewed as but one
part of the complex, living whole of Nature, connected to all other living things
and to Nature itself (see Planetary consciousness). It is possible that a subtle
psychokinetic process may take place,
enabling human beings to influence the
elements. How effective this process is
remains unknown. See Psychokinesis;
Shamanism.
Sources: Mircea Eliade. Shamanism.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964;

Into the Unknown.
Pleasantville, NY:
Reader's Digest, 1981; Denys Parsons.
"Cloud Busting: A Claim Investigated."

The Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 38, no. 690 (December 1956): 35264; Ruth Montgomery. Strangers Among
Us. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1979; Susy
Smith. Today's Witches. Englewood Cliffs,

NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970.

Collective unconscIOUS
Concept of psychiatrist Carl G. Jung that
refers to the memories of mental patterns
that are experienced and shared by a
large number, if not all, humans. Likewise, most members of a single culture
may have a more specific collective unconscious, while sharing also in the more
universal patterns. "Collective unconscious" is synonymous with "universal
consciousness. "
In developing the concept of the collective unconscious, Jung broke away
from psychiatrist Sigmund Freud's view
that the unconscious was exclusively personal and formed of repressed childhood
traumas. Jung affirmed a personal unconscious, and said that underneath it lies a
much deeper layer, the collective unconscious, which is separate. The collective
unconscious does not derive from per-

114

sonal experience, nor is it acquired, he

said. Rather, it is inborn. He chose the
descriptive term "collective" because this
part of the unconscious is universal.
While the contents of the personal
unconscious consist of repressed and forgotten material, the contents of the collective unconscious consist essentially of
archetypes, or primordial images or patterns of instinctual behavior. These contents have never been in consciousness,
but they can appear in consciousness in
the form of images and instincts. For the
archetypes to manifest, involvement is required from the personal consciousness in
the form of complexes, images, and ideas
that form a core derived from one or
more archetypes and having an emotional
tone.
Jung said his hypothesis of the collective unconscious was no more daring
than to assume the existence of instincts.
Nor was the hypothesis philosophical or
speculative; it was empirical, demonstrable by the identification of archetypes.
See Archetypes.
The collective unconscious is supported by extensive research, such as by
Joseph Campbell in his studies of the
world's mythologies. Scholars have found
Jung's understandings of symbols of the
collective unconscious compatible with
symbols in the writings of the great Spanish mystics, John of the Cross and Teresa
of Avila. See Jung, Carl Gustav; Symbols.
Sources: Frieda Fordham. An Introduction
to Jung's Psychology. 3d ed. Harmonds-

worth, England: Penguin Books, 1966;

Calvin S. Hall and Vernon A. Nordby. A
Primer on Jungian Psychology. New York:
New American Library, 1973; C. G. Jung.
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. 2d ed. Bollingen Series 20. Prince-

ton: Princeton University Press, 1968; Andrew Samuels, and Bani Shorter and Fred
Plaut. A Critical Dictionary of Jungian
Analysis. London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1986.

Cloud dissolving

(also cloud busting)

College of Psychic Studies

See Spiritualism.

Colors
Seven primary wavelengths, or vibrations, of light visible to the human eyered, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo,
and violet-which have had occult, religious, philosophical, and healing significance since ancient times. Colors are believed to have specific effects upon body,
mind, and spirit.
Color lore is ancient and is part of
the mystical, magical, and healing systems developed by the ancient Indians,
Chinese, Tibetans, Egyptians, Greeks,
Persians, Babylonians, and others. Modern scientific evidence supports some of
the ancient claims made about colors.
Red, the longest wavelength of visible colors, is associated with physical and
material forces, while violet, the shortest
wavelength, is associated with spirituality
and enlightenment. Black, the absence of
color, is virtually universally associated
with evil; while white, the combination of
all colors, is associated with the Godhead
and purity. In terms of the three aspects
of hUI11anbeings, the body is associated
with red, the mind with yellow, and the
spirit with blue. Some Hindu gods, usually attributes of Vishnu, are portrayed
with blue skin to denote their divine nature.
The Pythagoreans said that white
light-the Godhead-contains
all sound
and color, and that the seven colors of
the spectrum correspond to the seven
known planets and the eight notes of the
scale. Both the first and eighth notes of
the scale correspond to red, the eighth
note having a higher vibration of red.
The Old Testament tells that the
seven colors of the spectrum were given
by God as a rainbow, a token of a covenant between God and humankind. The

Colors

symbolisms and uses of color in religious

art were strictly regulated in the early
church, a practice that began to decline in
the Middle Ages. According to early standards, the colors of robes and ornaments
indicated whether or not a saint had been
martyred, and for what acts or work.
Healing with colors has been in use
for thousands of years in China and in
Indian Ayurvedic medicine. The ancient
Egyptians and Greeks also made use of
colors.
In the modern West, color healing
received little attention until the late nineteenth century. Edwin Babbitt's The Principles of Light and Color (1878) reaffirmed the Pythagorean correspondences
of music and color, and the power of
light to "vitalize." In 1933 Dinshah
Ghadiali published his three-volume
Spectra Chrometry Encyclopedia (1933),
proposing that colors denote chemical
potencies in higher vibrations. Ghadiali
said that white light contains all colors in
a harmonious balance, and imbalances in
the body are created by deficiencies or excesses of particular colors. He said balance could be restored by subjecting the
patient's whole body, or a part of it, to
colored lamp light.
Modern color therapy, also called
"light therapy," "chromatherapy," and
"colorology," is controversial and is considered an alternative or supplemental
treatment. Patients are exposed to colored lights, prescribed certain colored
foods to eat, or given water steeped in
sunlight in colored containers. Color
breathing is an exercise of visualizing the
inhalation and exhalation of colored
breath during meditation.

The Effects

of Color

Scientific research in the 1970s and

1980s showed that colored light does
have an effect upon the body. The perception of color by the eye triggers bio-

115

chemical reactions; there is no difference

if the person is color-blind.
Blue, by far the favorite color named
in surveys, has been demonstrated to be
one of the most beneficial colors, helping
to lower blood pressure, perspiration,
respiration, and brain-wave activity.
Green also is soothing. Warm colors,
such as yellow (the least favorite color
named in surveys), red, and orange, raise
blood pressure and metabolic rates; orange stimulates the appetite. Pink is beneficial in small doses; it relaxes and neutralizes aggressive behavior. Some jails
have "pink rooms" for violent inmates,
which replace the need for handcuffs and
tranquilizers. However, prolonged exposure to pink produces the opposite effect:
irritability, aggression, and emotional distress.
Some psychologists and color consultants employ colors to produce various
effects in hospitals and workplaces. Seriously ill patients, for example, are placed
in rooms with subdued colors, and shortterm patients are placed in rooms with
bright, warm colors. Color visualization
therapies are used in psychotherapy, in
which patients visualize themselves showered by or filled with particular colors. In
the workplace pastel shades of blue and
green seem to enhance employees' productivity and sense of well-being. Color
experts recommend that no room should
be a single color, but reflect a variety of
light wavelengths.
Sources: Jane E. Brody. "From Fertility to
Mood, Sunlight Found to Affect Human Biology." The New York Times (June 23,
1981): C1+; Jane E. Brody. "Surprising
Health Impact Discovered for Light." The
New York Times (November 13, 1984):
Cl-3; Linda Clark and Yvonne Martine.
Health, Youth, and Beauty through Color
Breathing. New York: Berkely, 1976; Richard Gerber. Vibrational Medicine. Santa
Fe: Bear & Co., 1988; Manly P. Hall. The
Secret Teachings of All Ages. 1928. Los

Angeles: The Philosophic Research Society,

116

1977; Roland Hunt. The Seven Keys to

Color Healing. San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1971; Individual Reference File of
Extracts from the Edgar Cayce Readings.
Virginia Beach, VA: Edgar Cayce Foundation, 1976; C. W. Leadbeater. The Science
of the Sacraments. 1920. Madras, India:
The Theosophical Publishing House, 1980;
S. G. J. Ouseley. The Science of the Aura.
1949. Romford, Essex: L. N. Fowler & Co.
Ltd., 1982; John N. Otto Health and Light.
New York: Pocket Books, 1983; S. Andrew
Stanway. Alternative Medicines: A Guide
to Natural Therapies. Rev. ed. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1986.

Committee for the Scientific

Investigation of Claims of the
Paranormal (CSICOP)
Organization devoted to debunking all
claims of the paranormal. CSICOP is the
champion of skeptics and the scourge of
believers. Some observers feel the organization goes to excessive lengths to discredit the paranormal. CSICOP has been
described by critics as not a scientific
group, but an advocacy group with a
strong and hidden religious agenda.
CSICOP, based in Buffalo, New
York, began as an offshoot of the American Humanist Association. The impetus
was a manifesto against astrology, published in the September-October 1975 issue of the Humanist and signed by 182
scientists, including eighteen Nobel prize
winners. The manifesto, "Objections to
Astrology," was the idea of the editor of
the Humanist at the time, Paul Kurtz,
professor of philosophy at the State University of New York in Buffalo.
The manifesto protested what they
alleged was growing newspaper exploitation of the public's interest in astrology,
and asserted that the public did not realize the distinction between astrology and
astronomy. The manifesto was published
in conjunction with an article attacking
Michel Gauquelin, a French researcher
who set out to discredit astrology, but

Colors

whose statIstics instead supported some

astrological phenomena, most notably
the Mars Effect. According to the Mars
Effect, physicians and sports champions
tend to be born within two hours of the
rise and culmination of Mars, Jupiter,
and Saturn. See Astrology. Gauquelin
threatened legal action over the article,
and the entire issue received national
publiciry. Kurtz and several others
founded CSICOP, first informally, and
then formally in the spring of 1976, when
it incorporated separately from the American Humanist Association.
Dennis Rawlins, a cofounder who
was skeptical of the occult, later began to
question the integriry of the debunkers.
Writing in Fate magazine, Rawlins said
he observed "underhanded" efforts to try
to discredit Gauquelin. CSICOP members
could not disprove Gauquelin with his
own data; instead, they reconfirmed his
findings. They then attempted to arrange
new data that would disprove his Mars
Effect hypothesis, Rawlins said. Rawlins
subsequently left CSICOP.
CSICOP's stated objectives are "to
establish a network of people interested
in examining claims of the paranormal;
to prepare bibliographies of published
materials that carefully examine such
claims; to encourage and commission research by objective and impartial inquirers in areas where it is needed; to convene
conferences and meetings; to publish articles, monographs, and books that examine claims of the paranormal; to not
reject on a priori grounds, antecedent to
inquiry, any or all of such claims, but
rather to examine them openly, completely, objectively, and carefully."
CSICOP's journal, originally named
The Zetetic and renamed The Skeptical
Inquirer after three issues, pursues scientific concerns about the perceived public
creduliry about the paranormal. The first
two issues of The Zetetic (the name derives from an ancient Greek school of
skeptical inquiry) were edited by Dr.

Marcello Truzzi, sociologist at Eastern

Michigan Universiry, Ypsilanti. Truzzi
left after two issues and founded his own
organization, which continues to publish
The Zetetic Scholar, an independent
skeptical inquiry journal.
CSICOP has successfully debunked
numerous paranormal claims. The organization views itself as unbiased, but
tends to take a hostile attitude toward
anything paranormal, which supposedly
is a danger to sociery. This stridency
alienates many moderate skeptics.
One of the celebrated members of
CSICOP is James Randi, known as the
Amazing Randi, a stage magician who
debunks the paranormal.
Randi attempted to discredit Uri Geller, renowned
for his psychokinetic metal bending, by
duplicating Geller's feats through sleight
of hand. See Uri Geller. He has exposed
as frauds a number of evangelical faith
healers, psychic dentists, and healers who
used a variery of stage magic tricks to appear to be gifted with clairvoyance and
divine healing.
In the summer of 1988, Nature, a
prestigious British journal that had surprised scientists by publishing an article
in support of homeopathy, sent Randi to
investigate the French lab where the research for the article had been done. Randi's team failed to duplicate the research
results, touching off a controversy. Jacques Benveniste, a French government
scientist whose work was the first to yield
scientific evidence in support of homeopathy, claimed Randi's team was not
thorough and ignored corroborating
evidence. Furthermore, Randi was said
to have distracted the French researchers with sleight-of-hand spoon-bending
tricks. Randi countered the stage tricks
were done during breaks for entertainment and to diffuse tension. Nature published another article retracting the first
article.
Sources: "CSICOP Defined." Parapsychology Review 19, no. 1 (January/February

Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal

117

1988): 5; Michel Gauquelin. Birth-Times.

New York: Hill and Wang, 1983; Richard
L. Hudson. "Nature Debunks Piece It Just
Published That Supported Homeopaths'
Claims." The Wall Street Journal (July 27,
1988): 30; James Randi. The Faith Healers.
Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1987;
Dennis Rawlins. "sTARBABY." Fate 34,
no. 10, issue 379 (October 1981): 67-98;
Leslie A. Shepard, ed. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology.
2d ed. Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1984.

Cone of power
In modern Witchcraft a force field of psychic energy raised by a coven of Witches
for magic purposes. The Witches join
hands and begin dancing in a ring and
chanting to raise the power, which is visualized as a cone, the base of which
comprises the circle, and the apex of
which either extends into infinity or is
pictured as a person or symbolic image.
When the energy peaks in intensity, the
group releases it toward accomplishment
of a goal, such as a spell or healing.
Cones of power also are raised
through cord magic. The Witches sit inside a magic circle and hold ends of overlapping or interwoven cords. As the
Witches chant, either aloud or silently,
knots are tied in the cords. Power is released when the knots are untied.
The energy projected by the cone of
power is similar to that raised in a group
prayer meeting. Witches who have developed their psychic abilities can sometimes
see the cone of power as a luminous, pulsating cloud flooded with changing colors, or as a silvery-blue light.
In 1940 many covens of Witches
gathered in the New Forest in England to
raise a cone of power to prevent Hitler
from invading the country. The energy
was directed against the men in the German High Command, either to convince
them the invasion would not be successful, or to confuse their minds so that the

118

Committee

for the Scientific

plans never reached fruition. The ritual

was performed on Lammas Day (also
called Lughnasadh), August 1, a Pagan
agrarian holiday that is an important sabbat in Witchcraft. Thirty-one years later,
in 1971, Witches in California came together on Lammas Day to raise a cone of
power directed at ending the war in Vietnam. See Witchcraft.
Sources: Margot Adler. Drawing Down the
Moon. Rev. ed. Boston: Beacon Press,
1986; Patricia Crowther. Witch Blood!

New York: House of Collectibles, 1974;

Stewart Farrar. What Witches Do: A Modern Coven Revealed. Rev. ed. Custer, WA:
Phoenix Publishing, 1983; Gerald B. Gardner. Witchcraft Today. New York: Magickal Childe, 1982; Starhawk. The Spiral
Dance. San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1979; Doreen Valiente. An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present. Custer, WA: Phoenix Publishing, 1973; Doreeen Valiente.
Witchcraft for Tomorrow.
Custer, WA:
Phoenix Publishing, 1978.

Consciousness
See Altered states of consciousness; Kundalini; Meditation; Mystical experiences;
Mysticism; Psi.

Contemplation
See Prayer; Mystical experiences.

Control
In mediumship a spirit or entity that acts
as the primary intermediary between the
medium and other discarnates who wish
to communicate to the living through the
medium. The control literally controls
which entities will communicate, and
when, how, and in what order. A control
usually stays with a medium permanently.

Investigation

of Claims of the Paranormal

A control manifests during a trance

or dissociated state of consciousness,
such as during automatic writing. The
medium may not be aware of the control
until told by a sitter who has witnessed
the spirit's manifestation. In 1924 Arthur
Ford was in trance when a spirit came
through and announced, "Tell Ford that
I am to be his control and that I go by the
name of Fletcher." Fletcher later communicated that he was able to work well
with Ford because he had the right pitch,
or vibration, for maintaining contact. See
Ford, Arthur Augustus.
Gladys Osborne Leonard's control
was Feda, an Indian girl who died around
1800. Feda helped Leonard become a
professional medium. Leonard could send
Feda anywhere to retrieve information.
Through her Leonard could describe locations she had never before seen, and recite information from pages in books in
distant rooms. See Book test; Leonard,
Gladys Osborne.
There is evidence that controls may
be secondary personalities of a medium.
Similarities exist between certain mediums and their controls. The controls of
Leonora Piper, celebrated American mental medium, were extensively studied by
Eleanor Sidgwick of the Society for Psychical Research, London. Although the
controls claimed to be autonomous, discarnate beings, Sidgwick was of the opinion that they were probably extensions of
Piper or fabrications. Their knowledge of
various subjects matched Piper's own
knowledge. The controls said they possessed subtle bodies, and that in order to
communicate through the medium, they
had to "enter the light," a sort of energy
or power. Piper vacated her body but remained attached via the astral cord, while
the controls occupied her form and operated it. Occasionally, Piper recalled being
in the spirit state and seeing spirits of the
dead there. If confronted with mistakes,
the spirits seldom owned up to them, but
explained them away by saying that en-

Cook, Florence

(1856-1904)

tering the light created confusion, or that

they could not manipulate Piper's body in
ways unaccustomed to her.
Eileen J. Garrett, another famous
medium, allowed herself to be extensively
tested by psychiatrists, including Ira
Progoff. Progoff concluded that Garrett's
spirit guides came from her own personality, and that two of them, Tehotah, a
symbol of creation, and Rama, a symbol
of the life force, were Jungian archetypes.
See Garrett, Eileen J.; Mediumship. Contrast with Channeling.
Sources: Atthur Ford in collaboration with
Marguerite Harmon Bro. Nothing So
Strange: The Autobiography
of Arthur
Ford. New York: Harpet & Brothers,
1968; Alan Gauld. Mediumship and Survival. London: William Heinemann Ltd.,
1982; Ivor Grattan-Guinness. Psychical Research: A Guide to Its History, Principles
and Practices. Wellingborough, Northamp-

tonshire, England: The Aquarian Press,

1982; Ruth Montgomery. A Search for the
Truth. New York: Bantam Books, 1968.

Cook, Florence (1856-1904)

British medium who became famous for
spirit materializations, but was exposed
as a fraud. She began giving seances as a
teenager, at a time when mediumship was
sweeping like wildfire through England.
She said she had first realized her psychic
gifts as a child, when she heard angelic
VOIces.
Cook's control spirit was Katie King,
who claimed to be the daughter of a buccaneer. King, when materialized, bore a
suspiciously strong resemblance to Cook.
Cook gained widespread fame for materializing King with lights on at a time
when virtually all seances were conducted
in the dark. Her seances gradually became more and more theatrical, and the
materializations more dramatic, from
hands to faces to the entire form.
In her seances Cook retired behind a
curtain or was shut up in a cabinet, and
was tied to a chair with a rope, the knots

119

of which were sealed with wax. The sitters prepared themselves by singing Spiritualism songs. After a few minutes, King,
pale and white with fixed eyes, emerged
from behind the curtain or the back of
the cabinet. Meanwhile, Cook moaned
and sobbed out of sight. Katie would not
speak, but only smiled and nodded. After
the sitters had been awed and entertained, the spirit disappeared behind the
curtain or back of the cabinet. The sitters,
following Cook's instructions, waited
and then looked for Cook, whom they
always found still clothed and tied, and
profoundly exhausted from the experience.
Cook attracted the attention of Spiritualist investigators, including the eminent British scientist William Crookes.
Investigators were amazed at King's
flesh-like appearance; more than one
concluded the "spirit" was Cook herself.
She was caught at least twice in fraud.
Once, a sitter grabbed a "spirit hand"
that was sprinkling him with water, and
found he had grabbed Cook, who was
seated at the seance table. The medium
protested that she was only reaching to
retrieve a flower the spirits had taken
from her dress. In 1873 a sitter grabbed
King first by the hand and then the waist.
The spirit struggled and was pulled away
by two of Cook's friends. The lights went
out. The sitters waited five minutes, then
opened the cabinet and found Cook
dressed and tied. Nevertheless, the sitter
was convinced he had touched a living
person, probably Cook.
On another occasion, in 1880, Sir
George Sitwell noticed that King's spirit
robes covered corset stays, an unusual requirement for a spirit. He seized her. The
curtain was pulled aside to reveal Cook's
chair empty and the ropes slipped.
Crookes subjected Cook to numerous tests. He photographed King and
walked arm in arm with the spirit, convinced of her validity. For the photographs, taken in 1874, Cook lay down on

120

a sofa behind a curtain and wrapped a

shawl around her head. Katie appeared in
front of the curtain. Crookes looked behind the curtain to see that a female form
still lay on the sofa, but never lifted the
shawl to verify that the form was that of
Cook. In another experiment he attached
Cook to a galvanometer, which passed a
mild electrical current through her.
Crookes reasoned that the slightest movement on Cook's part would register on
the meter. Katie appeared though the
meter's needle never moved.
Crookes and other supporters of
Cook were undaunted by exposures of
her fraud, claiming she was somnambulistic and never intended deliberately to
deceive sitters. See Mediumship; Materialization.
Sources: Alfred Douglas. Extrasensory
Powers: A Century of Psychical Researc;h.

London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1976; Alan

Gauld. Mediumship and Survival. London:
William Heinemann Ltd., 1982; Alan
Gauld. The Founders of Psychical Research. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1968; Trevor H. Hall. The Spiritualists.
London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.,
1962; R. G. Medhurst and K. M. Goldney.
"William Crookes and the Physical Phenomena of Mediumship." Proceedings of
the Society for Psychical Research 54, part
195 (March 1964): 25-156; Janet Oppenheim. The Other World: Spiritualism and
Psychical Research in England,
18501914. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985.

Cooke, Grace (1892-1979)

Popular British Spiritualist who founded
the White Eagle Lodge, a Spiritualist organization, and wrote numerous books
on spiritual growth and healing with the
help of her spirit guide, White Eagle, who
had incarnated as a Native American
chief.
Cooke was born in London on June
9, 1892. As a child she had her first psy-

Cook, Florence (1856-1904)

chic vision of White Eagle and other Native American spirits one night as they
appeared in a circle around her bed. The
visions came just before she fell asleep,
probably as she drifted into the hypnagogic state. Most of the natives wore
bright colors, but the tallest, a stately,
elder chief, was dressed in white. In the
dream state, the chief took her to the astral plane to a place of great beauty,
where she saw elemental spirits. He revealed himself as White Eagle, one of the
Great White Brotherhood, the Brotherhood of the Cross of Light within the Circle of Light. He explained the spiritual
work he and Cooke were to accomplish
together during Cooke's life.
Cooke became a Spiritualist medium
in 1913. While popular attention was focused on communicating with the dead,
Cooke preferred to emphasize spiritual
development and esoteric teachings,
which she felt were desperately needed in
the world.
Her first church was a small one in
Middlesex, but she eventually left it because of the congregation's preoccupation with proof of survival.
In 1936 White Eagle and other spirits in the Great White Brotherhood instructed Cooke to form an organization
for those people ready to practice brotherhood among men and be channels of
light, or light-bearers. Cooke established
the White Eagle Brotherhood at Burstow
Manor in Surrey, later moving headquarters to Pembroke Hall in Kensington,
London. The hall was destroyed by
bombs in World War II, and the Brotherhood moved to new premises in Kensington, and to Edinburgh, Scotland. In
1945 the White Eagle Lodge was further
established at the present headquarters at
New Lands in Liss, Hampshire. The organization has been administered by a
trust since 1953. Throughout her ministry Cooke was aided by her husband,
Ivan, and their two daughters. The White
Eagle Lodge grew to an international or-

Cooke, Grace (1892-1979)

Grace Cooke
ganization, including a publishing trust of
spiritual books and tapes.
Cooke was a teacher of meditation,
and published two books on the subject,
Meditation (1955) and The Jewel in the
Lotus (1973). In her later years, she experienced vivid rein carnation aI memories
of previous lives as a Mayan and Egyptian priestess, both under the tutelage of
White Eagle. Using a meditational technique learned from an Ea~tern adept,
Cooke would rise through her crown
chakra and read the Akashic Records.
The stories of these two past lives are recorded in Cooke's book The Illumined
Ones.
Cooke said the Mayan civilization in
which she lived as Minesta flourished at
least ten thousand years ago in the foothills of the Andes, an advanced culture
established by an extraterrestrial race by
way of Atlantis. Though archaeologists
date the earliest Mayans to about A.D.
350 in Central America, Cooke was confident that archaeological remains would
be found in South America to confirm her
visions. In 1965 some remains were
found in Peru that indicated a Mesoamerican influence, or vice versa.
As a Mayan Cooke was guided in
her spiritual development by Hah-Wah-

121

Tah, an incarnation of White Eagle. She

was initiated into the Plumed Serpent, the
Brotherhood of the White Magic, the circle of adepts. She married her brother,
To-waan.
In the afterlife White Eagle as HahWah-Tah continued to be Cooke's spiritual guide, and eventually informed her
she would reincarnate in Egypt. She was
born as Ra-min-ati, guided by the high
priest, Is-Ra, or White Eagle. She followed a spiritual path, was initiated into
the mysteries of Osiris, and, together with
her husband, Ra-hotep, was crowned
pharaoh of the Two-Lands.
Cooke believed White Eagle was the
legendary Hiawatha. This was never confirmed by White Eagle, who told her only
that his most recent incarnation had been
as White Eagle, Mohawk chief of the
League of Six Nations of the Iroquois.
Cooke was struck by the resemblance between renderings of Hiawatha and her visions of White Eagle.
In her work Cooke emphasized the
discovery of deep, spiritual truths; the
spreading of and living by the light of
love; and healing. She died on September
3, 1979, in Liss, Hampshire, at the age of
eighty-seven. See White Eagle Lodge.
Sources: Grace Cooke. The Illumined
Ones. New Lands, England: White Eagle
Publishing Trust, 1966; Grace Cooke. Sun
Men of the Americas. New Lands, England:
White Eagle Publishing Trust, 1975; Ingrid
Lind. The White Eagle Inheritance. London: Turnstone Press, 1984; The Story of
the White Eagle Lodge. New Lands, England: White Eagle Publishing Trust, 1986;
The White Eagle Lodge.

Crandon, Mina
See American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR).

Creation spirituality
A movement to redefine and revitalize
Christianity by restoring an element of
sensual, playful, and creative mysticism

122

that is accessible to all people, not merely

an elite of ascetics. The predominant
spokesperson for creation spirituality is
Matthew Fox, a Dominican priest who in
1988 was silenced temporarily by the
Vatican for his unorthodox views. Fox is
founder of the Institute in Culture and
Creation Spirituality (ICCS), an avantgarde master's degree program at Holy
Names College in Oakland, California.
It is Fox's contention that Christianity is moribund and cannot survive into
the third millennium in its present form.
The original, cosmic mysticism of Christ
has been suppressed by a patristic, moralistic, and anthropocentric framework
that has wreaked severe psychic damage
by alienating human beings from the cosmos, the planet, and each other. This
alienation has manifested in misogyny;
child and sexual abuse; drug, alcohol,
and entertainment addiction; materialism; and perhaps most important of all,
the matricide of Mother Earth.
Creation spirituality celebrates the
blessings of God's creation and not the
original sin doctrine of the church. It
holds that everyone is a mystic, but humanity has lost touch with this transformative power due to the NewtonianCartesian mechanistic, dualistic thought
of the Enlightenment. According to Fox
creation spirituality is the oldest tradition
in the Bible, espoused by the prophets
and by Jesus. It was at the center of the
teachings of the Greek church fathers of
the fourth and fifth centuries, and of various medieval mystics, most notably Meister Eckhart, Hildegard of Bingen, Julian
of Norwich, Francis of Assisi, and
Mechtild of Magneburg. Creation spirituality also is at the core of mystical traditions both East and West.
Fox's philosophy began to take
shape in the 1960s, when he went to
Paris to earn a doctorate in spirituality at
the Institut Catholique. There he studied
under Father M. D. Chenu, who acquainted him with creation spirituality

Cooke, Grace (1892-1979)

I
I
I

I
I

and with the Liberation spirituality developing in Latin America. Upon his return
to the United States, Fox taught at Aquinas Institute and Barat College. At the
latter, a women's college, his own feminism was born. In 1977 he founded the
ICCS at Mundelein College in Chicago,
and in 1983 moved the program to Oakland. Fox's numerous papers, articles,
and books have addressed creation spirituality and the question of the relationship between mysticism and social justice.
His 1983 book, Original Blessing: A
Primer in Creation Spirituality, brought
him to public attention.
Creation spirituality advocates the
rebirth of an earthy, ecstatic mysticism
that reveres the feminine principle, sexuality, passion, play, prophecy, creativity,
and the divine child within, all of which
is diametric to the orthodox Christian
mystical tradition of mortification of the
senses. Creation spirituality embraces panentheism, which holds that God is in
everything and everything is in God.
(Panentheism is often confused 'with pantheism, deemed a heresy by the church,
which holds that God is everything and
everything is God.) It advocates a return
of body consciousness in worship, that
is, movement and dance; if worship is
not playful, it loses its transformative
power.
In The Coming of the Cosmic Christ
(1988), Fox articulates his concept of a
Cosmic Christ, as opposed to a historical
Jesus, who embodies the aforementioned
qualities. The appropriate symbol of the
Cosmic Christ is Jesus as Mother Earth,
who is crucified yet risen daily. Fox says
that in order for Christianity to survive,
the church must turn from its preoccupation with the historical Jesus and begin a
quest for the Cosmic Christ. However, it
cannot be undertaken without a living
cosmology that embraces a "holy trinity
of science (knowledge of creation), mysticism (experiential union with creation
and its unnameable mysteries), and art

I
I

Creation spirituality

(expression of our awe at creation)," Fox

says. Such a cosmology-which also lies
at the heart of the planetary consciousness movement-must teach that the universe is not a machine, but an awesome
mystery.
Fox says that Western religion has
not nourished people in the mystical tradition, but has piled on one moral law
after another. The primary influence in
this development of the church was St.
Augustine of Hippo, a fourth-century
theologian and one of the most important
church fathers, whose views were dualistic and patristic, and who was preoccupied with human guilt and personal salvation. Fox observes that in a world of
interdependence of all things, there can
be no such thing as personal salvation.
The Cosmic Christ is an archetype,
and must be reincarnated repeatedly in
the mind and imagination before it takes
hold as a force. When it does a paradigm
shift will occur in Christianity. Creativity
will become the most important moral
virtue; there will be a return of folk art as
divine creativity is rediscovered within all
people. Fox believes it also will bring an
age of deep ecumenism.
Fox was brought to the attention of
the Vatican in 1984 by the Seattle chapter
of a conservative, ad hoc group, Catholics United for the Faith (CUFF). The
CUFF chapter termed Fox a "danger" to
the Catholic faith. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Sacred Congregation
for the Doctrine of Faith-formerly the
Holy Office of the Inquisition-ordered
an investigation of Fox's writings and
statements. Fox was supported by his Dominican superiors, who examined his
work and found nothing heretical.
Ratzinger, however, found other\vise. In 1987 he termed Fox's ideas
"dangerous and deviant," and said Original Blessing was a personal and subjective interpretation of Christian spirituality. In 1988 Ratzinger formally accused
Fox of: (1) denying the existence of orig-

123

inal sin and the doctrine of the church in

its regard; (2) referring to God as "Mother" and "Child"; (3) hiring a selfdescribed Witch, Starhawk, to teach at
ICCS; (4) having liberal views on homosexuality; and (5) being a fervent feminist. Fox was requested to observe a year
of silence commencing December 15,
1988.
Fox was never accorded the opportunity to face his Vatican inquisitors. He
agreed to the silencing, believing it only
served to call more attention to his work.
In his formal response to the charges, Fox
said that (1) he did not deny original sin,
but objected to its importance and its use
as a starting point in religion. God's creation should be celebrated as an original
blessing. (2) God has been called "Mother" by Pope John Paul I and medieval
mystics, and in the Scriptures, and referred to as child by medieval mystics. (3)
In the 1960s the Second Vatican Council
formally declared in its Declaration on
Non-Christian Religions that it is "foreign to the mind of Christ to discriminate
or harass persons because of their religion," and no exception was made of
Wicca (Witchcraft). (4 and 5) The
church's oppression of homosexuals and
women is tantamount to fascism. "The
Vatican's obsession with sex is a worldwide scandal which demonstrates a serious psychic imbalance," Fox said in an
open letter to Ratzinger.
Fox has been called a "New Age
priest" by the media, though that is not a
label he chooses. He sees many flaws in
New Age thought, some of which he
terms "pseudo-mysticism." Practices that
have become distorted, he says, are excessive preoccupation with states of consciousness, enlightenment, and past lives,
without any attention paid to social responsibility and conscience. See Eckhart,
Johannes; Goddess; Hildegard of Bingen,
St.; Julian of Norwich; Mysticism; Mysticism, Christian; Planetary consciousness.

124

Sources: Matthew Fox. Original Blessing:

A Primer in Creation Spirituality. Santa Fe,
NM: Bear & Co., 1983; Matthew Fox. The
Coming of the Cosmic Christ. San Fran-

cisco: Harper & Row, 1988; Matthew Fox.

"Is the Catholic Church Today a Dysfunctional Family? A Pastoral Letter to Cardinal Ratzinger and the Whole Church." Creation (November/December 1988): 23-37;
Jane Gross. "Vatican Silences 'New Age'
Priest." The New York Times (October 21,
1988); Laura Hagar. "The Sounds of Silence." New Age Journal (March/April
1989): 52-56+; Sam Keen. "Original
Blessing, Not Original Sin." Psychology
Today (June 1989): 55-58; "Priest Barred
from Public Speech or Writing for Liberal
Teachings." The New York Times (October 19, 1988).

Creative visualization
The use of positive, affirming mental pictures to obtain goals. A vivid mental picture of a desired goal is held in the mind
as though it already were accomplished.
Creative visualization is widely employed
in the creative arts, sports, business, alternative medicine, religious practices,
psychotherapy, the mystical and occult
arts, psychical research, and in personal
self-improvement. Other terms for it are
"positive thinking," "positive imaging,"
"dynamic imaging," "creative imaging,"
"imaging," and so on.
The power of thought, imagination,
and will to effect changes in circumstance
is ancient knowledge. See Imagery. Creative visualization is an aid in helping the
individual marshal the resources necessary to accomplish what is desired. It also
is believed to help establish a harmony
that facilitates fortuitous synchronicities,
that is, opportunities and "lucky breaks."
See Synchronicity.
Creative visualization seems to be
most effective when practiced in a relaxed
or altered state of consciousness, such as
in a daily prayer or meditation session.
Some individuals call on a higher power,

Creation

spirituality

such as the Divine, the Higher Self, or a

spirit guide or guardian angel to help realize the goal.
The concept of creative visualization
has been popularized in the West through
various writings, such as the many books
by Norman Vincent Peale, a Methodist
minister. Peale's initial book on the subject, The Power of Positive Thinking
(1952), advises a combination of prayer,
a faith in God, a positive frame of mind,
and affirmations, words or phrases that
trigger positive forces. For example, "I
am beautiful and loved" and "I am successful" are affirmations. When repeated,
written down, and contemplated, affirmations become part of consciousness.
Psycho-Cybernetics
(1960), by plastic surgeon Maxwell Maltz, discusses the
tremendous influence of the imagination
upon self-image. Maltz observed that patients with poor self-image had no boost
in self-esteem from plastic surgery, while
those whose self-image was good or was
improved experienced positive transformations after surgery.
In Creative Visualization (1979), author Shakti Gawain likens creative visualization to "magic" in the highest sense
of the word. Positive energy attracts more
positive energy. See also Meditation;
Prayer.
Sources: Shakti Gawain. Creative Visualization. New York: Bantam Books, 1982;
Vernon Howard. The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power. Reward ed. West Nyack, NY:
Parker Publishing, 1973; Vernon Howard.
Psycho-Pictography: The New Way to Use
the Miracle Power of Your Mind. Reward

ed. West Nyack, NY: Parker Publishing,

1973; Maxwell Maltz. The Magic Power of
Self-Image Psychology. New York: Pocket
Books, 1970; Maxwell Maltz. PsychoCybernetics. New York: Pocket Books,
1969; Edgar D. Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science. Edited by
John White. New York: Paragon Books,
1974; Norman Vincent Peale. Positive Imaging: The Powerful Way to Change Your
Life. FCL ed. Pawling, NY: Foundation for

Croiset,

Gerard (1909-80)

Christian Living, 1982; Norman Vincent

Peale. The Power of Positive Thinking.
New York: Prentice-Hall, 1952; Jane Roberts. The Seth Material. First published as
How to Develop

Your ESP Power, 1966.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970;

D. Scott Rogo. Psychic Breakthroughs Today. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire,
England: The Aquarian Press, 1987.

Creativity
See Inspiration.

Croiset, Gerard (1909-80)

Dutch clairvoyant with healing powers,
who gained international fame for his
ability to find missing persons, animals,
and objects.
Croiset was born March 10, 1909, in
Enschede, the Netherlands, to Jewish parents in the theater profession. His clairvoyance manifested by age six. He suffered an unhappy childhood. He was
neglected by his parents, who divorced
when he was eight, and was neglected or
abused in a series of orphanages and foster homes. He was frequently punished
for talking about his visions. At age thirteen he dropped out of school and drifted
through a series of low-level, unskilled
jobs.
In 1934 Croiset married Gerda ter
Morsche, the uneducated daughter of a
carpenter. The first of their four children,
a son, was born in 1935. Croiset opened
his own grocery store but was a poor
business manager. The turning point in
his life came in 1935, when a former customer introduced him to local Spiritualists, who helped him develop his psychic
ability. He experienced visions in symbols, and he had to learn how to interpret
them.
From 1937 to 1940, Croiset's psychic reputation in Enschede grew quickly.
He worked as a psychometrist, finding
people, objects, and animals. An ability

125

to heal by touch also manifested, and

he treated soldiers wounded in World
War II.
The second turning point in Croiset's
life occurred in December 1945, when he
attended a lecture on parapsychology
given in Enschede by Willem Tenhaeff of
the Universiry of Utrecht. Croiset was so
inspired that he volunteered to be one of
Tenhaeff's test subjects.
After several months of tests in
Utrecht, Tenhaeff concluded that Croiset
was one of the most remarkable psychics
he had ever encountered; his abiliry remained fairly constant.
Tenhaeff became Croiset's mentor,
introducing him to police work and
bringing him to the international public
eye. Croiset was tested by parapsychologists all over the world. He solved crimes
in at least half a dozen countries, found
lost documents for public officials, and
helped scholars identify artifacts and historical manuscripts. His passion was
finding missing children. He did many
readings over the telephone, which he
said helped keep confusing mental images
to a minimum.
Croiset screened requests for his services by inruition. He said that a vibration would begin and make him feel filled
inside. A serious problem would cause
him to see many colors, which would begin to spin around him until they formed
pictures, which appeared to shoot out at
him like an image in a 3-D movie.
Croiset accepted no payment for his
psychic readings, but accepted donations
at his healing clinic, where he treated
over one hundred patients a day. He
knew instantly upon seeing a patient
whether or not he could help the person,
and how. He sometimes saw the conditions or diseases were psychic in origin
and connected to experiences. Occasionally, he treated sick animals.
In 1953 the Parapsychology Institute
was created at the University of Utrecht,
and Tenhaeff was named director. In

126

1956 Croiset and his family moved from

Enschede to Utrecht so that he could be
near Tenhaeff.
One of Croiset's most significant
contributions to parapsychology was to
popularize the "chair test," first performed in the 1920s by Pascal Forthuny.
In the test a distant meeting place and
time were scheduled. The chairs at the
site were numbered, and one chair was
selected at random to be the test chair.
From one hour to twenry-six days in advance, Croiset predicted who would sit in
the chair. A tape of his prediction would
be played at the meeting, and the information verified by the person occ;,upying
the chair. The first chair test took place in
1947 in Amsterdam, before a meeting of
the Dutch Sociery for Psychical Research.
Croiset died on July 20, 1980. His
healing clinic continued under the direction of his son. See Psychic criminology.
Sources: Jack Harrison Pollack. Croiset the
Clairvoyant. Garden Ciry, NY: Doubleday,
1964; W. H. C. Tenhaeff. Telepathy and
Clairvoyance. Springfield, IL: Charles C.

Thomas, 1972; Benjamin B. Wolman, ed.

Handbook of Parapsychology. New York:
Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977.

Crookes, William
See Cook, Florence; Parapsychology; Sociery for Psychical Research (SPR).

Crop circles
Large circles and other patterns that appear inexplicably in the middle of grain
fields when the crop is several feet high.
Most crop circles have been found in
Southeast England since the early 1980s.
But other countries-including the United
States-have reported them as well. Some
have been exposed as hoaxes but others
remain unexplained.
Crop circles measure from as small
as ten feet in diameter to as large as three
hundred feet. They appear overnight,

Croiset,

Gerard (1909-80)

sometimes preceded by amber lights reportedly hovering above the Earth. The
grain inside the circles usually has been
found lying horizontally,
seemingly
knocked down or crushed by some tremendous force, yet unbroken and still
growing. No tracks leading up to them
have been found, giving additional credence to theories suggesting some external force from above was responsible.
In the years between 1980 and 1987,
between 100 and 120 crop circles were
found in England. Over the following
years the numbers increased dramatically: 112 in 1988; 305 in 1989; and 400
in 1990.
With the increase in numbers of circles also came significant changes in their
appearances. Where the phenomenon
once was limited to circles of varying
sizes, new formations began taking shape
that ranged from large circles surrounded
by smaller ones to elaborate patterns that
resembled some form of ancient hieroglyphs, featuring rectangles, rings, spurs,
and pathways linking circles to one another.
Theories as to the origins and causes
of these crop circles are as multiple as the
shapes themselves. Some theories blame
natural forces, such as violent weather
patterns or the effects of irrigation. Others claim the shapes were left by UFOs,
because of the appearances of anomalous
lights prior to some circle formations.
Still other theories suggest the circles are
communications from other intelligent
life forces, perhaps a planetary intelligence of Earth itself.
In 1988, before the sudden proliferation and variation of crop circles, Terrence Meaden (a British physicist with the
Tornado Storm Research Organization,
who had studied some fifty crop circles)
dismissed them as the result of rare meteorological events, which he called stationary whirlwinds, or sudden vortices of
wind. Meaden said these bursts of air
sink to the ground and flatten crops in a

Crop circles

spiral, but because they last only a few

seconds cause relatively minor damage.
Similar circles began appearing in
grain fields in the United States outside of
Kansas City, Missouri, in September
1990. US scientists also were quick to
point to freak weather patterns, stating
that vortices could be caused by temperature imbalances in the upper and lower
portions of the atmosphere.
Other researchers have argued that
the crop circles were due to excess circular irrigation, which alters the salts and
silts in the soil, leaving anything growing
vulnerable to powerful winds.
While these theories of natural
causes might explain the singular circle
formations, they fall far short of answering questions about those shapes that resemble pictograms.
In a 1990 challenge to Meaden's
"whirlwinds,"
British psychical researcher Ralph Noyes wrote in a paper
presented at a conference in Bournemouth, England, to the Society for Psychical Research: "The impression can no
longer be resisted that a factor is at work
that exhibits a capacity for invention and
design, in short, some degree of intelligence."
That view was also shared by another British researcher and electrical engineer, Colin Andrews. He maintained
that the circles seem to be elaborate pictograms created by some sort of intelligent life force as an attempt to communicate with humankind.
Charles D'Orban of London University's School of Oriental and African
studies went one step further, likening the
pictorial shapes in one crop field in Wiltshire, England, to ancient Sumerian text.
D'Orban deciphered the symbols in the
field to be a warning to increase the number of water wells-a suggestion that
drought was on the way. His finding, in
July 1990, was made during one of the
country's hottest and driest spells in recent years.

127

Another British researcher, John

Haddington, described dramatic 1990
configurations as a Buddhist ritual tool
known as vajra, a representation of the
unbreakable absolute in the universe. He
concluded that something of a divine nature may have a message to convey to humans about their existence.
During the proliferation of crop circles during the summer of 1990 in England, researchers and television crews
staked out several locations, hoping to
answer the mystery behind the formations. During one such vigil, crews armed
with special infrared cameras and recording devices failed to pick up any photographic evidence or record any sounds,
even through noises could be heard above
them near one field, where a spiralshaped formation was discovered the
next morning.
Sources: Richard Beaumont. "More Circular Evidence." Kindred Spirit 1, no. 8: 25-

28; "Bumper Crop of Cropfield Circles."

Strange Magazine no. 6 (1990): 33; John
Haddington. "The Year of the VAJRA."
Global Link Up issue 44 (Autumn 1990):
4-9; "Hoaxes and Phenomena." Global
Link Up issue 44 (Autumn 1990): 10-11;
Pat Delgado and Colin Andrews. Crop
Circles, The Latest Evidence. London:
Bloomsbury Publishing, 1990; Donna
McGuire and Eric Adler. "More Puzzling
Circles Found in Fields." The Kansas City
Star (September 21, 1990): A1+; Ralph
Noyes. "Crop Circles: Further Indications
of a Paranormal Factor." Paper presented
to Conference of the Society for Psychical
Research, Bournemouth, England, July
1990; Michael Poynder. "Cairns and Crop
Circles." Kindred Spirit 2, no. 1: 24-26;
Michael T. Shoemaker. "Measuring the
Circles." Strange Magazine no. 6 (1990):
34-35+; Robert Smith. "The Crop Circle
Mystery." Venture Inward 7, no. 1
(JanuaryIFebruary 1990): 12-16.

128

Cross correspondence
A cross correspondence occurs when the
information communicated through one
medium corresponds with information
communicated through another, independent medium. There is no normal
explanation for the occurrence. Some
psychical researchers believe cross correspondences provide strong evidence in
support of life after death. Others say
they are produced by the mediums in an
unconscious telepathic network.
Psychical researchers have defined
three types of cross correspondences:
simple, complex, and ideal. In simple
cross correspondences, two or more mediums produce the same word, words, or
phrases, or similar phrases that are
clearly interconnected. In complex cross
correspondences, topics are mentioned
only indirectly. Ideal cross correspondences involve messages that are incomplete until put together.
The Society for Psychical Research
(SPR) in England studied cross correspondences intently between 1901 and
1932. The principal communicators appeared to be three of the founders of the
SPR, all of whom had been interested in
the question of survival after death:
Edmund Gurney, who died in 1888,
Henry Sidgwick, who died in 1900, and
Frederic W. H. Myers, who died in 1901.
Of the three men, Myers was most interested in proving survival after death, and
had stated while living that he would attempt to communicate posthumously.
Sidgwick had been open to the possibility
of survival, while Gurney had been skeptical. These three were joined by other deceased communicators.
Leonora Piper, a prominent American medium, claimed to establish contact
with the spirits of the three men through
automatic writing. Her impressive results
generated much publicity, and inspired
about twelve other women to try the
same thing, all independently. One of the

Crop circles

principals was Margaret Verrall of Cambridge, England, who shared Myers's interest in classicism. After some time of
automatic writing, the scripts of which
were collated and examined by members
of the SPR, the cross correspondences
were noticed. For example, "Myers"
would give Verrall one part of a message,
and the rest to another automatist in India (Alice Fleming, the sister of Rudyard
Kipling). Over a period of years, other
mediums had similar results. Most of the
communications of "Myers" contained
references to classical literature.
SPR member Frank Podmore believed that cross correspondences were
the result of telepathic communication
among the living. He suggested that one
automatist telepathically broadcast material, which was picked up by other automatists. Psychical researchers have not
found any clear evidence for that sort of
phenomena, however. Also, the idea for
cross correspondences did not originate
with anyone living. The plan seems to
have been devised on the "other side" by
"Myers." Myers, when living, knew full
well that researchers would attempt to
explain communications of entire messages through one medium in terms of telepathy and clairvoyance on the part of
the medium. But if pieces of messages
were disseminated with apparent deliberation, it \vould strengthen the case for
survival.
Some of "Myers's" communications
support that notion. In automatic writing
through Piper, he purportedly stated, "I
am trying with all forces ... together to
prove that I am Myers." And in automatic writing through Fleming: "Oh, I
am feeble with eagerness-how can I best
be identified?"
The principal investigators of the
SPR concluded that the cross correspondences \vere the products of the deceased
SPR leaders and others. Though the style
and content of their messages conformed
with their living personalities, they were

Crowley,

Aleister

(1875-1947)

not conclusive proof of survival after

death.
One of the last mediums to participate in the SPR's research was Gladys
Osborne Leonard. In subsequent years
cross correspondences have appeared in
other psychical research experiments, but
have not been the subject of great attention. See Automatisms.
Sources: Richard Cavendish, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Unexplained. New York:

McGraw-Hill, 1974; Alfred Douglas.

Ex-

trasensory Powers: A Century of Psychical

Research. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd.,
1976; Alan Gauld. Mediumship and Survival. London: William Heinemann Ltd.,
1982; Ivor Grattan-Guinness. Psychical Research: A Guide to Its History, Principles
and Practices. Wellingborough, North-

amptonshire, England: The Aquarian Press,

1982; J. B. Rhine and Robert Brier, eds.
Parapsychology
Today. New York: The
Citadel Press, 1968; H. F. Saltmarsh. Evidence of Personal Survival from Cross Correspondences. London: G. Bell & Sons,

Ltd., 1938.

Crowley, Aleister (1875-1947)

English magician and occultist, selfdescribed as the "Beast of the Apocalypse" and called by the media "The
Wickedest Man in the World." Crowley,
a man of no small ego, both enraged and
fascinated others with his rites of sex
magic and blood sacrifice. Despite his excesses some consider him one of the most
brilliant magicians of modern times.
He was born Edward Alexander
Crowley on October 12, 1875, in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. His parents,
members of a fundamentalist sect, the
Plymouth Brethren, raised him in an atmosphere of repression and religious bigOtry. He rebelled to such an extent that
his mother christened him "the Beast" after the Antichrist.
Crowley was drawn to the occult at
a young age and was fascinated by blood,
torture, and sexual degradation. He stud-

129

ied at Trinity College at Cambridge but

never earned a degree, instead devoting
his time to writing poetry and studying
occultism.
On November 18, 1898, he joined
the London chapter of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (HOGD) and
was christened "Frater Perdurabo" (another of several magical names he used
was "the Master Therion"). He quickly
advanced to the highest grade in the Order. Through yoga he recalled alleged
past lives as Pope Alexander VI, renowned for his love of physical pleasures;
Edward Kelly, the notorious magical assistant to John Dee, the astrologer of
Queen Elizabeth I; Cagliostro; and
Eliphas Levi, who died on the day Crowley was born. Crowley also believed he
had been Ankh-f-n-Khonsu, an Egyptian
priest of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty.
After leaving Trinity he named himself Count Vladimir and pursued his occult activities full time in London. Stories
of bizarre incidents circulated, perhaps
fueled in part by Crowley's mesmerizing
eyes and aura of supernatural power.
Some individuals professed to see a
ghostly light surrounding him, which he
said was his astral spirit. His flat was said
to be pervaded by an evil presence, and
people who crossed him were said to suffer accidents.
Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers,
one of the founders of the HOGD, taught
Crowley the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin
the Mage from an old manuscript
Mathers claimed to have translated. The
manuscript supposedly was inhabited by
a nonphysical intelligence that provided
Crowley's source of magical power.
Mathers and Crowley quarreled and reportedly attacked each other psychically
with astral vampires and demons. Following his expulsion from the HOGD,
Crowley traveled and delved into Eastern
mysticism. He lived for a time at Boleskin
Manor on the southern shore of Loch
Ness in Scotland.

130

He had an enormous sexual appetite,

and his animal vitality and raw behavior
attracted an unending stream of willing
women. In 1903 he married Rose Kelly,
the first of two wives, who bore him
one child. He had a steady string of
mistresses, whom he called "Scarlet
Women" -the most famous was Leah
Hirsig, whom he called "the Ape of
Thoth" - and sired illegitimate children.
He was fond of giving his women "Serpent Kisses," using his sharpened teeth to
draw blood. He tried unsuccessfully to
beget a child by magic, the efforts of
which he fictionalized in a novel, Moonchild (1929).
On March 18, 1904, Kelly received
communications from the astral plane to
contact the Egyptian god Horus. Crowley
performed a ritual and contacted Horus's
spirit messenger, Aiwass, whom Crowley
took to be his "True Self." Over three
days Kelly took dictation from Aiwass in
trance. The result was Liber Legis, better
known as The Book of the Law, one of
Crowley's most important works. Central
to it is the Law of Thelema: "Do what
thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,"
which Crowley said means doing what
one must and nothing else.
Aiwass also said that Crowley had
been selected by the "Secret Chiefs," the
master adepts, to be the prophet for the
coming new Aeon of Horus, the third
great age of humanity.
In 1909 Crowley began a homosexual relationship with the poet Victor
Neuberg, who became his assistant in
magic. By 1912 he was involved with the
Ordo Templi Orientis occult order, and
became its leader by 1922.
From 1915 to 1919, Crowley lived
in the United States. In 1920, while driving through Italy, he had a vision of a
hillside villa. He found the place on Sicily, took it over, and renamed it the Sacred Abbey of the Thelemic Mysteries.
Envisioned as a magical colony, the villa
served as the site for numerous sexual or-

Crowley, Aleister (1875-1947)

gies and magical rites, many attended by

his illegitimate children. The behavior led
Benito Mussolini to expel Crowley from
Italy in May 1923.
In 1929 Crowley married his second
wife, Maria Ferrari de Miramar, in
Leipzig, Germany.
Crowley's later years were plagued
with poor health, drug addiction, and financial trouble. He earned a meager living by publishing his writings. Much of
his nonfiction is rambling and muddled,
but continues to have an audience. Besides The Book of the Law, his other
most notable work is Magick in Theory
and Practice (1929), considered by many
occultists to be a superb work on ceremonial magic. He spelled "magic" as
"magick" to distinguish true magic from
stage magic.
In 1934, desperate for money, Crowley sued sculptress Nina Hammett for libel in her biography of him, Laughing
Torso (1932), in which she stated that
Crowley practiced black magic and indulged in human sacrifice. The testimony
given at the trial so repulsed the judge
and jury that the trial was stopped and
the jury found in favor of Hammett.
In 1945 Crowley moved to a boarding house in Hastings, where he lived the
last two years of his life, dissipated and
bored. During these last years, he met
Gerald B. Gardner, called the father of
modern Witchcraft, and shared ritual material with him. Crmvley died on December 1, 1947. He was cremated in Brighton and his ashes were sent to followers
in the United States.
Crowley's other published books include The Diary of a Drug Fiend (1922);
The Stratagem, a collection of fiction stories; The Equinox of the Gods (1937),
which sets forth The Book of the Law as
humankind's new religion; and The Book
of Thoth (1944), his interpretation of the
Tarot. Two volumes of his autobiography 'were published. See Hermetic Order
of the Golden Dawn; Magic.

Cryptomnesia

Sources: Richard Cavendish, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Unexplained. New York:

McGraw-Hill, 1974; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The Encyclopedia of Witches and

Witchcraft. New York: Facts On File,
1989; Perrott Phillips, ed. Out of This
World. London: Reader's Digest Assn.,
1976; John Symonds and Kenneth Grant,
eds. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley,
an Autobiography.
London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1979; Colin Wilson. The Occult. New York: Vintage Books, 1973.

Cryptomnesia
The unconscious memory of information
learned through normal channels. Cryptomnesia is one possible explanation for
memories of past lives and communications with the dead. Information that is
consciously "forgotten" may be stored
deep within the unconscious indefinitely.
According to psychiatrist Carl G. Jung,
this forgetting is not only normal but necessary. Otherwise, the mind would become unbearably cluttered. Hypnosis, an
altered state of consciousness, automatic
writing, or inspiration can stimulate recall of the buried information, which
seems "new."
Psychical researchers consider the
possibility of cryptomnesia when investigating cases of reincarnation, or a medium's communication with the dead. The
possibility of cryptomnesia is strong if research shows that the information apparently obtained paranormally can be
found in existing sources, and that the
person may have had access to those
sources; and that the information does
not go beyond those sources.
The earliest case of cryptomnesia recorded in psychical research occurred in
1874, when the English medium William
Stainton Moses purported to contact the
spirits of two young brothers who had
died in India. The deaths were verified by
a check of records. Further research disclosed that six days prior to the seance,

131

The Times had run an obituary of the

boys. The information given at the seance
included all the information that was in
the obituary, and nothing more.
The case for cryptomnesia is especially strong if the paranormal information contains the same errors as the
existing sources. In 1977 a twenty-threeyear-old woman named Jan was hypnotized on British television by a past-life
regressionist. She recalled a life as Joan
Waterhouse, a famous witch in Chelmsford, who was tried for witchcraft and set
free in 1566. Jan gave the date as 1556.
Experts discounted the regression as
cryptomnesia, because the error in date
was published in a Victorian reprint of a
rare pamphlet on the trial. Only two copies of this reprint are in existence; one of
them is on display at the British Museum.
It is possible that Jan saw the pamphlet,
though she did not recall doing so. She
had only a grammar school education,
yet gave accurate details of the trial and
the major figures in it.
Cryptomnesia is also considered the
explanation for some cases of recitative
xenoglossy. This occurs in instances of
past-life memories in which a person
speaks a fe,,'! words and phrases of foreign languages he or she has not learned.
See Xenoglossy.
When cryptomnesia occurs the individual usually is not aware of it. Two mediums investigated by psychologist Ian
Stevenson claimed not to have read the
obituaries of people they contacted
through their Ouija board. Yet Stevenson
discovered that one of them was in the
habit of working on crossword puzzles in
the Daily Telegraph, which appeared on
the same page as the obituaries. Stevenson concluded that the obituary information fell within range of the eye and was
absorbed unconsciously.
It is difficult for researchers to eliminate the possibility of cryptomnesia in
many afterlife and reincarnation cases,
because no one knows the limits of how

132

much the brain can store for how long. In

one of the most famous cryptomnesia
cases, information obtained by a girl at
age twelve was dredged up years later as
"contact with the dead." Under hypnosis
the woman, identified only as "Miss c.,"
communicated with a Blanche Poynings,
who said she had been a minor person in
the court of Richard II. The period details
provided were remarkably accurate.
Asked what books she had read about
Richard II, Miss c., using a Ouija under
hypnosis, acknowledged that as a girl she
had read the novel Countess Maud, by
Emily Holt. The details in the novel corresponded to the material provided by
Blanche Poynings, though Miss C. altered
the portrayal of the Blanche personality.
In the 1960s Finnish psychiatrist
Reima Kampman obtained similar results
with secondary school students hypnotized to recall past lives. Kampman suggested to his subjects that they were back
in past lives, then asked them (under hypnosis) for the original source of their
memories. Some cited books they had
seen or read as a small child.
Cryptomnesia is ruled out in cases
where the information goes beyond accessible records to facts that can be verified only by other people or in personal
diaries. It is also eliminated in cases
where the individual is extremely unlikely
to have had access to any sources, such as
very young children who remember previous lives. The famous Bridey Murphy
reincarnation case of 1952 is possible but
unproven cryptomnesia, according to Stevenson, because the enormous knowledge
of period detail went far beyond what
can be explained in normal circumstances. See Past-life recall.
Sources: Alan Gauld. MediumshiP and Survival. London: William Heinemann Ltd.,
1982; Carl G. Jung, ed. Man and His Symbols. 1964. New York: Anchor Press/

Doubleday, 1988; Ian Stevenson. "Cryptomnesia and Parapsychology."

The
Journal

of the Society for Psychical

Re-

Cryptomnesia

search 52, no. 793 (February 1983): 1-30;

Ian Wilson. All in the Mind. Garden City,
NY: Doubleday, 1982; Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook of Parapsychology.
New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977.

Crystals
Clear and colored quartz, as well as semiprecious and precious stones-all generally referred to in modern usage as
"crystals" -have, more than any concept
or object, become synonymous with the
New Age. From the 1980s crystals were
widely used as amulets and talismans
with reputed healing, psychic, or magical
properties. There is no scientific evidence
that crystals have paranormal properties,
but adherents believe that the stones emit

vibrations undetectable
by ordinary
means.
The modern popularity of crystals is
a new twist on ancient and universal lore.
Early civilizations valued crystals for
their alleged protective properties against
disease, bad luck, evil, and sorcery, and
for their physical and mental healing
properties. Ancient peoples most commonly wore crystals as amulets in jewelry
and breastplates. This practice continued
throughout the Middle Ages, when European nobility wore them to ward off the
plague. Crystals also were ground into a
powdered form and administered as medicines for a variety of disorders.
As in ancient times, crystals are worn
in pendants, rings, and other jewelry, carried in small pouches, placed about

Large chunks of quartz are believed

to energize rooms.

Variety of crystals and semiprecious

stones fashioned into objects for
decoration or crystalwork

Left: Herkimer diamonds. Right:

Crystal jewelry.

Crystal wands

Crystals

133

homes and offices, and crushed or soaked

in water for gem elixirs. They are said to
alleviate stress, stimulate creativity, enhance dreams, and awaken the psychic
senses and higher consciousness. In some
forms of healing therapy, they are laid in
patterns on the body's chakra points and
energy meridians. They also are used in
divination, in which they are cast in lots
or selected from piles, and in meditation.
They are used in alternative medical
treatment of animals as well as humans.
Crystals are often fashioned in wands and
other magical tools.
Some crystal enthusiasts believe they
can "program" certain stones, such as
clear quartz, for certain functions. The
stones are first "cleared" by immersing
them in salt, exposing them to sunlight,
or some other technique, and then they
are "programmed" through meditation
or concentration. Stones that are "double
terminated," or have points on both ends,
are said to have greater powers.
Individuals who claim to channel entities say the purpose of the crystal renaissance is to teach spiritual awareness
and help heal. See Amulet; Colors; Talismans.

134

Sources: Randall N. Baer and Vicki Vittitow Baer. The Crystal Connection: A
Guidebook for Personal and Planetary Ascension. San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1987; E. A. Wallis Budge. Amulets and Superstitions. 1930. New York: Dover Publications, 1978; Edmund Harold. Focus on
Crystals. New York: Ballantine Books,
1986; Ursula Markham. Fortune-Telling by
Crystals and Semiprecious Stones. Welling-

borough, Northamptonshire, England: The

Aquarian Press, 1987; Jake Page. "Supreme
Quartz." Omni (October 1987): 95-100;
Katrina Raphaell. Crystal Enlightenment.
New York: Aurora Press, 1985; Uma Silbey. The Complete Crystal Guidebook.
New York: Bantam Books, 1987.

Cults
See Alternative religious movements.

Culture hero
See Mythology.

Curse
See Psychic attack.

Crystals

D
Dalai Lama
The religious and temporal leader of
Tibet. Dalai Lama means "ocean of
wisdom." Tibetans usually refer to His
Holiness as Yeshe Norbu, "the Wishfulfilling Gem," or Kundun, "the Presence." According to Tibetan belief, the
Dalai Lama is an emanation of Chenresi,
the Buddha of Compassion, the national
deity of Tibet who vows to help and protect all living things. Chenresi is often depicted as a herdsman with four arms, or
as a being with eleven heads, one thousand arms, and an eye in the palm of his
hand.
The Dalai Lamaship is not a hereditary succession, but a succession of reincarnations. Prior to his death, the Dalai
Lama selects the circumstances of his
next incarnation. He may give clues as to
where he may be found, or the clues may
manifest after his death. Oracles, high lamas, and astrologers are consulted, and
the search goes out for an infant born
near the time of the Dalai Lama's death
who is his reincarnation. Candidates,
who include peasant children, are tested
for past-life recall by lamas and must
identify personal objects owned by the
Dalai Lama. The child also may recognize
high lamas, or recite scriptures he has not
been taught. Once certified the new Dalai
Lama is taken to the Potala Palace in
Llasa to be enthroned and schooled. A

Dalai Lama

regent rules in his name until he is old

enough to assume his duties.
The Dalai Lamaship was instituted
in the fourteenth century by Tsongkhapa
(b. 1357), the founder of the Yellow Hat
branch of Tibetan Buddhism, the church
of most Tibetans and Mongols. Khapa
went to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, where
he instituted religious reforms, created a
monastic hierarchy, and discouraged the
magical practices of the Red Hat branch,
which had evolved out of the native Bon
religion and early Buddhism. The First
Dalai Lama, Gendiin Drub, was born in
1391 as an incarnation of Chenresi.
Of the early Dalai Lamas, two became famous: the fifth and the sixth. The
Great Fifth seized secular power in 1642
with the help of Mongol troops. He defined the powers of the Dalai Lamaship.
He traveled to Peking, where the Manchu
emperor received him as King of Tibet
and named him "Universal Ruler of the
Buddhist Faith." Until the end of the
nineteenth century, there existed a reciprocal relationship between the Dalai
Lama and the Emperor of China, who
wielded some secular power in Tibet.
The Great Fifth enlarged the
Potala-originally constructed as a meditation pavilion in about the seventh century by a Tibetan king-by turning it into
a thirteen-story palace. He was afraid
that if he died before it was completed,
work would come to a halt. He died dur-

135

and early twentieth

centuries. Thupten
Gyatso improved living standards, reorganized the army, and opened the isolated country to the technological
advances of the industrialized
world. In
1912, the year following
the revolt
against the Manchu dynasty in China, the
Chinese were driven out of Tibet and the
country was independent until 1950.
Thupten Gyatso died in 1933. Several days after his death, the face of his
corpse, which had been ceremonially enthroned prior to burial, turned to the
east, giving a sign for the whereabouts of
his successor.
The Fourteenth
Dalai
Lama, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, was
born to a large peasant family in the
northeastern village of Takster on July 6,
1935. He was taken by procession
to
Lhasa in 1939 and was enthroned on the
Lion Throne in 1940.

His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai

Lama, Tenzin Gyatso
ing construction of the second story. The
news of his death was concealed for thirteen years so that the palace could be
completed; a monk \vho resembled him
was substituted in his place for public appearances, and a regent actually ruled. In
1697 the Sixth Dalai Lama, already in his
teens, was revealed.
Melodious Purity, as the Sixth Dalai
Lama was called, was renowned for his
drinking and his consorting with numerous women in T antric sexual rites. He
wrote love songs that continue to be sung
in the present day. The Manchu emperor,
plotting against him, imited him to Peking and had him poisoned along the
\vay. The murder of Melodious Purity encouraged the later murders of the young
ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth Dalai
Lamas by the Chinese, all with the tacit
approYaI of the ruling regents.
The Thirteenth Dalai Lama, Thupten
Gyatso,
managed
to a\'oid this fate;
he ruled during the latter nineteenth

136

In 1950, at age sixteen, Tenzin

Gyatso assumed full political power as
the head of the Tibetan state due to the
invasion
and occupation
of Chinese
Communist troops. For nearly nine years
he led a policy of nonviolence against the
occupation,
during which he worked to
reassert independence. In 1959 a revolt in
eastern Tibet was crushed, and Chinese
troops marched
on Lhasa. The Dalai
Lama, his family, and others fled to
India.
Since 1960 T enzin Gyatso has resided in exile in Dharmsala, India, called
"Little Lhasa." He has been active on behalf of Tibet, traveling throughout
the
world to meet with religious and political
leaders, among them the late Pope Paul
VI, and Pope John Paul II. He has established educational, cultural, and religious
organizations
to preserve Tibetan culture
and religion. He has been instrumental in
the passage of three United Nations resolutions reaffirming the fundamental human rights of Tibetans (1959, 1961, and
1965), which have been ignored by the
Chinese. Tenzin Gyatso has stated that
his incarnation is the Dalai Lama's most

Dalai Lama

difficult, and that the lineage

with him. See Lama.

may end

Sources: Barbara and Michael Foster. Forbidden Journey: The Life of Alexandra
David-Nee!.
San Francisco:
Harper
&
Row, 1987; His Holiness the Dalai Lama
of Tibet. My Land and My People: Memoirs of the Dalai Lama of Tibet. 1962. New
York: Potala Corp., 1983; The Office of
Tibet, New York City.

Da Love-Ananda (formerly
Da Free John) (b. 1939)
American mystic and founder of the Free
Daist Communion,
a body of five institutes that disseminate Da Love-Ananda's
teachings.
Da Love-Ananda

was born Franklin

Jones on November 3, 1939, in Jamaica,

Long Island, New York. By his own account, he was "Illumined" from birth (he
capitalizes numerous \vords to emphasize
their importance), and he spent his early
years in a condition he called "Bright," in
which he was "a radiant form, a source
of energy, bliss, and light." However,
he was moved by the unhappiness of others and their lack of awareness that "Divine Happiness" was innate within them.
At age two-and-a-half,
he says, he renounced the Bright to develop and teach
a "God-Realizing
Way" of life for ordinary people.
In 1957, at age seventeen, he entered
Columbia University, where he studied
philosophy.
In 1961 he did graduate
work in English at Stanford University,
where he also volunteered
for experiments with psychedelic drugs, including
LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin. In the
mid-1960s he studied yoga and reportedly achieved the arousal of the kundalini
force. He also became involved for a time
in Scientology, where in 1968 he met
Nina, whom he married. In the same year
he visited India, where he met Swami
Muktananda
Paramahansa
(1908-1982)

Da Love-Ananda

(formerly

Da Free John)

and became his chela, or student, for two

years. In 1969 Muktananda
bestowed
upon him the name "Love-Ananda,"
meaning "the Divine Love-Bliss," but he
continued to use his given name.
On September 10, 1970, while in a
temple of the Vedanta Society in Hollywood, California, Da Love-Ananda
had
what he described as a permanent awakening to "the Transcendental
Divine Self,
or Consciousness
Itself." He established
the Dawn Horse Communion
ashram,
based upon Bhakti (devotional)
Yoga,
and taught four stages of development:
the way of Divine Communion;
the way
of Relational Enquiry; the way of Recognition; and the way of Radical Intuition.
In 1973 he assumed the name "Bubba
Free John." Bubba was a childhood nickname, and Free John a rendering of Franklin Jones, meaning "a free man through
whom God is Gracious."
By 1979 he had dropped Bubba in
favor of "Da" ("Giver of Life"), which
had been revealed to him in a vision. It is
interpreted as an honorific meaning "one
who Gives or Transmits the Divine Influence and Awakening to living beings."
His organization
was known as the Johannine Daist Communion,
comprising
the Laughing Man Institute,
the Free
Communion
Church,
the Advaitayana
Buddhist Order, and the Crazy Wisdom
Fellowship.
By 1986 Da Love-Ananda had written more than thirty works and had established three meditation
centers: the
Mountain of Attention in northern California,
T umomama
in Hawaii,
and
Translation
Island Hermitage
in Fiji.
However, he was greatly discouraged by
the inability or refusal of the average person to "Realize the Truth," and knew his
teachings were doomed to failure. On
January 11, 1986, he reportedly died at
the Translation
Island Hermitage. Then,
in the presence of his physician and several witnesses, he reportedly reentered his
body in an act of love for humanity. It is

(b. 1939)

137

claimed that he actually died and resurrected himself and did not merely have a
near-death experience.
His alleged physical death freed him
from his teaching and his need to interact
with ordinary people. He resides at the
Hermitage,
\vhere he merely "Stands
Free" and is "Boundlessly Radiant" in all
directions, ready to "Offer the direct Realization of Truth" to all who \vill receive
"His Gift." He lives almost as a recluse,
cared for by a small number of attendants
and granting audiences to a few practitioners. He adopted new titles, and is
known informally as "Da Love-Ananda"
or "Heart-Master
Da Love-Ananda,"
and
formally
as "Avadhoota
Da
LoveAnanda Hridayam."
"Avadhoota"
refers
to one who has passed beyond worldly
attachments
and desires; "Hridayam"
is
Sanskrit for "heart."
The Free Daist Communion,
the
present name of Da Love-Ananda's
religious organization,
dedicates
itself to
spreading his teachings. It includes five
fellowships for different levels of practice: the Laughing Man Institute, based in
San Rafael, California; the Dawn Horse
Fellowship; the Ajna Dharma Fellowship;
the Advaitayana
Buddhist
Fellowship;
and the Crazy Wisdom Fellowship.
Sources: Heart

Nlaster Da Love-Ananda.

Compulsory Dancing. First published as

Conversion. 1979. San Rafael, CA: The
Dawn Horse Ptess, 1987; Heart Master Da
Love-Ananda. The Knee of Listening: The
Early Life and Radical Spiritual Teachings
of Heart-;\iaster Da Love-Ananda (Da Free
John). 1972. San Rafael, CA: The Dawn
Horse Press, 1987; Leslie A' Shepard, ed.
Encyclopedia of Ocwltism
and Parapsychology. 2d ed. Detroit: Gale Research Co.,
1984; John White, ed. What Is Enlightenment? Exploring the Goal of the Spiritual
Path. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher,
1984.

138

David-Ned, Alexandra
(1868-1969)
French explorer, author, and scholar of
Tibet, the first Western woman to enter
Llasa, the forbidden capital of Tibet. Alexandra David-Neel spent fourteen years
in Tibet as one of the first Westerners to
probe that nation's mysticism
She claimed to be descended

and magic.
from Gen-

ghis Khan on her mother's side. She was

the consummate
adventurer,
and stated
once that the surest elixir to youth is
travel and intellectual activity.
She was born Louise Eugenie Alexandrine Marie David on October
24,
1868, in Paris, and was raised in Brussels
from age five. Her father, Louis David,
was a Huguenot
activist and friend of
novelist Victor Hugo. Her introduction
to occultism came at age fifteen, when
she read a journal published by the Supreme Gnosis, an occult society in London. In 1888, at age twenty, she went to
London to study for a year and boarded
at the Supreme Gnosis quarters. There
she was exposed to Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, and Spiritualism.
In 1889 she went to Paris to study at
the Sorbonne,
and lived with Theosophists in the Latin Quarter. She became
interested in Buddhism, and wrote articles on religion and occultism for various
intellectual journals.
In 1891 she inherited money, which
enabled her to travel to India and Ceylon
to the edge of the Himalayas. After her
return to Paris, she worked as a singer
under
the pseudonym
Mademoiselle
Myrial, after one of Hugo's characters. In
1900, at age thirty-two,
she met Philip
Neel, a bachelor and engineer seven years
her senior, and became one of his mistresses. They were married in 1904 in
Tunis. After two years of a stormy union,
David-Neel
left. They remained
married, however, and Philip supported her
financially during most of her years of
travel.

Da Love-Ananda

(formerly

Da Free John)

(b. 1939)

Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet

By 1904 David-Neel had termed herself a "rational
Buddhist,"
and wrote
her articles from this perspective.
She
lectured to Theosophical
audiences in
London and Paris in 1910. In 1911 she
returned to India to studv Oriental languages. There she met Sri Aurobindo
Ghose.
In 1912 she met the Maharaj Kumar
(Cro\Vil Prince) of Sikkim,
Sidkeong
Tulku, who invited her to Gangtok, the
capital of Sikkim, which lies at the border
between India and Tibet. She and the
prince, younger than she, formed a romantic friendship.
David-Neel
was entranced by the Tibetan culture and took
quickly to its customs. Sidkeong introduced her to lamas of both the Red Hat
(traditional)
and YellO\v Hat (reformed)
branches of Tibetan Buddhism. The populace treated her as an emanation
of
Queen
Palden
Tibet.

Victoria, who was

Llamo, the patron

regarded
goddess

as
of

On April 15, 1912, David-Neel had

the first of two audiences with the Thir-

Dauid-Neel,

Alexandra

(1868-1969)

teenth Dalai Lama, held in Kalimpong,

India. He advised her to learn Tibetan.
Later, a naljorpa, a wizard, advised her to
enter Tibet- despite the fact that travel
there was forbidden to foreigners - and
be initiated by a master. Instead she returned to Sikkim to resume her study of
Sanskrit, believing that her destiny lay in
writing a major work on comparative
branches
of Buddhism.
Her circumstances changed radically in 1914, when
the early death of Sidkeong cut off her
access to royal courts and World War I
prevented her return to Europe.
She became a disciple of the Gomchen (Great Hermit) of Lachen, whom
she had met in 1912. The Gomchen lived
as a hermit in the Sikkim Himalayas at
De-Chen in the Cave of Clear Light, located at 12,000 feet. In exchange for instruction
in Tibetan
and Tantra,
she
pledged complete obedience and taught
him English. The Gomchen gave her the
name "Lamp of Wisdom." She took up
residence as a hermit in a cave one mile
below his. One of her servants was a mi-

139

nor tulku, a boy of fifteen named Aphur

Yongden, who later became her adopted
son and a lama in his own right.
David-Neel
developed
a telepathic
rapport with the Gomchen, considered
(he highest form of teaching but rarely
artained due to the insufficient psychic
de\'elopment
on the part of the pupils.
She also learned various psychic arts,
by which Tisuch as tumo breathing,
betan yogis keep themselves warm in the
frigid winters, and which prepares one
for spiritual emancipation.
See Milarepa.
She had sensations of having been a nomad of Central Asia in a previous life.
The Gomchen is most likely the one who
initiated David-Neel into the Short Path
of Tibetan mysticism and ga\'e her permission to reveal her knowledge.
The
Short Path, preferred by Tibetan sorcerers and magicians, requires no long-term
monastic discipline, and the initiate may
undertake whate\'er experiments are desired for advancement.
Tibet

In 1916 David-~eel
at the im'itation

illegally entered
of the Panchen

Lama, second in rank to the Dalai Lama,

and spent time at his monastery at Shigatse. As a result the British expelled her
from her Sikkimese hermit's cave. All her
servants save Yongden, who had a British
passport, deserted her. She and Yongden
departed for Japan. From there they went
into China and secretly penetrated Tibet
again in a dangerous journey, reaching
their goal of Kumbum, the monastery
that probably served as the model for the
Shangri-La
in James
Hilton's
novel
Shangri-La. David-:-\eel spent mo-and-ahalf years at Kumbum, during which she
translated rare manuscripts
into French
and English, and obserwd
the magical
and ps\'chic reats of Tibetan adepts.
In 1921 she set out ,,'ith Yongden
and a ne\\' part\' of servants for Lhasa.
She had no money-presumably
funds
from Philip \vere stolen by Chinese
officials - and dressed in tartered clothing. She "'as

140

beset by bandits

but was

never harmed, and frequently took hospitality from them. Yongden passed her
off as a sorceress and as the wife of a
deceased sorcerer to cajole offerings of
food from peasants. She also masqueraded as a kamdora, a female spirit or
fairy whose blessings are sought.
The journey to Lhasa took three
years due to detours caused by local
fighting,
bandits,
wild animals,
and
avoidance of government
officials. The
last stage of the journey was made across
the uncharted and treacherous Po country, whose
mored
to

wild inhabitants
were rube cannibals.
David-Neel

walked through deep snow, slept in icy

caves, and was often ill. She had to resort
to tumo to stay alive, and to lung-gom
traveling, a type of entranced movement
that enables rapid progress without food,
water, or rest. Accomplished
lung-gompas bound along as though their bodies
are very light; they are reputed to fly at
times. It is believed that when in trance,
they cannot be disturbed, for to do so
prompts the god within them to depart
prematurely,
causing their death.
Reaching Lhasa in February 1924
was anticlimactic for David-Neel, and by
April she was anxious to leave. Her beggar's disguise prevented her from accessing the intellectual and educational
opportunities there.
By 1925 she and Yongden were back
in Paris, and David-Neel was famous for
the publicity of her exploits. She lectured
and began a demanding schedule of writing books and articles.
In 1928 she purchased a small villa
outside of Digne in southern France and
named it Sam ten Dzong, the Fortress of
Meditation.
There
she and Yongden
toiled over their manuscripts.
After Philip's death in 1941, DavidNeel acknowledged
having participated
in and observed Tantric sexual rites during her travels. She had also learned a
mild version of the chad ("to cut up")
ritual, a grim rite designed to harness oc-

David-Neel, Alexandra (1868-1969)

cult forces and liberate

one from all at-

tachments.
In the chad the participant
sacrifices himself or herself to dismemberment
and devouring
by a hungry
horde of ghouls, then renounces the sacrifice as illusion because he or she is nothing, and therefore has nothing to give.
Da,"id-Neel may have continued to practice the chad during her later years in
France.
Yongden was expected to manage
David-NeeFs estate, but the lama, an alcoholic, died of uremic poisoning
in
1955.
David-Nee!
hired
a secretary,
Jeanne Denys, in 1958. Denys came to
despise the ill-tempered David-Neel, and
devoted ten :"ears to an unsuccessful attempt to prove her works as fiction.
In 1959 David-Neel
hired Marie:Yladeleine Peyronnet, who looked after
her until she died just short of age 101 on
September 6, 1969. Twentv years later
Pevronnet was still working at Samten
Dzong, ,vhich is now a conference center
and museum . .:vIost of David-Nee!'s
books and artifacts ,vent to various other
museums.
David-NeeFs
,yorks include more
than thirty titles, and contain descriptions
of Tibetan practices, rituals, and ceremonies that \X'esterners are unlikely ever to
see performed
again" Her best-known
books are My Journey to Lhasa (1927',
an account of her penetration to the capital; Magic and Mystery in Tibet (1929"
anecdotal accounts of magical and mvstical practices; Initiations and Initiates of
Tibet (1930, a more serious discussion of
T antric lore and mystical rites; and Buddhism: Its Doctrines and Its Alethods
:1936"
a recapitulation
of an earlier
work on Buddhist doctrines. During her
life she recei,"ed many honors, including
the French Legion of Honor, the gold
medal of the Geographical
Society of
Paris, the sih"er medal of the Royal Be!gian Geographical
Society, and the Insigne of the Chinese Order of the Brilliant
Star.

Deathbed

visions

Of all her adventures,

David-Nee!
considered her stay at the hermit's cave in
the Sikkimese Himalayas to be the summit of her dream. She inspired many, including Lama Anagarika Govinda, who
tutored under the same Gomchen. See
Dalai Lama;

Shambhala;

Thought-form.

Sources: Alexandra
David-Nee!.
1929.
lviagic and Mystery in Tibet. New York:
Dover
Publications,
1971;
Alexandra
David-Nee!. .lvIy Journey to Lhasa. 1927.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1986; Barbara and
Michael Foster. Forbidden Journey: The
Life of Alexandra David-Neel. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987; Leslie A.
Shepard, ed. Encyclopedia of Occultism
and Parapsychology. 2d ed. Detroit: Gale
Research Co., 1984.

Dead Sea Scrolls

See Essenes; Gnosticism.

Deathbed VISiOns
Paranormal
experiences
of the dying.
:Ylost deathbed visions are apparitions of
the dead or mythical or religious figures,
and visions of an aftenvorld.
Deathbed
visions are significant because they provide evidence, albeit not scientific, in support of sun'ival of consciousness
after
death. The visions share certain traits
with mystical experiences,
such as a
marked sense of the sacred, profound
peace, and elation.
Deathbed visions have been recorded
since ancient times. Early psychical researchers, among them James H. Hyslop
and E. Bazzano, collected and studied
cases around the turn of the twentieth
century. The first systematic study was
done by William Barrett, English professor of physics and psychical researcher.
Barrett became interested in 1924 when
his wife, a physician specializing in obstetrical surgery, told him about a woman

141

patient whose deathbed

VISIOns transformed her into a state of peace and radiance just before she died.
Several decades later other significant research was conducted
by Karlis
Osis under the auspices of first the Parapsychology
Foundation
and then the
American Society for Psychical Research.
Between 1959 and 1973, Osis collected
data on tens of thousands of deathbed
and near-death experiences in the United
States and, in a joint effort with Erlendur
Haraldsson, in India. Their findings confirmed Barrett's research, the experiences
of Elisabeth Kiibler-Ross and others who
work with the terminally ill and dying,
and research of the near-death
experience (NDE). See Near-death
experience
(NDE).
Deathbed
visions
share common
characteristics
not influenced by racial,
cultural, religious, educational,
age, and
socioeconomic
lines, such as radiant
lights, scenes of great beauty, beings of
light, and feelings of great peace. Most
deathbed visions are of glowing beings of
light: apparitions of the dead known to
the dying, or great religious or mythical
figures, such as the Virgin Mary, Jesus,
or other deities, angels, and so on. These
figures are called "take-away
apparitions" because their apparent
purpose
is to summon or escort the dving to the
aftef\vorld. Their appearance usually elicits a response of joy, peace, happiness,
and cessation of pain, though a small
number of individuals react with fear or
denial.
People who attend the dying may see
the take-away apparitions,
albeit rarely,
or perceive an unusual light or energy in
the room. They may also witness an energy cloud form over the dying, which in
a few cases has been reported to assume
the shape and appearance
of the dying,
connected to the body by a silvery cord.
When the person dies, the cord is severed,
and the astral shape dissipates. See Outof-body experience (OBE).

142

Total visions, in which the dying behold (or are transported

out-of-body
to
see) a preview of the afterworld, occur in
about one-third of deathbed visions. Such
visions usually are of endless and exquisitely beautiful gardens. Other visions are
of great architectural structures and symbols of transition such as gates, bridges,
rivers, and boats. These afterworld scenes
may be populated with angels or spirits
of the dead and, in a small number of
cases, may be permeated
with celestial
music. Typically, colors are vivid, and the
dying one feels uplifted. Seldom do afterworld visions conform to the religious expectations of the dying.
About half of all deathbed visions
studied by Osis and Haraldsson
lasted
five minutes or less. Another 17 percent
lasted between six and fifteen minutes,
and 17 percent lasted more than one
hour. Approximately
76 percent of the
patients died within ten minutes of their
vision, and almost all died within one or
several hours.
Theories
discounting
deathbed
visions propose that they are hallucinations
induced by drugs, fever, disease, oxygen
deprivation, wish-fulfillment,
and depersonalization.
However,
such hallucinations arising from these factors usually
concern the present and not the afterworld. Furthermore,
Osis and Haraldsson found that deathbed visions are most
likely to occur to patients
conscIOus.

who are fully

Deathbed visions are significant to

thanatology, the scientific study of death,
for they shoyv death not as extinction but
as a wondrous transition, a rite of passage that should be undergone
consciously and yvith dignity. There are various arts to "right dying," as exemplified
in the ancient Western mystery traditions
and in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. In
the modern West, however, this passage
is undermined by fear of death and high
technology that enables vegetative husks
to cling to pointless life as long as possi-

Deathbed visions

ble. See Apparition;

enon.

Encounter

phenom-

Sources: William Barrett. Death-Bed Visions: The Psychical Experiences of the Dying. 1926. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England: The Aquarian Press, 1986;
W. Y. Evans-Wentz, compo and ed. The Tibetan Book of the Dead. 3d ed. London:
Oxford University Press, 1960; Michael
Grosso. The Final Choice: Playing the Survival Game. Walpole, NH: Stillpoint Publishing, 1985; Edmund Gurney, Frederic
W. H. Myers, and Frank Podmore. Phantasms of the Living. London: Kegan Paul,
Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd., 1918; Karlis
Osis. Deathbed Observations by Physicians
and Nurses. Monograph no. 3. New York:
Parapsychology Foundation,
1961; Karlis
Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson, At the Hour
of Death. Rev. ed. New York: Hastings
House, 1986.

Decline/incline

effects

Two phenomena associated with psi testing in the laboratory.

The decline effect
occurs when a high-scoring subject's performance begins to decline, either within
a run (a fixed group of successive trials)
or a session (all trials completed within
one sitting). The term also applies to the
diminishing of one's psi talent in general.
The incline effect is the opposite: a subject's scores increase in runs and sessions.
The decline effect is said to be the
most consistent finding in parapsychology: The more a subject is tested, no matter how gifted, the progressively lower his
or her scores. Scores that are above
chance in the beginning slide to chance or
below. Many gifted subjects lose their talent after only a few runs, while others
can endure through thousands of trials.
Pavel Stepanek, a gifted Czech subject,
managed to last ten years before his ability declined. Some subjects regain their
ability after a hiatus. Many test subjects
have reported a loss of spontaneity
and
attention and a drop in enthusiasm during tests of twenty runs.

Declinelincline

effects

Less gifted subjects are not tested as

extensively as gifted ones, yet they do suffer the decline effect, usually between sessions. Declines within a single session are
rare. The attitude of the experimenter
also is a factor; if the subject senses a
waning interest, scores tend to drop.
Charles T. Tart, American parapsychologist, hypothesized in the 1960s that
the reason for the decline effect is the lack
of immediate feedback for the test subject. The perception
of psi is a subtle
process. Proficiency in recognizing it depends on being able to distinguish subtle
internal cues and feelings. Without immediate feedback a subject has no way of
judging which cues are correct and which
are not. The result is confusion and a decline in scores.
Another major factor is boredom.
Many tests involve numerous repetitions
of tasks, such as guessing cards and dice
throws.
Not surprisingly,
the subjects
psychically burn out.
The incline effect, in which scores
become progressively higher, may reflect
learning and skill improvements
on the
part of the subject. Some parapsychologists believe scores can be improved by
giving subjects immediate feedback on results. The incline effect occurs far less frequently than the decline
perimenter effect.

effect. See Ex-

Sources: Hoyt L. Edge, Robert L. Morris,

John Palmer, and Joseph H. Rush. Foundations of Parapsychology. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986; Stanley Krippner, ed. Advances in Parapsychological
Research 2: Extrasensory Perception. New
York: Plenum Press, 1978; J. B. Rhine and
Robert Brier, eds. Parapsychology Today.
New York: The Citadel Press, 1968;
Charles T. Tart. Psi: Scientific Studies in
the Psychic Realm. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1977.

143

A disorientation
of time in which one
feels that one has been to an unknown
place before, or has experienced a situation before. Deja vu is an impression of
familiarity that is unexpected, and applies
to events, experiences,
sensory impressions, dreams, thoughts, statements, desires, emotions, meetings, visits, the act of
reading, the state of knowing, and, in
general, living. The term, French for "already seen," was first used to describe
such experiences in 1876 by E. Letter
Boirac, who called it "la sensation du
deja vu." It was introduced to science in
1896 by F. L Arnaud. There is no adequate English equivalent for the term
"deja vu."
Deja vu is a common psychological
experience. In a 1986 poll conducted by
the University
of Chicago's
National
Opinion Research Council, 67 percent of
adult Americans
reported
instances of
deja vu, up from 58 percent in 1973. In
other studies deja vu is experienced more
frequentlv among women than men, and
among younger people than older.
Theories eXplaining deja vu differ
\videly. Some psychologists call it "double cerebration."
As early as 1884, theories \vere ad\'anced suggesting that one
hemisphere of the brain receives information a split second earlier than the other
half. In 1895 English psychical researcher
Frederic W. H. :vlyers theorized that the
subconscious mind registered information
sooner than the conscious mind. The biological process of deja m, if there is one,
has not been proved.
Reincarnationists
say deja vu is
caused by fragments of past-life memories jarred to the surface of the mind by
familiar surroundings
or people. Others
say it may be the product of out-of-body
travel during sleep, or other extrasensory
phenomena such as clailToyance or telepathy. Still others, using psychiatrist Carl
G. Jung's theory of the collective uncon-

144

scious, say deja vu happens when one

draws on the collective memories of humankind.
Jung had a profound deja vu experience on his first trip to Africa. Looking
our the train window, he felt he was returning to the land of his youth of five
thousand years earlier. He explained it
in Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961)
as "recognition
of the immemorially
known." See Collective unconscious.
Sources: Andrew Greeley. "Mysticism Goes
Mainstream."
American Health (January!
February 1987): 47-56; Joseph Head and
S. L. Cranston. Reincarnation: The Phoenix fire Mystery. New York: Julian Press!
Crown, 1977; Gardner Murphy. "Direct
Contacts with Past and Future: Retrocognition and Precognition."
The Journal of
the American Society for Psychical Research 61, no. 1 (January 1967): 3-23;
Vernon M. Neppe. The Psychology of Deja
Vu. Johannesburg, South Africa: Witwatersrand University Press, 1983; Benjamin B.
Wolman, ed. Handbook of Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold,

1977.

Demon
A low-level spirit that interacts in the affairs of the physical world. Demons are
universally believed to exist in numerous
varieties, and may be either entirely good,
entirely evil, or capable of both. They
may offer advice and assistance or be responsible for bad luck, disease, illness,
and death. Demons may be summoned,
controlled, or expelled by qualified adepts, such as a priest, magician, sorcerer,
or shaman.
"Demon" means "replete with wisdom," and is derived from the Greek daimon, "divine power," "fate," or "god."
To the Greeks daimons were intermediary spirits - including
those
heroes-between
humankind
gods. A daimon acted
spirit. See Inspiration.

of deified
and the

as an advisory

Deja vu

Demons, by Hans Holbein the Younger

Demons in Western religion and lore
have been classified into various systems
since at least A.D. 100-400. The Testa-

ment of Solomon, which dates to this period, describes Solomon's magic ring for
commanding
demons called the djinn,
and gives the names and functions of various Hebre\v,
Greek, Assyrian,
Babylonian, Egyptian,
and perhaps Persian
demons. During the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries,
Christian
demonologists catalogued
demons into various
hierarchies of hell and ascribed to them
attributes and duties, including ambassadorships to earthly nations. The most
complex hierarchy was devised by Johann \lVeyer, who estimated that there
were 7,405,926
demons serving under
seventy-two princes.
Much demon lore concerns sexual
intercourse between demons and humans.
Demons with such sexual appetites are in
the demonologies
of the ancient Hebrews, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, Persians, and other cultures.

Demon

Judaic demonology is complex and is

derived from Hebrew, Christian, Arabic,
Germanic, and Slavic sources. Kabbalistic
works contain contradictory
conceptions.
The Zohar follows a Talmudic legend of
the origin of certain demons as the products of sexual intercourse
between humans and demonic powers: Every pollution of semen results in demons. Other
demons, such as Lilith, were created as
disembodied spirits during the six days of
Creation,
especially at twilight on the
Sabbath eve; they too are associated with
sexual
intercourse
with humans-the
"night terrors."
Other Kabbalistic writings speak of demons created out of fire
and air, demons that fill the air between
the Earth and the moon, and good demons that help people. There are demons
who, with angels, are in charge of the
night hours, and interpretations
of diseases, and those who have seals that must
be used to summon them.
In Christianity
demons are associated only with evil. They include the an-

145

gels \vho cast their lot with Lucifer and

were thrown
along with him out of
heaven, as well as pagan deities turned
into demons by the church. As agents of
the Devil, demons devote themselves to
leading humans astray, tormenting them,
assaulting them sexually, and in some
cases possessing
them.
Prior to the
twelfth century, sex with demons was not
considered possible, but the belief became
dogma by the fourteenth
century. Demons in the shape of human males (incubi) were said to prey on women, while
demons in female shapes (succubi) preyed
on men. During the Inquisition heretics,
who e,'entually
included witches, were
accused of engaging in sexual orgies with
demons. The sex usually was portrayed
as unpleasant and painful, although according to the church, which had a low
view of women as weak and inclined toward immorality,
some women enjoyed
copulation
with
demons.
Monstrous
births were explained away as the products of human-demon
intercourse.
See
Witchcraft.
In other cultures, such as ShintoBuddhist Japan, demons are associated
with ghosts of the dead.
Demons that plague humans with
problems and illness are exorcised according to rituals. It is universally believed that demons may be kept at bay
through various preventive rituals, such
as certain prayers or charms, or by certain amulets worn on the body or kept on
the premises. See Amulet; Exorcism; PosseSSIOn.
In ritual magic demons are summoned by elaborate ritual and dispatched
on tasks. They are considered to be tricky
and rather dangerous to work with. See
Crowley, Aleister; Hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn; Psychic attack. Compare
to Angel.
Sources: Richard Ca,'endish.
The Black
Arts. J\'ew York: Perigee Books, 1967;
Rosemarv Ellen Guiley. The Encyclopedia
of W'itches and \Y,'itchcraft. J\'ew York:

146

Facts On File, 1989; Jeffrey Burton Russell.

Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press,
1984; Gershom Scholem. Kabbalah. New
York: New American Library, 1974.

Depossession
The exorcism

(also releasement)
of attached

discarnate

hu-

man spirits and nonhuman

spirits allegedly attached to living people, causing a
host of physical, mental, and emotional
ills. Types of depossession are practiced
around the world.
"Depossession"
as such is an outgrowth of past-life therapy, largely as a
result of the research of American psychologist Edith Fiore. The term "depossession"
is preferred
to "exorcism,"
which connotes demonic possession.
Fiore and other past-life therapists
attest that in regressing patients to past
lives, they observe interference from attached
spirits.
Among
about
30,000
cases, Fiore estimated that 70 percent of
all patients have at least one spirit attached to them, but are not aware of it.
The spirits allegedly create problems such
as unexplained mood swings and behavior, chronic pains and illnesses, mental illness, suicidal urges, and drug and alcohol
abuse.
Most spirits are believed to be deceased humans who have not left the
earth plane. They are said to attach themselves to a member of their family or find
an individual who is weakened by substance abuse, hostility, or severe illness.
Nonhuman spirits include elementals and
evil-natured entities.
Depossession
usually
is accomplished merely by persuading the spirits
to depart. Patients subsequently say they
feel lighter and better, though this may be
due at least in part to expectations of relief.
According to Fiore many possessions
are karmic, caused by spirit possession in
past li,'es on the part of the patients.

Demon

r
Some therapists say that past-life recalls
may concern not the patients, but their
attached
spirits. See Past-life therapy
(PLT).
Depossession has precedence in the
West. During the height of Spiritualism,
people suffering from unusual mental
symptoms
often attended
seances
in
hopes of having "low" spirits exorcised.
The first medically trained person to approach mental illness as due to spirit possession \vas Carl Wickland, an American
physician and psychologist who had attended
numerous
Spiritualist
seances.
Wickland and his wife, Anna, attributed
all manner of mental conditions and illnesses to confused, benign spirits who
were trapped in the auras of living people. The Wicklands depossessed patients
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. \Vickland invented a static electricity machine
that transmitted
lowvoltage electric shock to the patient, causing the possessing spirit great discomfort.
The device was a forerunner
of lowvoltage electric shock treatment used in
psychotherapy.
Wickland then forced the spirit to
leave its victim, enter Anna's body, and
then finally depart forever. If the spirit
resisted, Wickland called on "helper spirits" to keep the possessing spirit in a socalled "dungeon,"
out of the aura of the
victim or Anna, until the spirit gave up its
selfish attitude and departed.
Titus Bull, a New York physician
and neurologist,
used a medium in the
early twentieth century to persuade obsessing entities to depart. See Exorcism;
Possession; Thought-form.
Sources: Dr. Edith Fiore. The Unquiet
Dead: A Psychologist Treats Spirit Possession. Garden City, NY: DolphinIDoubleday & Co., 1987; Edith Fiore, Ph.D. "Freeing Stalemates in Relationships
by the
Resolution of Entity Attachments."
The
journal of Regression Therapy 3, no. 1
(Spring 1988): 22-25; Louise Ireland-Frey.
"Clinical Depossession: Releasement of At-

Deva

tached Entities from Unsuspecting Hosts."

The journal of Regression Therapy 1, no. 2
(Fall 1986): 90-101; Hiroshi Motoyama,
Ph.D. "Bodily Healing through Releasement." The journal of Regression Therapy
2, no. 2 (Fall 1987): 108-9; D. Scott Rogo.
The Infinite Boundary. New York: Dodd,
Mead & Co., 1987; Carl Wickland. Thirty
Years Among the Dead. 1924. North Hollywood, CA: Newcastle Publishing Co.,

1974.

Depth psychology
See Psychology.

Dervish
See Sufism.

Deva
In Hinduism and Buddhism, an exalted
being of various kinds. The term deva is
Sanskrit for "shining one."
Hinduism distinguishes
three kinds
of devas: mortals who live in a higher
realm than other mortals,
enlightened
people who have realized God, and Brahman in the form of a personal God.
In Buddhism devas are gods who live
in various realms of heaven as a reward
for their previous good deeds; however,
they are still subject to rebirth.
Madame
Helena P. Blavatsky, cofounder of the Theosophical
Society, introduced
the concept of devas to the
West, defining them as types of angels or
gods who were progressed entities from a
previous planetary period. They arrived
on earth before elementals or human beings, and would remain dormant until a
certain stage of human evolution was
reached. At that time the devas would integrate with elementals and help further
the spiritual development of humankind,
Blavatsky said.

147

In modern times devas are popularly

thought of more as nature spirits, who
may elect to help people. They usually are
invisible, but may be seen by clairvoyance. They are said to communicate
through clairaudience and meditation.
The amazing produce of Findhorn in
Scotland, and of Perelandra in Washington, DC, has been attributed to cooperation between people and devas. Devas
manifest as "architects"
of nature; one is
assigned to every living thing, even the
soil. The deva designs blueprints for all
living things, and orchestrates
the energies necessary for growth and health. At
Findhorn and Perelandra, devas dispense
advice on planting, fertilizing, watering,
and general plant care. Despite human
destruction
of the environment,
which
dismays and perplexes the devas, the devas remain willing to work with those human beings who make an effort to understand the intricacies and harmonies of
nature.

See Nature

spirits; Findhorn.

Sources: H. P. Blavatsky. 1888. The Secret

Doctrine.
Pasadena,
CA: Theosophical
University Press, 1977; Findhorn Community. The Findhorn Garden. New York:
Harper & Row Perennial Library, 1975;
Paul Hawken. The Magic of Findhorn.
New York: Bantam Books, 1976; The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion. Boston: Shambhala, 1989; The New
Age Catalogue. Kew York: Doubleday!
Dolphin, 1988.

Dharma
In Hinduism and Buddhism, law, truth,
or doctrine that defines the cosmos; also,
duty, truth, righteousness,
virtue, ideal,
phenomena,
and so on. Dharma
has
many-shaded
meanings,
depending
on
context. "Dharma"
is Sanskrit from the
Aryan root dhar, to uphold, sustain, or
support. Its Pali form is dhamma, \vhich
is generally used in The1;avada Buddhism.
In Hinduism dharma is the supreme
operating law of the universe, governing

148

earth and all beings upon it and all gods

in the cosmos, existing with neither beginning nor end in time. The major aspects of dharma that govern human beings and the world are samsara,
or
reincarnation;
karma, the law of cause
and effect; and moksha, the spiritual liberation from the bondage
of reincarnation. Dharma also refers to the continuous effort to eliminate karma by surrendering to divine will. Dharma is duty;
it relates to moral nature and behavior
rather than religious beliefs. Each individual has his or her own dharma to follow
in the quest
Communities

for spiritual development.

have collective dharmas to

provide educational
to their members.

and social supports

Within the context of reincarnation,

dharma is the purpose to which an individual is born, created by a need in a particular time and place. Karma is the conditioning
that
makes
fulfillment
of
dharma possible.
In Buddhism
dharma
comprises
teachings about the universe and a discipline, a means by which to attain awakening. It arises from humankind's
attempts to understand
the world. The
essence of dharma is expressed in the
Four Noble Truths:

1. Suffering exists. There are three general types of suffering: suffering of

pain, which is physical and mental;
suffering of change, which superficially appears to be pleasure but actually is suffering;
and pervasive
compositional
suffering,
which is
part of karma and rebirth. (Rebirth
and reincarnation
are not equivalent;
see Reincarnation.)
2. Suffering is caused by karma and
"afflictive emotions" such as desire,
hatred,
ignorance,
lack of selfcontrol, jealousy, and anger.
3. Suffering is ended by the extinction
or cessation of its causes.
4. Causes

are

overcome

through

the

Deva

Noble Eightfold Path, which consists

of Right View, Right Determination,
Right Effort, Right Speech, Right
Conduct,
Right Livelihood,
Right
Mindfulness,
and Right Concentration.
Dharma

is the second

of the Three

Treasures; the first is the Buddha and the

third is the Sangha, or the kinship and
harmony of all things. Dharma, the second Treasure, is the "truth of Buddhism"
or "the way." The three poisons
to
Dharma are hatred, ignorance, and greed.
Buddhists
do not follow Buddha;
they follow dharma, the way of Buddha.
The dharma is the universe, which is both
empty and void and full and complete.
Karma is the action of dharma, and freedom from karma is freedom from blind
response to it. The enlightened soul sees
karmic
hindrances
as fundamentally
empty and does not become burdened by
them. A gatha (verse stating major points
of Buddha dharma) intended to free one
from blind response to karma is the Purification Gatha:
All the evil karma ever created by
me since of old,
on account of my beginningless
greed, hatred, and ignorance,
born of my body, mouth, and
thought,
I now confess, openly and fully.
The term "dharma"

also refers to at-

tributes or phenomena
called "elements
of being," which are minute impulses of
energy. Dharmas comprise the skandas,
the karmic aggregates of form, feelings,
perceptions, impulses, and consciousness,
which in turn comprise the illusory nature of all sentient beings. See Karma.
Sources: Robert Aitken. Taking the Path of
Zen. San Francisco: North Point Press,
1982; John Blofeld. The Tantric Mysticism
of Tibet. Boston: Shambhala Publications,
1987; Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the
Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Kindness, Clarity,

Direct-voice

mediumship

and Insight. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1984; Virginia Hanson and Rosemarie Stewart, eds. Karma: The Universal
Law of Harmony. 2d ed. Wheaton, IL:
Theosophical
Publishing
House,
1981;
Yong Choon Kim. Oriental Thought. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1973;
Solange Lemaitre. Ramakrishna and the Vitality of Hinduism. 1959. Woodstock, NY:
The Overlook Press, 1984; Maurice Percheron. Buddha and Buddhism.
1956.
Woodstock,
NY: The Overlook
Press,
1982; K. M. Sen. Hinduism. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex,
England:
Penguin
Books, 1961.

Dianetics
See Church of Scientology.

Direct-voice mediumship
A method of spirit communication,
in
which a spirit speaks directly to an audience without using a medium's vocal apparatus. In early Spiritualism direct-voice
mediumship
took the form of the dead
communicating
to the living by speaking through trumpets and megaphones,
which amplified their voices. Sometimes a
spirit voice seemed to emanate from a
point in space near the medium. According to some Spiritualists, the vocalization
was made possible by an artificial larynx
constructed
by the spirits and activated
by ectoplasm. The spirits were said to use
ectoplasmic rods to manipulate the trumpets and megaphones,
which floated
around the rooms.
Most early Spiritualist mediums employed direct-voice
communication
at
one time or another, though some specialized in it more than others. In the
1850s the Spirit Room of Jonathan
Koons, an Ohio farmer, was famous for
spirits that talked and played musical instruments.
After attending
several seances, Koons claimed he was directed by
a band of spirits to build the room and

149

procure fiddles, guitar, drums, a horn,

tambourine,
triangle, and other instruments. He and his wife acted as mediums.
Audiences were impressed by the cacophony of sound while the instruments flew
about the room. Voices described as "unearthly" sang
able language,
Number One,
from different

songs in an undistinguishwhile the chief spirit, King

spoke through a tin horn
corners of the room.

Direct-voice mediumship
was often
suspected of ventriloquist
fraud. However, records of some seances conducted
in the nineteenth century attest to the authenticity
of the spirit voices, which
talked at the same time as the medium, or
several of which talked at once from different locations. As of the late twentieth
century, direct-voice mediumship
was a
rarity.
One of the best-known
modern
direct-voice mediums is Leslie Flint of
England. Flint, a Spiritualist, retired from
giving public seances in 1976, after more
than thirty-five years of direct-voice mediumship. The spirits seemed to speak
from a point above and slightly to the left
of Flint's head. Psychical
researchers
thought Flint might actually receive messages clain'oyantly
and then surreptitiously substitute his own voice. Flint was
extensively tested - he called himself "the
most tested medium in England" - but no
evidence of fraud was ever found. The
most dramatic test was done in London
and New York in 1970. Flint's lips were
sealed with plaster, and a throat microphone showed no evidence of use of his
vocal chords, despite the manifestation of
ghostly voices. See Ectoplasm; Spiritualism. Contrast \vith Channeling.

Sources: Slater Brown. The Heyday of Spiritualism. New York: Hawthorn

Books,
1970; Richard Cavendish. Encyclopedia of
the Unexplained. New York: McGrawHill, 1974. John Godwin. Occult America.
New York: Doubleday, 1972. Edgar D.
Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge

150

for Science. Edited by John White. New

York: Paragon Books, 1974.

Displacement
In psi testing, perception of information
other than the "target," either in time or
context. In laboratory
tests for psi, displacement was first documented in 1939
by Whately Carrington,
a psychical researcher at Cambridge University in England. Since then it has been observed as
a common occurrence in psi testing, usually affecting time and sequences. For example, a person being tested to give the
order of face-down ESP cards may experience a displacement of one or two cards
either forward or backward.
Similarly,
the receiver in a telepathy or clairvoyance
test of a series of photographs
or images
may see them correctly, but one or more
images forward or behind the target.
In the ganzfeld stimulation
test, in
which a receiver attempts to identify one
of several images transmitted
telepathically, more than one image may be received, sometimes so vividly that a decoy
is chosen over the target image.
Parapsychologists
call displacement
a type of "psychic noise." It is caused by
two main factors: the absence of linear
time in the higher planes, where psychic
awareness functions; and the psychic association of a group of potential targets,
when they become difficult to tell apart.
Displacement
also occurs in psychic
readings and precognitive dreams, when
unpleasant
news or conditions are suppressed or buried in nonthreatening
information or symbols. See Psi hitting and
psi missing; Stained-glass window effect.
Sources: June G. Bletzer. The Donning International Encyclopedic
Psychic Dictionary. Norfolk, VA: The Donning Co.,
1986; Mary Ellen Carter. Edgar Cayce on
Prophecy.
New York: Warner,
1968;
Edgar D. Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A
Challenge for Science. Edited by John

Direct-voice

mediumship

W'hite. New York: Paragon Books, 1974;

Russell Targ and Keith Harary. The Mind
Race. New York: Villard Books, 1984;
Joan Windsor.
The Inner Eye: Your
Dreams Can Make You Psychic. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985; Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook of Parapsychology.
New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold, 1977.

Divination
The
the
host
and

art of foretelling the future, finding

lost, and identifying the guilty by a
of techniques. Divination has existed
has served a social function in all civ-

ilizations throughout
history, by providing a means for solving problems and resolving disputes. The responsibility
for
divination customarily
falls to a priest,
prophet,
oracle, witch, shaman, witch
doctor, medicine man, psychic, or other
person
reputed
to have supernatural
powers.
Innumerable
divinatory,
or mantic,
methods exist, and diviners use the ones
sanctioned by their cultures. Techniques
fall into two broad categories: the interpretation
of natural or artificial signs,
omens, portents, and lots; and the direct
communication
with gods and spirits
through visions, trance, dreams, and possession. All divination is an attempt to
communicate with the divine or supernatural in order to learn the will of the gods;
and even in the interpretation
of signs
and lots it is assumed that the gods interfere to provide answers to questions. A
skilled diviner also employs a keen sense
of intuition and an innate understanding
of human psychology. A typical divination consists of advice as well as prediction-sometimes
more of the former than
the latter.
In early civilizations divination was
primarily a royal or holy function, used
for guidance in matters of state and war,
and to forecast-and
therefore avoid or

Divination

Diviner
mitigate-natural
disasters. Most courts
employed royal diviners, whose very lives
often depended
upon the accuracy of
their forecasts. The Chaldeans and Babylonians had elaborate divinatory systems
under the auspices of priests, who saw
portents in virtually everything in nature
around them. The ancient Chinese had
court astrologers and other diviners who
interpreted cast lots of yarrow sticks (the
I Ching), bones, and other objects. Early
Egyptian priests slept in temples in hopes
of receiving divinatory information from
the gods in a dream. In ancient Rome a
special caste of priests called augurs interpreted signs in nature, believed to be
messages sent by the gods. Augurs interpreted such natural phenomena
as the
flights of birds, the patterns of clouds and
smoke, and the markings on the livers of
sacrificed
animals
(livers, rather than
hearts, were believed the central organ of
the body). The Greeks divined dreams
and consulted special oracles, who went
into trance to allow the gods to speak
through them. The most famous oracle
resided at Delphi, near the base of Mount
Parnassus. The Greeks helped spread divination among the masses by popularizing astrological
horoscopes.
See Astrology.
In tribal cultures divination remains

151

largely a royal or sacred function. In shamanic cultures divination is performed by

shamans, who go into trance to communicate with spirit helpers. In parts of Africa, the king's diviner has the force of
law. The royal oracles of the African
Zande employ numerous methods of divination. The simplest is to place two
sticks in an anthill and see which stick
has been eaten by the following day. Another method
is use of a "rubbing
board," an object made of two pieces of
wood. The pieces are rubbed together,
and yield an answer when they stick together. Most common is the benge oracle.
The benge poison, obtained from a plant
and similar to strychnine,
is fed to a
chicken. Answers are divined from the
length and nature of the fowl's death
throes. The chicken's survival also yields
an answer.
All cultures employ divinatory methods that consist of interpreting artificial
signs. The most common involve sortilege, or the casting of stones, bones,
shells, and other objects, which yield answers from the patterns of their fall. Two
popular divination methods, Tarot cards
and the I Ching, are of this type. In western Uganda the Lugbara fill small pots
with medicines, which represent the suspects of a crime. The pots are set on the
fire; \vhichever one does not boil over fingers the guilty one. In other methods suspects are required to consume awful potions or stews; the guilty one will suffer
indigestion.
In the East divination is more an accepted part of daily life than it is in the
West. In India some parents publish ads
of the horoscopes of their newborn children and the horoscopes
of their marriageable children, which include the astrological lineage of the entire family. In
parts of the Middle East, royalty still confer with astrologers in making decisions.
In China palmistry is used in some forms
of holistic health therapies. The female
matchmakers
of Korea analyze horo-

152

scopes when pairing

men and women.

marriageable

young

In Western society divination

has
been associated with sorcery. The Old
Testament
contains many proscriptions
against consulting diviners; some of the
Hebrew terms for "diviner" have been
translated as "witch." As early as 785,
the Catholic church forbade the use of
sorcery as a means of settling disputes,
but that did not prevent consultation
of
village wizards
and wise men and
women. During the Middle Ages and
Renaissance,
diviners who invoked demonic forces were punished by fines, humiliation in a pillory, or loss of property;
some who were also convicted of witchcraft were put to death. Despite disapproval from the church and the scientific
community,
and the many laws against
fortune-telling
(widely
considered
a
fraud), divination has never been eradicated; the average person has too great a
desire to attempt to see into the future.
See Dreams; Dowsing;
Omen; Oracle;
Prophecy.
Sources: Hachiro Asano. Hands: The Complete Book of Palmistry. New York: Japan
Publications,
1985; Mircea Eliade. Shamanism. 1951. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964; James G. Frazer. The
Golden Bough: The Roots of Religion and
Folklore. New York: Avenel Books, 1981;
Michel Gauquelin. Dreams and Illusions
of Astrology.
Buffalo, NY: Prometheus
Books, 1979; Emile Grillot de Givry.
Witchcraft,
Magic and Alchemy.
New
York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931; Michael
Loewe and Carmen Blacker. Oracles and
Divination.
Boulder: Shambhala,
1981;
Lucy Mair.
Witchcraft.
New
York:
McGraw-Hill,
1969; Max Marwick, ed.
Witchcraft and Sorcery. 2d ed. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex,
England:
Penguin
Books, 1982; Keith Thomas. Religion and
the Decline of Magic. New York: Scribner,
1971.

Divine Light Mission

See Alternative

religious

movements.

Divination

Dixon, Jeane (b. 1918)

American psychic most famous for her
prediction of President John F. Kennedy's
assassination
in 1963. Jeane Dixon has
successfully predicted world and personal
events since the 1940s. She also foresaw
the assassinations
of US Senator Robert
Kennedy in 1968, American civil rights
activist Martin Luther King in 1964, and
Indian civil rights leader Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, and the attempted assassination
of Alabama
Governor
George
Wallace in 1972. She predicted such historical events as the launching of Sputnik
by Russia, Nikita Khrushchev's
rise and
fall in power, and Richard M. Nixon's
destiny as US president
some twenty
years before his election victory.
Dixon was born Jeane Pinckert in
Wisconsin in 1918 and grew up in California. She married James Dixon at the
age of twenty-one.
After a brief time
spent in Detroit, the couple established a
real estate business in Washington,
DC.
Dixon's gifts for prophecy were evident from her earliest years. As a toddler
she would ask for things that had not yet
arrived in the mail, or talk about events
that had not yet occurred. When Dixon
was eight, a Gypsy predicted she would
become a great psychic.
Dixon believes her powers are a gift
from God for the purpose of serving humanity. Thus she established a policy of
not charging fees and directing income
from books, a syndicated horoscope column, and other sources into a foundation
she created in 1964, Children to Children.
Dixon says she receives her information through meditation,
prayer, telepathy, psychometry,
visions, and dreams.
For example, she received telepathic messages from unspecified sources concerning the impending assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. She
foresaw the deaths of President Franklin
D. Roosevelt and actress Carole Lombard

Donne,

John (1572-1631)

after touching their hands. Dixon warned

Lombard not to fly for several weeks, but
the actress, who was promoting
war
bonds during World War II, disregarded
the warning and was killed the same
night in a plane crash. Dixon's precognition of John F. Kennedy's assassination
came to her in a vision years beforehand,
and was published in 1956 in Parade
magazine. She warned Kennedy not to go
to Dallas, where he was assassinated on
November 22, 1963.
Of all her methods of receiving information
psychically,
visions are the
most dramatic. Dixon says she can sense
the arrival of a vision three days before
receiving it. During the entire four days,
she says she feels uplifted and inspired.
The visions-which
always deal with
great events of international
significance-are
sometimes in color and sometimes in black and white.
accompanied

They may be

by music and voices.,

Sources: Denis Brian. Jeane Dixon: The

Witnesses.
New York: Warner,
1976;
Jeane Dixon and Rene Noorbergen.
My
Life and Prophecies. New York: Bantam
Books, 1970; Edgar D. Mitchell. Psychic
Exploration: A Challenge for Science. Edited by John White. New York: Paragon
Books, 1974; Ruth Montgomery. A Gift of
Prophecy. New York: Bantam Books,
1966.

Dolmen
See Megaliths.

Donne, John (1572-1631)

English preacher, prose writer, and poet
of mystical experiences, considered one
of the greatest poets of his day. John
Donne was hailed as a theologian;
his
contemporaries
called him "our English
Tertullian,"
after the great Carthaginian
theologian (c. 180-c. 230). He carried on
the tradition
of Augustine,
Jerome,

153

Thomas Aquinas,
and other Christian
church fathers in his brilliant and inspired
"metaphysical"
poetry,
very little of
which was published during his life.
Donne was born in London to a Roman Catholic family. He studied law and
theology at Oxford, and perhaps Cambridge, but he took no degree because his
Catholicism prevented him from swearing allegiance to a Protestant
queen.
Gradually, he leaned more and more toward Protestantism.
In 1598 he was made secretary to Sir
Thomas Edgerton. He fell in love with
Ann More, the daughter of Sir George
More, and married her secretly. In anger
Sir George had Donne fired from his
post, which ruined any future in public
service.
After ten years of extreme poverty,
Donne was ordained a minister of the
Church of England in 1615. He was
enormously successful, and in 1621 was
named Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral,
a
position he held until his death ten years
later. During this last phase of his life,
Donne wrote more than 160 sermons and
much religious poetry containing erotic
Imagery.
In 1623 Donne nearly died from
illness. ~'hen his health was restored,
he wrote Devotions, an account of his illness and recovery. Devotions
is comprised of t\venty-three
units, each of
which offers a Meditation,
Expostulation, and Prayer.
Shortly before his death,
Donne
preached his own funeral sermon and
went to bed. He ordered his portrait to be
painted on his shroud; he contemplated it
for se\'eral days before passing away on
March 31, 1631.
Donne's language and imagery concerning the ecstatic state are remarkably
similar to the writings of the great Spanish mystics, St. John of the Cross and St.
Teresa of Avila. Like them, Donne expresses the ecstatic union of the human
soul with God, often comparing it to love

154

between humans.
is The Extasie.

His best-known

work

Sources: F. C. Happold. Mysticism: A

Study and an Anthology. Rev. ed. New
York: Penguin, 1970; Elizabeth T. Howe.
"Donne and the Spanish Mystics on Ecstasy." Notre Dame English Journal (Spring
1981): 29-44; Louis Kronenberger, ed. Atlantic Brief Lives. Boston: Little, Brown,
1971; Peter A. Piore, ed. Just So Much
Honor: Essays Commemorating
the FourHundredth
Anniversary
of the Birth of
John Donne. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1972; A. J.
Smith. John Donne. New York: Methuen,
1985.

Double
An apparition of a living person. Doubles
are exact replicas of persons, including
clothing, and often deceive witnesses with
their solid appearance. They usually are
seen in a location distant from the real
person. Some doubles act strangely or
mechanically.
The true nature and cause of the
double are not known. Popular occult
theory holds that doubles are projections
of an astral body. The projections may
happen involuntarily
or, in the case of
certain adepts, be accomplished
at will.
See Bilocation. The appearance
of doubles often is associated with the imminent
death of the person.
The double is known by various
names, including "Beta body," "subtle
body," "fluidic body," and "pre-physical
body." It is called a "fetch" in Irish and
English folklore. In Irish lore a fetch seen
in the morning is a portent of long life for
the individual, while a fetch seen in the
evening is an omen of impending death.
A German term for the double is doppleganger, which comes from an expression
meaning "double walker." In Sweden it is
called the vardager.
Beliefs about doubles exist in tribal
cultures. One widespread

Donne,

belief is that the

John (1572-1631)

double is the soul, which is the reflection

of the body.
The ancient Egyptians said the soul
itself had a double called the ka. Upon
death the ka resided in the tomb along
with the corpse, while the soul departed
for the undenvorld.
A special part of the
tomb, called "the house of ka," was reserved for the double, and a priest was
appointed
to minister to it with food,
drink, and offerings.
It is possible to see one's own double. Shortly before his death by drowning, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley saw his
double. The English antiquarian
John
Aubrey records the case of Lady Diana
Rich, daughter of the Earl of Holland,
who saw her mirror-image
double while
walking in the garden one morning. A
month later she died of smallpox.
English medium Eileen J. Garrett
theorized that the double is a means of
telepathic and clairvoyant projection, and
can be manipulated to expand one's consciousness. See Apparition;
Out-of-body
experience (OBE).
Sources: Katherine Briggs. An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1976; E. A.
Wallis Budge. Egyptian Magic. 1901. New
York: Dover Publications,
1971; Maria
Leach, ed., and Jerome Fried, assoc. ed.
Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of
Folklore, Mythology,
and Legend. San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979; Sheila
Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. Psychic
Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970;
Lewis Spence. An Encyclopedia of the Occult. Reprint. London: Bracken Books,
1988.

Dowsing
Divination by using a forked rod, bent
wire, or pendulum to locate people, animals,
objects,
and
substances.
The

Dowsing

method has numerous

applications,
including finding underground
water, oil,
coal, minerals, cables, and pipes; locating
missing people, murder victims, and murderers; locating lost objects and animals;
and mapping archaeological
sites before
digging begins. Dowsing also is used to
diagnose illness.
Dowsing
is ancient,
dating back
some seven thousand years; its exact origins are unknown. Ancient Egyptian art
portrays dowsers with forked rods and
headdresses with antennae. Ancient Chinese kings used dowsing rods. During the
Middle Ages, dowsing was used widely in
Europe and Great Britain to locate coal
deposits. It was associated with the supernatural, which gave rise to the terms
"water witching"
and "wizard's
rod."
Reformation
leader Martin Luther said
dowsing was the work of the Devil. To
counteract
evil
influences,
medieval
dowsers baptized their rods with Christian names. In the United States, dowsing
has been used since pre-Republican
times,
primarily to find water well sites.
It is not known how or why dowsing
works. Psychic ability is thought to playa
key role. The dowser may have an innate
psychic ability to tune in to the person,
substance, object, or whatever is being
sought. As the dowser approaches
the
right location, the rod begins to twitch
and jerk up and down, sometimes violently. German scientist Baron Karl von
Reichenbach
believed the jerking of the
rod was due to earth force fields, which
sent out vibrations and radiations.
Supposedly, the dowser psychically picked up
the vibrations
and translated
them by
subtle muscle movements
to the rod.
More recent experiments
have shown
that dowsing rods are sensitive to electrostatic and electromagnetic
fields.
The force field theories, however, do
not explain why many dowsers work
strictly off maps in their homes, far away
from the actual field sites. Nor do they
explain why many dowsers, like clairvoy-

155

ants, are able to get images

and future.

of the past

Many dowsers believe that one must

be born with the innate ability to dowse,
but experiments have shown that almost
anyone can learn how to do it. Experiments in Russia have demonstrated
that
dowsers can transmit their sensitivity to
others by touching them as they dowse.
Russian tests also have demonstrated that
women are twice as successful at dowsing
as men. Scientists there theorized that unknown force fields responded better to
the polarity in women's bodies. In 1986,
however,
a study of the astrological
charts of a small group of American
dowsers revealed some common characteristics, thus buttressing the innate ability theory. The majority of charts had fire
as the dominant element, strong ties to
the planet Pluto, and a higher frequency
of lunar and solar eclipses, among other
characteristics.

Dowsing Tools
Forked dowsing sticks usually are
made of hazel, ash, rowan, or willO\v,
and occasionally metal, whalebone,
and
plastic. Wands or bobbers are stripped
tree branches, stiff wires, or the ends of
fishing rods, which have been weighted
on one end. Angle rods are made of
metal.
Ordinary
coathangers
suffice,
though copper and aluminum ,vires are
said to be more responsive. In Europe the
rod has given way to the pendulum,
which is suspended on a string and rotates in response to questions or as a
dowser scans a map. The dowser usually
"tunes" the instrument by concentration
and visual images. Dowsers who locate
missing persons may first hold their instrument over a personal item belonging
to the person.
Some exceptionally
skilled dowsers
have learned how to dowse without a
tool. Uri Geller, the Israeli renowned for
his psychokinetic mental bending, learned

156

to dowse with his bare hands, holding

them outstretched
with palms down.
When he locates hidden objects, he feels a
resisting force on his palms, similar to the
effect created by putting two similar poles
of a magnet together.

Dowsing as a Science
Dowsing was widely used until the
nineteenth
century, when scientists rejected it as superstition.
In the twentieth
century, dowsing made a comeback, especially in Europe and Great Britain,
where it has been used successfully in archaeological digs, the search for minerals,
and in medicine. During World War I,
dowsers helped locate mines, unexploded
shells, and buried mortars for the military.
The Abbe Alexis Mermet of France
believed in dowsing as a science as early
as 1906, an activity he documented in his
classic book, How I Proceed in the Dis-

covery of Near or Distant Water, Metals,

Hidden Objects, and Illnesses. Mermet
dowsed archaeological sites at the request
of the pope and found dozens of murderers and missing persons.
After 1930
dowsing became known as radiesthesia in
Europe. The term ,vas coined by the
Abbe Alex Bouly, a French priest and
dowser, who hoped it would rid dowsing
of its occult taint and make it acceptable
as a science. "Radiesthesia"
comes from
the Latin root for "radiation"
and the
Greek root for "perception."
The term is
widely used throughout
Europe, but less
so in the United States and Great Britain.
also founded L'Association des
Amis de la Radiesthesie in 1930. In 1933

Bouly

the British
Society
formed. International

of Dowsers
radiesthesia

was
con-

gresses are held regularly in Europe.

In the United States dowsing is used
by some oil, gas, and minerals companies,
some of whom say they have found
dowsers to be more accurate than geologists using "scientific" techniques. Many

Dowsing

water and pipe companies use dowsing to

locate buried cables and pipes, and to
find damaged spots. During the Vietnam
War, the Marines used dowsing rods to
locate mines, booby traps, and sunken
mortar shells. Dowsers also have contrib-

Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which prohibits

diagnosis or attempted healing by using a
device, except under very stringent conditions. See Geller, Uri; Psychic archaeology.

uted research toward the understanding

of mysterious earth energies, such as leys.
Despite the advances dowsing still struggles to be recognized as a "legitimate"
field. The American Society of Dowsers
estimates that there are more than 25,000
dowsers in the United States.

Sources: American Society of Dowsers.

"How Can I Tell If I Am a Dowser?" The
New Age Catalogue. New York: Doubleday/Dolphin,
1988; Christopher
Bird.
"Dowsing: The Medical Potential." New
Realities 3, no. 2 (October 1979): 57-61;
John P. Boyle. The Psionic Generator Pattern Book. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1975; Uri Geller and Guy Lyon Playfair. The Geller Effect. New York: Henry
Holt, 1986; George P. Hansen. "Dowsing:
A Review of Experimental Research." The
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 51, no. 792 (October 1982): 34367; James R. Morgan,
M.S., F.R.C.
"Dowsing." The American Dowser 27, no.
2 (May 1987): 16-18; Sheila Ostrander
and Lynn Schroeder. Psychic Discoveries
Behind the Iron Curtain. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970; Sarah Wooster.
"A Statistical Look at Natal Aspects of
Dowsers." The American Dowser 26, no. 2
(May 1986): 40-44; Richard D. Wright.
"Towards a Definition of Dowsing." The
American Dowser 26, no. 1 (February

Dowsers were persecuted during the

Stalinist era in the Soviet Union, as were
psychics and occultists in general. After
Stalin's death in 1953, serious research in
dowsing was resumed. Dowsing is called
BPE, for "Biophysical Effects Method." It
is heavily used in geological and archaeological work.

Dowsing

in Medicine

In Europe, Great Britain, and elsewhere, dowsing is sometimes used as a

diagnostic tool in alternative medicine. A
pendulum is suspended over the patient's
body and "attuned"
to healthy parts. As
it is moved over unhealthy parts, the pendulum's movements change. The dowser
also may ask questions and divine answers according to the rotation of the
pendulum; clockwise for "yes," counterclockwise for "no."
Medical
dowsing
was pioneered
largely by three French priests, Mermet,
Bouly, and Father Jean Jurion. In experiments with doctors, Bouly was able to
identify cultures of microbes in test tubes
by dowsing. Mermet developed dowsing
techniques to help missionaries
identify
medicinal plants in foreign countries. Jurion accurately diagnosed disease and illness. Though harassed by the French Order of Physicians, he treated more than
30,000 patients over twenty-five years.
Medical dowsing is prohibited in the
United States under the 1976 Pure Food,

Dreams

1986): 7-11.

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

See Fairies.

Dragon Project Trust

See Megaliths;

Power point.

Dreams
The meaning
of dreams has puzzled
humankind
since antiquity.
Everyone
dreams, regardless
of whether
or not
dreams are recalled upon awakening. The
overwhelming
majority of dreams deal

157

metaphorically
with issues, events, and
people in the life of the dreamer, and every element in a dream has significance to
the dreamer.
Some dreams are paranormal,
involving clairvoyance,
precognition,
and
telepathy (shared dreams) between two
or more people. Others are interpreted as
having past-life content. A still different
type is the lucid dream, in which the
dreamer is aware of the dream and in
some cases can direct its outcome.

Historical Beliefs about Dreams

In ancient times dreams were seen as
supernatural
events, bearing prophecies,
predictions,
divinations,
and messages
from the gods. All primitive religions, including those of the present, view dreams
as a way for spirits to speak to human
beings. One of the earliest extant works
on dream concepts and interpretations
is
the Chester Beatty papyrus
of Egypt,
which dates to 2000 B.C. It discusses good
and bad dreams, dream associations and
plays on words, and the concept of "contraries," that is, to dream of one thing is
to realize the opposite in real life. Dream
interpretation
also was important to the
ancient
Babylonians
and Greeks,
although Aristotle dismissed gods as the
sources of dreams. The Greeks attempted
to incubate healing dreams by spending a
ritual night in the temple of Aesculapius,
the god of healing. The "right" dream
meant a cure.
In the second century ~-\.D., the Roman Artemidorus
of Ephesus developed
the most comprehensive system of dream
interpretation
until the time of Sigmund
Freud. Artemidorus believed that dreams
\vere continuations
of the activities of the
day, and were influenced by the dreamer's sex, age, occupation,
and station in
life.
The Old and New Testaments make
numerous

158

references

to the

interpreta-

tions of dreams. The early Hebrews used

dream interpretation
to influence behavior and thought.
The importance of dreams and their
meanings was prominent in the writings
of the church fathers, including St. Augustine, up to the time of Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274),
who, following
the
lead of Aristotle,
decided
to ignore
dreams. Early Christianity reinforced the
belief in the divinatory power of dreams,
especially the significance of vivid and repetitive dreams. The ancient Greek custom of dream incubation was for a time
kept alive in the practice of nocturnal vigils at the shrines of Christian saints. But
during the Middle Ages, the church, in
establishing itself as the ultimate authority, taught that dreams should be ignored.
The Reformation
of the sixteenth
century heralded the end of widespread
belief
in miracles
and
supernatural
events, though dreams still retained their
importance. At the popular level, dream
interpretation
continued to be an important service offered by wizards and astrologers, and was the subject of magical
formulae and various handbooks. Dream
dictionaries, based largely on the work of
Artemidorus,
proliferated.
Before the late nineteenth
century,
psychological
explanations
were
not
given to dreams. Psychiatrist
Sigmund
Freud, in his pioneering work, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), considered
dreams the "royal road" to the unconscious, and believed they were wish fulfillments of repressed infantile desires.
Events during the day, \vhich Freud called
"day residues,"
triggered nocturnal
releases of these repressed elements in the
form of dreams. To interpret
dreams
Freud used free association, in which the
dreamer says \vhatever comes to mind in
relation to the various elements in a
dream. Because of the sexual nature of
Freud's psychology,
dream elements invariably are seen as phallic or vaginal
symbols.

Dreams

Angel appearing to Joseph in a dream (Matthew 1:20)

Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung considered
dreams the expression of contents of the
personal unconscious
and the collective
unconscious.
He said the purpose
of
dreams is compensatory,
to provide information about the self, achieve psychic
equilibrium, and offer guidance. Jung believed that dream symbols from the collective unconscious have universal, or archetypal meanings (see Archetypes), but
those from the personal unconscious do
not, and take on meaning from the individual's experiences, beliefs, and cultural,
racial, ethnic,
and religious
heritage.
Only the dreamer, not an outsider, can
interpret a dream's true meaning.
Jung considered
dream interpretation of utmost importance in the process
of individuation,
or becoming
whole.
Dream symbols are the raw language of
the unconscious, brought to the attention
of the conscious without censor. Dreams
tell us the frank state of our
showing us where we are in
dividuation
and showing us
to be dealt with consciously.

Dreams

inner
terms
what
For

lives,
of inneeds
exam-

pie, symbols of the shadow, the repressed

aspects of the self, often appear in dreams
to demand our attention.
According to Jung, our psyche seeks
to have a dialogue with us, and brings us
information
in three successive ways:
first, psychically, as in dreams; second,
through "fate" such as accidents, illness,
and so on; and third, through physical
disorder
and illness. To ignore our
dreams is to court more drastic events.
Since Freud and Jung, other theories
have been put forward on the nature,
function, and meaning of dreams. For the
most part, however, they are elaborations
on the work of these two giants.

The Nature

of Dreams

In the early 1950s, it was discovered

in research at the University of Chicago
that dreams occur during the rapid eye
movement (REM) stages of sleep. Typical
seven-hour periods of sleep by healthy
adults are divided into sixty- to ninetyminute cycles, each of which has a REM

159

period, during which dreams occur. Each

dream period is longer than the previous
one; they range from five to ten minutes
for the initial one, which occurs about
ninety minutes after the onset of sleep, to
up to forty minutes for the final period
prior to awakening. REM sleep has been
found to be crucial to the process of
learning new skills.
Infants spend most of their sleep in
cycles associated with dreaming. Animals
also appear to dream.
Robert W. McCarley and J. Allan
Hobson, psychiatrists
at Harvard Medical School, have theorized that dreams
are born in the brain stem when neurons,
using the chemical
acetylcholine,
fire
bursts of electrical signals to the cortex,
where higher thought and vision originate. The cortex attempts to make sense
of the signals by rearranging them, along
with real memories, into a story, which
accounts in part for the bizarre nature of
most dreams.
Dreams usually occur in color and
seldom with smells or tastes. The reason
for the lack of the latter may be due to
the fact that only visual neurons fire during REM. Most people are likely to remember the last dream prior to awakening. However,
lab studies have shown
that if dreamers are awakened during earlier dream periods, they will recall those
dreams as well. Unless written down,
hmvever, the details of most dreams fade
within five to ten minutes.

Dreams, Creativity, Health, and

Death
since

Dreams
time

have provided
inspiration
immemorial.
Solutions
to

problems, ideas for inventions, and artistic expressions have found their way to
the conscious mind through dreams. For
example, artist and poet William Blake
found dreams to be a continuing source
of inspiration and artistic subjects, as did
Salvador Dali and other artists of the sur-

160

realistic

schools.

The idea for Dr. Jekyll

Robert
Louis Stevenson in a dream, and inventor
Elias Howe conceived of the sewing machine from a dream.
There is some evidence that dreams

and Mr. Hyde came to author

are harbingers
or barometers
of health
problems. Jung noted that when some patients dreamed of destruction of or injury
to horses- an archetypal symbol of the
animal life within the human body-they
subsequently
were shown to be in the
early stages of serious illness, such as cancer. A 1987 study by Dr. Robert Smith of
Michigan State University showed that
cardiac patients who dreamed of destruction, mutilation,
and death had worse
heart disease than those who did not. The
dreams worsened as did the conditions,
despite the fact that the patients did not
know the severity of their disease.
Dreams also sometimes serve as a
way to prepare an individual for death.
Terminally
ill patients sometimes have
transitional
dreams,
such as entering
beautiful gardens, crossing bridges, or
walking through doorways, which occur
shortly before death and which often
bring peace of mind.

Paranormal Dreams
Dreams universally have been seen
as sometimes having prophetic content.
Seeing into the future through dreams
customarily has been the province of the
priest, shaman, or diviner. Various folklore techniques
also exist for inducing
precognitive dreams, though most are of
dubious value. Precognitive dreams may
occur once or twice during an individual's life, or not at all; some people, especially those who exhibit other psychic talents, seem to have frequent precognitive
dreams. See Precognition.
Precognitive
dreams, which the dreamer eventually
learns to discern from ordinary dreams,
may be accompanied
by certain symbols
or emotions.

Dreams

Some dreams appear to be spontaneously telepathic.

Freud observed
that
"sleep creates fa\'orable conditions for telepathy," and referred often to dream telepathy in his clinical work with patients.
Dream telepathy has been of interest to
psychical researchers and parapsychologists since the late nineteenth
century.
The founders of the Society for Psychical
Research (SPR) in London collected 149
dream telepathy cases in their study of
spontaneous
paranormal
experiences,
published
in Phantasms of the Living
(1886). More than half of the dream
cases involved death, and most of the remainder concerned crises or distress.
The first known experimental effort
to induce telepathic
dreams was conducted during the same time period by an
Italian psychical researcher, G. B. Ermacora. He used a medium whose control
spirit allegedly sent telepathic dreams to
the medium's four-year-old
cousin.
Various other dream studies have
been conducted in the twentieth century,
some by the SPR and the American Society for Psychical Research, as well as by
others.
There are about half a dozen scien-

ill
tific demonstrations
of telepathy
dreams, the most famous of which was
research conducted
from 1962-74 by
Montague Ullman, Stanley Krippner, and
others at the Dream Laboratory
of the
Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn,
New York. When subjects were in REM
stages, a person in another room attempted to telepathically
transmit a target art image, usually depicting people
and archetypal in character. The subjects
\vere then a\vakened and asked to describe their dreams. The next day they
were sho\vn several possible targets and
asked to rank them in terms of matching
the content and emotions of their dreams.
In some cases the dream correspondences
would occur one to two days after the
target had been transmitted.
Overall, the
correlation of dream images to target im-

Dreams

Dr. Stanley Krippner and artwork used

in dream telepathy experiments at the
Dream Laboratory of the Maimonides
Medical Center, Brooklyn, New York
ages was significantly above chance. The
rapport between agent and subject was
an important
factor in success. Characteristics that indicated an ESP influence
included unusual vividness, colors, and
detail, and a somewhat puzzling nature to
the dreamer.
Studies of ESP experiences in general
show that dreams are involved in 33 percent to 68 percent of all cases. In telepathic cases dreams are involved in 25
percent; and in precognitive cases dreams
are involved in approximately
60 percent.
About 10 percent of ESP experiences occur when an individual is at the borders
of sleep. See Hypnagogic!hypnapompic
states. Individuals who undergo ESP tests
in laboratories sometimes have precognitive dreams about elements in the tests.

Lucid Dreams
In a lucid dream, the dreamer is
aware of the fact that he or she is dreaming. Lucid dreams occur during REM
stages. Nearly everyone has at least one
lucid dream, and a very few people dream

161

lucidly often. Aristotle, in the fourth century B.C., mentioned the existence of lucid
dreaming. The earliest extant written account of a lucid dream (in Western history) is contained in a letter written in
415 by St. Augustine, who described the
lucid dream of a Carthaginian
physician,
Gennadius. Lucid dreams have been ignored by many dream researchers, or dismissed as impossible. Some researchers,
hmvever, feel lucid dreams hold great potential as creativity and healing tools.
There are varying degrees of lucidity
in dreams.
At the lowest level, one
awakes from a realistic dream and realizes it \vas a dream, not reality. At the
highest level, one is aware of the dream
as it takes place, and can influence its
course and outcome. The form taken by a
lucid dream seems to mirror the dreamer's mental state. The initiation of awareness of dreaming can be triggered by various factors, such as the stress of a
nightmare,
incongruous
elements, or a
spontaneous
recognition that the reality
is different from waking reality. Generally, lucid dreams are characterized
by
light (sometimes
very bright), intense
emotions, heightened colors and images,
flying or levitation, and a sense of liberation or exhilaration.
Some are almost
mystical in nature. Sex plays a prominent
role in lucid dreams,
especially
for
women.
Interest in lucid dream research was
piqued in the late 1960s by the now classic study by British researcher Celia E.
Green. Subsequent work in the 1970s and
1980s by British parapsychologist
Keith
Hearne, and by the American researchers
Ann Faraday, Patricia Garfield, and Stephen LaBerge, among others, sustained
this interest.
been

Lucid dream studies, howe,oer, have

inconsistent.
Some haye demon-

strated that, with practice-using

autosuggestion
and other techniques - indiyiduals can cause themselves to dream
lucidly or exert greater

162

control

over their

lucid dreams, such as dreaming about

certain topics. The art of controlling
dreams certainly is not new; the earliest
recorded mention of lucid dreaming as a
learnable skill dates to eighth-century Tibetan yoga practices. Philosopher
P. D.
Ouspensky taught himself how to enter
lucid dreams from a waking state; he
called them "half-dream"
states.
The applicability of lucid dreams is
controversial. Adyocates believe that controlled lucid dreaming can be applied to
creativity, problem solving, relationships,
health, and the riddance of nightmares. It
is estimated that 10 percent of the population may be able to learn dream control with some proficiency. Such individuals typically are at peace with their lives.
LaBerge and some other researchers
relate lucid dreams to out-of-body experiences, most of which occur during sleep
or while a person is in bed. See Imagery;
Out-of-body
experience
(OBE); Prophecy; Symbol; Telepathy.
Sources: Sharon Begley. "The Stuff That
Dreams Are Made Of." Newsweek (August
14, 1989): 41-44; Sigmund Freud. 1900.
The Interpretation of Dreams. New York:
The Modern Library, 1950; Patricia L.
Garfield. Creative Dreaming. New York:
Ballantine Books, 1974; C. E. Green. Lucid
Dreams. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1968;
Robert A. Johnson. Inner Work. New
York: Harper & Row, 1986; C. G. Jung.
Dreams. From The Collected Works of C.
G. fungo Vols. 4, 8, 12, and 16. Princeton:
Princeton Uniyersity Press, 1974; Morton
Kelsey. Dreams: A Way to Listen to God.
New York: Paulist Press, 1978; Stanley
Krippner and Joseph Dillard. Dreamworking: How to Use Your Dreams for Creative
Problem-Solving. Buffalo, NY: Beady Limited, 1988; Stephen LaBerge. Lucid Dreaming. New York: Ballantine Books, 1985;
John A. Sanford. Dreams and Healing: A
Succinct
and Lively Interpretation
of
Dreams. New York: Paulist Press, 1978;
John A. Sanford. Dreams: God's Forgotten
Language. 1968. San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1989; Keith Thomas. Religion and

Dreams

the Decline of Magic. New York: Charles

Scribner's Sons, 1971; Montague Ullman
and Claire Limmer, eds. The Variety of
Dream Experience. New Yark: Continuum, 1987; Montague Ullman and Stanley
Krippner with Alan Vaughan. Dream Telepathy: Experiments
in Nocturnal ESP.
Baltimore: Penguin, 1973; Montague Ullman and Nan Zimmerman. Working With
Dreams. Los Angeles: Jeremv P. T archer,
1979; Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook
of Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977.

Drop-in communicator
A strange entity, unknown to both medium and sitters, who manifests unexpectedly at a seance. Drop-in communicators
have
been studied
by some
psychical researchers since the late nineteenth century as possible evidence that
seance spirits are real and not constructs
from the medium's
subconscious,
and
that the information
they provide does
not come from telepathy or super-ESP on
the part of the medium. The ideal drop-in
provides information that has never been
in print in a public source, and which is
known to (and can be verified by) only a
small number of people.
Most drop-in cases, hoviever, are inconclusive,
with drop-ins
manifesting
only once or twice and giving insufficient
information
to verify their identities.
Nonetheless,
the majority
of drop-ins
seem to have motives for manifestingsometimes
nothing more than to talk
about themselves, as though they were
lonely.
One famous drop-in with a mission
was the case of Runolfur
Runolfsson,
who dropped
in on medium Hafstein
Bjornsson in 1937 and identified himself
as a rough, hard-drinking
Icelander who
had died in 1879 at age fifty-tvvo. Over
the course of several sittings, Runolfsson
said he wanted to find his missing leg
bone. He said he had gotten drunk,

Drop-in

communicator

passed out at the shore, and drowned,

and that his corpse had been picked apart
by birds. The thigh bone was still missmg.
The identity and details of Runolfsson's life were verified. His thigh bone
\vas discovered
interred
between
the
walls of a house, apparently left by a carpenter. The bone was buried, and Runolfsson expressed his thanks. He stayed in
contact with Bjornsson and became one
of his controls.
Drop-ins are on rare occasions accompanied by physical phenomena
such
as table-tilting,
mysterious
lights, apports, scents, and strange noises.
It may be argued that some of the
alleged highly evolved entities that are
channeled also are drop-in communicators, for they manifest without warning.
However, these entities provide little, if
any, concrete historical data that may be
checked by researchers;
some of them
claim never to have lived on earth. The
entity Seth, who first appeared at a Ouija
session to Jane Roberts and her husband,
gave information about the previous lives
of himself and Roberts and her husband
in nineteenth-century
Boston. This information was examined by psychiatrist Ian
Stevenson, a leading expert on reincarnation. Stevenson felt the material was derived from Roberts's own subconscious.
See Super-ESP;
glossy.

Worth,

Patience;

Xeno-

Sources: Alan Gauld. "A Series of Drop-in

Communicators."
Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 55 (July 1971):
1966-72; Alan Gauld. Mediumship and
Sun'ival.
London:
William Heinemann
Ltd., 1982; Erlendur Haraldsson and Ian
Stevenson. "An Experiment with the Icelandic Medium Hafstein Bjornsson." The
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 68, no. 2 (April 1974): 192202; Erlendur Haraldsson and Ian Stevenson. "A Communicator
of the 'Drop In'
Type in Iceland: The Case of Runolfur
Runolfsson." The Journal of the American

163

Society for Psychical Research 69, no. 1

(January 1975): 33-59; Jane Roberts. The
Seth Material. First published as How to
Deuelop Your ESP Power. 1966. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970; D.
Scott Rogo. Psychic Breakthroughs Today.
Wellingborough,
Northamptonshire,
England: The Aquarian Press, 1987; Ian Stevenson. "A Communicator
Unknown to
Medium and Sitters." The Journal of the
American Society for Psychical Research
64, no. 1 (January 1970): 53-65; Ian Stevenson and John Beloff. "An Analysis of
Some Suspect Drop-in Communicators."
The Journal of the Society for Psychical
Research 50, no. 785 (September 1980):
427-47.

Drugs in mystical and

psychic experiences
Consciousness-altering
agents that induce, enhance, or inhibit experiences of a
psychical, transpersonal,
or mystical nature. Laboratorv research with drugs has
yielded disparate results. Opinions concerning the validity of psychedelic druginduced experiences vary. Some take the
position that drugs do not cause mystical
experiences, only pseudomystical
experiences that have no transcending,
lasting
impact; others feel that psychedelic drugs
duplicate mystical experiences and are of
value in psychotherapy.
The use of drugs as religious sacraments is an ancient custom found in every
part of the ,,odd. The "isions that occur
during the experiences have spiritual purposes and are interpreted
accordingly.
The purpose mav be to commune with
the Divine, to seek life's purpose, or to
undergo a spiritual initiation.
In some
shamanic traditions, nm'ices ingest a psychotropic drug that enables them, so thev
claim, to take their souls out-of-body and
contact mythical and spirit beings, deities, animals, and objects. They are transformed and empowered
when they return to ordinary consciousness.
See Shamanism.

164

The shamanic flight is evocative of

the reports of flying in some of the European witchcraft trials during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The accused
witches were said to ride broomsticks,
animals, and demons through the air to
mountainous places, where they indulged
in vile orgies of copulation with monsters
and demons,
dancing,
and feasting,
which was sometimes said to include the
flesh of roasted infants. These flights allegedly were made possible with magical
flying ointments,
rubbed on the body,
which contained toxic and hallucinogenic
ingredients.
Drugs as a means of achieving mystical experiences generally are eschewed
in Eastern disciplines, although some yogis take them. Drugs are held to interfere
with the natural evolution of the psyche
that occurs during yoga. The attainment
of niruikalpa samadhi, the highest mystical state, cannot occur without sufficient
integration of the intellect, emotions and
intuition,
which drugs cannot provide.
Nor can drugs artificially duplicate this
state. It is held that most elevated drug
experiences still occur within the realms
of maya, or illusion, and do not completely transcend the ego or the empirical
self. In T antra hallucinogens playa minor
role; alcohol is featured in rites of sensual
pleasure.
In the Western high magic tradition,
mind-altering drugs also are discouraged.
The magician works from an altered state
of consciousness
that ideally is created
from within, so that he or she remains in
command of the consciousness. Moderate
use of alcohol is considered acceptable
for raising power in some magical rites.
Experiments with a variety of drugs
on the effects of psi ability have been conducted since the 1920s. Results have been
largely meaningless,
bility of controlling
l\'o two people react
of a drug in exactly
feine has been shown

due to the impossisubjective variables.

to the same amount
the same \vay. Cafon at least one oc-

Drop-in

communicator

casion to have a positive influence on psi

ability, while alcohol has been shown to
both improve and depress test results.
Marijuana,
and particularly
the strong
psychedelic drugs like LSD (lsyergic acid
diethylamide), mescaline, and psilocybin,
trigger too much disorientation
and instability to yield meaningful results. The
most effective means of inducing an altered state of consciousness that is conducive to psi appears to be relaxation. See
Ganzfeld stimulation.
Some research has been devoted to
exploring the potential
mystical nature
and benefits of psychedelic drugs, especially mescaline, psilocybin,
and LSD.
The psychedelic state generally is characterized by a loosening of the ego boundary and the distinction between self and
object; heightened emotions and sensory
stimuli; and an opening to the unconscious, collective unconscious, and superconscious realms. The experience
goes
through various stages, beginning with
patterns and images from personal memory and heightened sensory phenomena,
and progressing to distortions in time and
space, visionary
landscapes,
transcendence of time and space, cosmic archetypes, beings and symbols, and participation of or observation
in mythical and
archetypal
dramas. Not all experiences
reach the same levels.
The physical mechanism at play is
the inhibition of the production
of serotonin caused by psychedelics. Serotonin
helps the brain regulate stimuli. It can
also be depressed by fasting, meditation,
exhaustion,
concentration,
and extreme
temperatures.
Mescaline was first classified in the
1880s by Louis Lewin, a German pharmacologist, and was synthesized in 1918.
By the 1950s, when novelist and critic Aldous Huxley was introduced to it, mescaline had been the subject of moderate
experimentation,
including by psychologists who thought it would provide insight into their patients' mental processes.

Drugs in mystical

and psychic

experiences

Mescaline takers feel they can remember and "think straight," but visual
images are intensified, particularly colors,
which appear to be supernaturally
brilliant. Interest in space and time drop dramatically, and the taker loses interest in
doing much of anything save drinking in
the Being and "is-ness" of everything.
The high lasts eight to ten hours. Mescaline apparently creates no physical dependency. "Bad trips," or negative experiences, are most likely to happen
to
individuals who are prone to depression
or anxiety, or who suffer from jaundice.
Huxley, who later took LSD, became
an advocate of drugs as a doorway to visionary or perhaps even mystical experiences. He said hallucinogenic
drugs
served to enlarge the "reducing valve" in
the brain and nervous system, which prevents the mind from being overloaded by
constant cosmic awareness, the Mind at
Large. See Huxley, Aldous.
LSD was discovered in 1943. Albert
Hoffman, a Swiss chemist, was working
with a derivative of lysergic acid, an active ingredient in the ergot fungus of rye,
and began to hallucinate after absorbing
it through his skin. By 1947 LSD was receiving worldwide publicity. In the late
1950s, it came to the attention of Timothy Leary, a psychologist on the faculty
of Harvard University who was experimenting with psilocybin. Working with
Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass) and others, Leary became one of the foremost advocates of LSD, viewing it as a cure for
society's ills. See Leary, Timothy; Ram
Dass.
Publicity about bad trips and uncontrollable flashbacks
led the Food and
Drug Administration
to severely restrict
access to LSD to only selected researchers
in 1963.
In the 1960s Robert Masters and
Jean Houston
conducted
LSD experiments. In Varieties of Psychedelic Experiences (1966), they identified four levels
in the unconscious
reached during LSD

165

trips: (1) The sensory level comprises

vivid eidetic images, usually of animals,
landscapes,
mythical contents, architecture, and so on, all of which have been
previously recorded by the brain. (2) The
recollective analytic level brings in emotions of repressed or forgotten events; the
subject may clearly see solutions to problems. (3) The symbolic level comprises
images that are historical,
legendary,
mythical, ritualistic, and archetypal in nature. The subject may act our myths, perform rituals, or undergo initiations.
(4)
The integral level is self-transformation,
religious
enlightenment,
and possibly
mystical union. Of their 206 subjects,
only forty attained level three and only
eleven attained level four.
In psychotherapy
LSD initially was
thought to have promise as a model for
schizophrenia, but it proved to be too unpredictable to be useful for that purpose.
The most extensive research into
LSD and its uses in psychotherapy
has
been conducted by psychiatrist Stanislav
Grof, who believes LSD can be a powerful catalyst in the healing process by activating and intensifying
symptoms
so
that they can be dealt with, integrated,
and resolved.
Grof began his clinical
work in 1956 in Prague and came to the
United States in 1967, working first in
humanistic psychology and then rranspersonal psychology. See Psychology. From
1967 to 1973, he worked at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, where
he conducted more than three thousand
LSD sessions and had access to more than
two thousand other sessions conducted in
the United States and Czechoslovakia.
According to Grof LSD experiences
cannot be explained in terms of traditional psychotherapy,
nor are any two
trips the same. The \'alue of the drug lies
in mapping uncharted realms of human
consciousness,
of which Grof identifies
\vhich
three domains: (1) psychodynamic,
involves emotionally relevant memories;
(2) perinatal, which relates to either real-

166

istic or symbolic experiences of

therefore, also to death, which
related); and (3) transpersonal,
the consciousness
transcends

birth (and
is closely
in which
time and

space. This domain includes embryonic

and fetal experiences; past lives; psychic
abilities; out-of-body experiences; organ,
tissue,
and cellular
experiences;
the
arousal of kundalini energy; and encounters with suprahuman
spiritual beings,
extraterrestrials,
deities, other universes,
the universal Mind, and the supracosmic
and metacosmic Void (primordial emptiness). Experiences of death-rebirth
in the
perinatal state are said to force a reexamination
of one's life and help bring
about change and growth. Grof's later
work concerned nonchemically
induced
altered
states of consciousness,
with
which he said he obtained the same results as with LSD. See Altered states of
consciousness;
Kundalini;
ences; Spiritual emergence;

Peak experiTobacco.

Sources: Sybille Bedford. Aldous Huxley: A

Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf/
Harper & Row, 1973; Emma Bragdon.
The Call of Spiritual Emergency: Crisis of
Spiritual
Awakening.
San
Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1990; W. V. Caldwell.
LSD Psychotherapy:
An Exploration
of
Psychedelic and Psycholytic Therapy. New
York: Grove Press, 1968; Fritjof Capra.
Uncommon Wisdom: Conversations with
Remarkable People. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1988; Nona Coxhead. The Relevance of Bliss: A Contemporary Exploration of Mystic Experience. London: Wildwood House, 1985; Ram Dass. The Only
Dance There Is. Garden City, NY: Anchor
BookslDoubleday,
1974; Stanislav Grof.
Realms of the Unconscious. New York:
The Viking Press, 1975; Stanislav Gro. Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy. Albany, NY:
State University of New York, Albany,
1985; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The Encyclopedia of \'litches and Witchcraft. New
York: Facts On File, 1989; Michael
Harner. The Way of the Shaman. New
York: Bantam, 1986; Aldous Huxley. The

Drugs in mystical

and psychic

experiences

Doors of Perception. New York: Harper &

Row, 1954; Timothy Leary. Changing My
Mind, Among Others. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1982; Holger Kalweit.
Dreamtime 0~ Inner Space: The World of
the Shaman. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1984; Serge King. Kahuna Healing.
Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing
House, 1983; Charles T. Tart. States of
Consciousness. New York: E. P. Dutton,
1975; Charles T. Tart, ed. Transpersonal
Psychologies. New York: Harper & Row,
1975; Roger N. Walsh and Frances
Vaughan, eds. Beyond Ego: Transpersonal
Dimensions in Psychology. Los Angeles:
Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1980; Andrew Weil.
The Natural Mind: A New Way of Looking at Drugs and the Higher Consciousness.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972; Benjamin
B. Wolman, ed. Handbook of Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold,
1977.

Druids
The priestly caste of the Celts, a Germanic tribe that spread out over much of
Europe, the British Isles, and parts of
Asia Minor in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. Not much is known about the
Druids,
modern

who have been romanticized

in
times. Their traditions were oral

and were largely

crushed the Celts
The Romans and
about the Druids

lost when the Romans

in the first century A.D.
Greeks wrote a little
from about the second

century B.C. to the fourth century A.D.the Romans, including Julius Caesar, perhaps from a biased point of view. Other
knowledge has come from archaeological
digs.
Druid means
"knowing
the oak
tree" in Gaelic; the robur oak was sacred
to the Celts. The exact role and purpose
of the Druids in Celtic society is uncertain, and many theories have been advanced over the centuries.
They have
been equated with the Persian Magi and
the Hindu Brahmins. Some controversial
modern

Druids

theories

hold

that

they were a

shamanic possession cult, as evidenced by

their human sacrifice, chanting, drumming, night fires, and apparent ecstatic
dancing.
By most classical accounts, the Druids were a noble caste of both men and
women who were responsible for passing
on theological and philosophical wisdom,
knowledge and skills in science (including
astronomy and construction
of a calendar), augury, composition, sacrificial procedures, and herbal medicine. They conducted religious rites and sacrifices, and
also acted as jurists. They may have been
magical bards, especially in Wales. Their
duties apparently varied according to geographic region.
According to classical texts, the Druids had a set of magical beliefs, but little
is known beyond a few charms. The mistletoe, which was sacred because it grows
parasitically on the oak, was used in various formulae. Pliny provides the only extant account of a Druidic ritual, the harvesting of mistletoe, which was done on
the sixth day of the new moon. A Druid
dressed in a white robe climbed an oak
tree. Using his left hand, he cut the mistletoe with a sickle, probably made of
gilded bronze. The mistletoe was caught
in a white cloth before it touched the
ground. It was used in rituals, which also
included the sacrifice of two white bulls.
A feast followed.
The Druids made prophecies
from
dreams, the movements of the crow, eagle, and hare, and the death throes and
characteristics of the entrails of sacrificed
animals and humans.
They conducted
their religious rites in sacred oak groves,
and near rivers and lakes where Celtic
water deities were thought to dwell. They
sacrificed victims by shooting them with
arrows, impaling them on stakes, stabbing them, slitting their throats over cauldrons (and then drinking the blood), or,
according to Strabo, burning them alive
in huge wickerwork
cages. An archaeological find in 1984 of the remains of a

167

remarkably preserved young Celt man,

buried in a bog near Manchester, England, supports the Roman reports. The
Lindow Man, as the remains are called,
appears to have been a Druid priest chosen by lot to be sacrificed. After a meal of
scorched cake that may have been burned
bannock (a ground barley griddle cake
used in Druidic rituals), the young man
had his throat cut, his windpipe crushed,
his head bludgeoned, and his face held
under water. The serene expression on his
face indicates he went to his death willingly.
The Romans feared the Celts and
found their human sacrifice customs revolting and barbaric; they began a systematic destruction of Celtic culture in
the first century A.D. Emperor Claudius
banned Druidism in A.D. 43. In battle the
Romans found the Celts to be fierce and
fearless, which the Romans attributed to
the Celts' belief in immortality, a second
life after death (not the same as reincarnation). In 60 Roman troops assaulted
the Celts' holy stronghold on the island
of Mona (Mon or Anglesey). According
to Tacitus wild Druid women dressed in
black dashed about "like the Furies,"
screaming and howling curses at the Roman soldiers. The Romans prevailed, killing everyone, including the Druids. The
sacred oak groves were demolished. The
shattering defeat plunged the Celts and
Druidism into decline.
Interest in the Druids was renewed in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
with their romanticization in literature.
In the seventeenth century, British antiquarian John Aubrey theorized that the
Druids had built Stonehenge, a view that
has since been disproved but has remained a popular belief into modern
times. In the early eighteenth century, antiquarian William Stukeley, who agreed
with Aubrey, organized a revivalist Druid
Order, which had no association with the
ancient Druids. In 1781 a British carpenter, Henry Hurle, formed the Ancient Or-

168

der of Druids, a benefit society whose

principles were drawn heavily from Freemasonry. In 1833 the group split in two.
The Ancient Order of Druids retained its
mystical underpinnings, while the United
Ancient Order of Druids became a charitable organization. The Ancient Order of
Druids attracted many occultists, including Freemasons, Order of the Golden
Dawn initiates, and Rosicrucians. The organization split again in 1963 with the
formation of the Order of Bards, Ovates,
and Druids, which drew off much of the
original group's membership. Other
Druid groups flourished in Britain in the
early twentieth century.
In the United States, modern Druidism has had a small following, beginning
in 1963 with the founding of the Reformed Druids of North America. The order was conceived by a group of students
at Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, as a facetious protest against a
school requirement that students attend
religious services. Though the requirement was dropped in 1963, the reformed
Druids caught on. The order expanded in
a collection of autonomous "groves."
Rituals were written from anthropological literature, such as Fraser's The
Golden Bough. P. E. 1. (Isaac) Bonewits
emerged as a Druidic leader in the mid1970s and added much to the modern
writings. Some groves eventually split off
to form the New Reformed Druids of
America, and Bonewits left to form his
own organization, Ar nDrafocht Fein
("Our Own Druidism") in 1983. By the
late 1980s, Ar nDrafocht Fein was the
only active, national Druid organization,
with headquarters in Nyack, New York.
Bonewits's goal was to pursue scholarly
study of the Druids and their IndoEuropean contemporaries, and reconstruct a liturgy and rituals adapted to
modern times. Like the British Druid organizations, the American groups claim
no connection with the ancient Druids.
Modern Druids celebrate eight sea-

Druids

sonal pagan festivals in outdoor henges

and groves. The most prominent festival
is the summer solstice. In England the
neo-Druids
were allowed to gather for
eighty years at Stonehenge,
until they
were prohibited from doing so in 1985,
due to vandalism by spectators during the
public gatherings. A Stonehenge replica
in eastern Washington
State is used by
many American Druids. See Stonehenge.
Sources: Margot Adler. Drawing Down the
Moon. Rev. ed. Boston: Beacon Press,
1986; Malcolm W. Browne. "'Bog Man'

Druids

Reveals Story of a Brutal Ritual." The New

York Times (January 26,1988): C-1, C-ll;
Georges Dottin. The Civilization of the
Celts. New York: Crescent Books, 1981;
Robert
Graves.
The White
Goddess.
Amended and enlarged ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966; Stuart Piggott. The Druids. New York: Thames and
Hudson,
1986; Ward Rutherford.
The
Druids: Magicians of the West. Rev. ed.
Wellingborough,
Northamptonshire,
England: The Aquarian Press, 1983; Jennifer
Westwood, ed. The Atlas of Mysterious
Places. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1987.

169

E
Earth lights (also ghost lights,
spook lights)
Mysterious
luminous
phenomena
seen
around the world, including more than
one hundred sites throughout
the United
States and others in Britain, Japan, and
else\vhere. Earth lights are inexplicable
balls or patches of light reported to have
been seen in remote areas, often near
power lines, transmitter
towers, mountain peaks, isolated buildings, roads, and
railway lines. Neither marsh gas nor artificiallights,
most earth lights are yellow
or white, while others are red, orange, or
blue. The lights may change color as they
are observed. They appear randomly or
regularly at particular
sites, \'arying in
size and configuration,
and may be "active" for years. Some appear and become
"inactive" after short periods of time.
Researchers
have identified several
common characteristics
of earth lights:
The lights appear only in remote areas; (2) the lights are elusi\'e, and the
viewer must be at the proper distance and
angle to see them; (3) the lights react to
noise and light, such as from flashlights
or car headlights,
by receding into the
distance or disappearing
altogether;
(4)
the lights are often accompanied by outbreaks of gaseous materials;
observers
frequently report a buzzing or humming
sound in the vicinity of the sightings.
Perhaps the most famous earth lights
are the .;vlarfa lights, named after .;vlarfa,

170

Texas, about two hundred miles south of

El Paso. These lights, first reported in
1883 by Robert Ellison, a settler, are often seen to the southwest of the Chinati
Mountains.
The Marfa lights frequently
bounce up and down. One resident described them as running across the mountain like grass fire. Investigators
who
have chased the lights say they seem to
possess intelligence and play games with
humans.
Another active site is near Joplin,
Missouri, where yellow and orange lights
are visible every night from dusk until
daVin. The lights have defied attempts to
explain them and appear to be true
anomalies. When viewed through binoculars, they appear to be diamond-shaped
\vith hollow
and transparent
centers.
They leave behind luminous pinpoints of
light dancing in the air, as though they
have their own intrinsic luminosities.
Since 1913
lights also have
Brown Mountains
1916 a researcher

intense,
multicolored
been reported
in the
of North Carolina. In
from the United States

Geological Survey dismissed the phenomenon as nothing more than train lights.
Yet the lights continued to appear even
after a flood later that year disrupted
train service to that region for several
weeks.
Not all reported
earth
anomalies.
Some have been

lights are
shown to

have natural
explanations,
most commonly car headlights.
The anomalies

Earth lights (also ghost lights, spook

lights)

have produced numerous theories as to

their origins, causes, and meaning.
Some researchers theorize that earth
lights are produced by seismic stresses beneath the earth. These stresses are said to
generate high voltage that creates small
masses of ionized gas, which are then released into the air near the fault line. Support for this theory can be found at several locations where earth lights have
been reported. These include: seven of
eight lochs in Scotland-sites
of earth
light activity-which are on a major fault
line; the remote valley of Hessdalen, near
Norway's Swedish border, which is in a
fault region that has been subjected to
earth tremors; and the Brown Mountain
lights of North Carolina, which could be
linked to the nearby Grandfather Mountain fault.
While study of earth lights is a modern phenomenon, early societies were apparently aware of them and incorporated
them into their beliefs and practices. For
example, the Native American Snohomish of Washington State regarded them
as doors to the worlds beyond; while the
Yakima, another Washington tribe, believed they could help them divine the future. The Australian Aborigines claim the
spirits of the dead or evil beings manifest
themselves as what they call min-min
lights.
Earth lights also have been linked to
locations where sacred shrines and monuments were erected by early societies.
They have been seen around Viking burial sites, Himalayan temples, and other
mystical or holy places, such as at England's Glastonbury Tor, the Castlerigg
Stone Circle, and other Megalith sites.
Not surptisingly, the earth lights
phenomena have sparked debate among
those who claim they are terrestrial in origin and others who feel they are convincing evidence of UFOs. Researcher Paul
Devereux's theory that earth lights represent an unfamiliar, but terrestrial form of
electromagnetic energy has played a

ECKANKAR

prominent role in at least one controversial study that suggests energy given off
by the lights could spark changes in the
brain that might lead some individuals to
imagine they've had an encounter with a
UFO. In laboratory experiments electromagnetism has been shown to affect the
brain's hippocampus region, causing a
subject to undergo an altered state of
consciousness. Researchers have been
able to duplicate the same kinds of visions and bodily sensations experienced
by people who claim to have come in
contact with extraterrestrials.
Sources: Paul Devereux. Earth Lights Revelation. London: Blandford Press, 1990;
Paul Devereux. Earthmind. New York:

Harper

& Row, 1989; Sharon Jarvis, ed.

New York:
Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1989.
True Tales of the Uninvited.

Earth mysteries
See Dowsing; Earth lights; Leys; Megaliths; Planetary consciousness; Power
point.

ECKANKAR~'
Religious movement founded in 1965 by
the late Paul Twitchell, dedicated to presenting the teachings of ECK. ECK is the
Holy Spirit, the life force, the "Audible
Life Current" that sustains all life, and
which manifests in light and sound. ECKANKAR headquarters are in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with followers in approximately one hundred countries.
ECKANKAR involves the study of
Spirit in the lower worlds of marrer, energy, space, and time. According to
Twitchell, the 971st Living ECK Master,
it is older than all religions on Earth, and
traces of it can be found in most spiritual
teachings. It was formerly a secret path to
'The terms ECKANKAR, ECK, Mahanta, and Soul Travel are trademarks of
ECKANKAR.

171

Sri Paul Twitchell

God. Central to ECKANKAR is mastery

of "the Ancient Science of Soul Travel,"
which is the expansion of inner consciousness through the physical, astral,
causal, mental, and etheric planes. Soul
Travel provides the direct path to realization of SUGMAD (a sacred name of
God).
According to ECKANKAR one may
attain spiritual illumination without the
asceticism required of adepts in other religions. ECKANKAR, a blend of Western
and Eastern esoteric philosophies, espouses high moral values and a detachment from materialism. Initiates advance
through various levels. The sacred scriptures of ECK are the Shariyat-KiSUGMAD, twelve volumes on the inner
plants, the first two of which ,vere transcribed by Twitchell.
Little is known about Twitchell's
early life. He declined to give a birth date,
and said not long before his death that

172

his real name was Peddar Zaskq, that he

never knew his real parents, and was
raised by foster parents named Twitchell.
His authorized biography, In My Soul I
Am Free (1968), by Brad Steiger, says
that he was an illegitimate child born on
a Mississippi riverboat, and was raised by
his father and stepmother in China Point,
a southern town.
Twitchell said his father, a businessman who traveled widely, learned the art
of Soul Travel, an expansion of consciousness, from an Indian holy man, Sudar Singh, of Allahabad. The elder
Twitchell taught it to his older son and
daughter. The daughter, Kay Dee, taught
Paul Twitchell, the youngest, how to
leave his body when he was three.
As a youth Twitchell met Singh in
Paris, and with his sister went to Singh's
ashram in Allahabad to study for a year.
During World War II, he joined the Navy
as a gunner. Small and wiry at five-footsix, he was nicknamed "little toughie."
He said he took numerous out-of-body
trips during the war to save others in
trouble and heal the sick.
In 1944, while Twitchell was serving
aboard a Navy ship in the Pacific, a Tibetan master named Rebazar Tarzs appeared to him in his soul body. Tarzs,
who claimed to be about five hundred
years old, introduced Twitchell to a spiritual and mystical mystery called ECKANKAR.
Following the war Twitchell returned to the United States and settled in
Seattle. He worked as a newspaper reporter and freelance writer for pulp magazines. He visited India again, and had
intensive encounters in Soul Travel with
Tarzs.
His spiritual beliefs were further influenced by his exposure to the SelfRealization Church of Absolute Monism,
in Washington, DC; Scientology, in
which he advanced to "clear"; and the
Ruhani Satsang Sikh movement. Twitchell and his first wife joined the Self-

ECKANKAR

Living ECK Master Sri Harold Klemp

Realization Church, associated with the
Self-Realization Fellowship of Paramahansa Yogananda, and lived on the
grounds for more than five years. In 1955
they separated and left the church. They
were divorced in 1960.
In 1964 T,vitchell married Gail Atkinson, a University of Washington student. They moved to San Diego upon
Tarzs's instructions to prepare for their
life's work in ECKANKAR. Twitchell
was to become the first American to be a
Living ECK Master, or human representative of God, charged with the mission
to spread the secret teachings of ECKANKAR.
In 1965 Twitchell began to write and
lecture on ECIC<\i,\;"KAR.Interest grew
rapidly. Twitchell lectured around the
world, and claimed to use Soul Travel to
heal, exorcise ghosts from haunted
houses, find missing persons and criminals, and help others in their spiritual
quests. He inspired great admiration and

ECKANKAR

adoration among his followers, who

called him the Mahanta, the embodiment
of the highest state of God Consciousness
on Earth. By 1988 ECKANKAR had established 284 centers in twenty-three
countries.
In his later years, Twitchell said enemies were trying to assassinate him because of his spiritual beliefs, and he quit
traveling alone. He died in 1971 and the
ECK Rod of Power was handed to Darwin Gross. Gross's authority was challenged in 1980, and on October 22,
1981, he was succeeded by Harold
Klemp, who had been named by Twitchell in 1970 as the third American Living
ECK Master. Gross was later expelled
from the Order of ECK Masters on
charges of spiritual insubordination.
ECKANKAR headquarters
were
moved from Las Vegas, Nevada, to
Menlo Park, California, in 1975, and
then to Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1986.

Soul Travel
Soul Travel, according to ECKANKAR, is the soul's journey home to God,
an upliftment into ecstatic states of consciousness. The ability to leave the physical body at will and travel into the spiritual realms is taught to all ECKists.
Twitchell preferred the term "Soul
Travel" over "bilocation," which he felt
sounded too much like astral projection
(deemed harmful) and did not express the
breadth and depth of ECKANKAR.
According to ECKANKAR the soul
is sheathed in protective bodies. The
ECKist travels in the Atma Sarup, the
soul body. The travel is done in the four
spirito-materialistic planes below the soul
plane: physical, astral, causal, and mental. Soul Travel may be done alone, but it
is preferable to be accompanied by a spiritual master who has attained the soul
plane and is living-that is, the Living
ECK Master.

173

Soul Travel may be accomplished

through several basic methods, including
dreaming, contemplation, and chanting
"SUGMAD," "HU," or other holy
words.
Sources:

ECKANKAR:

An Introduction.

Booklet. Minneapolis: ECKANKAR, n.d.;

John Godwin. Occult America. Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1972; Harold
Klemp. Soul Travelers of the Far Country.
Minneapolis: ECKANKAR, 1987; Leslie A.
Shepard, ed. Encyclopedia of Occultism
and Parapsychology. 2d ed. Detroit: Gale
Research Co., 1984; Brad Steiger. In My
Soul I Am Free. Minneapolis: ECKANKAR, 1968; Paul Twitchell. ECKANKAR:
The Key to Secret Worlds. San Diego: Illuminated Way Press, 1969; Paul Twitchell.
The Spiritual Notebook. Menlo Park, CA:
IWP Publishing, 1971; Paul Twitchell. The
Tiger's Fang. New York: Lancet Books,
1967.

Eckhart, Johannes
(c. 1260-1327)
Dominican
theologian
and mystic,
founder of "German mysticism." Johannes Eckhart is known generally as
"Meister Eckhart" or simply "Meister"
(Master). He is considered the most important medieval German mystic, and
one of the most important figures in
Christian mysticism.
Eckhart is said to have been born in
Hockheim in Thuringia; no exact records
of his date and place of birth exist. At
about age fifteen, he joined the Dominican Order at Erfurt, where his exceptional abilities were recognized, and he
was eventually sent to the Dominican
Higher School in Cologne to study theology. There it is likely that he heard
Thomas Aquinas and Alberrns Magnus,
who had a profound influence on the development of his mystical philosophy.
Eckhart also was greatly influenced by
Plotinus, Dionysius the Areopagite, Au-

174

gustine, and Erigena. He returned to Erfurt, and sometime between 1290 and
1298 was named prior.
He attended the University of Paris
in 1300, and in 1302 received the title of
Meister of Theology. The following year
he was elected the first Provincial-Prior of
the Dominican Order for Saxony (most
of northern Germany and Holland). In
1307 he also became Vicar-General of
Bohemia and was given the task of ridding the area of its notoriously lax ways
and heretical views. The problems were
compounded by the animosity between
the Dominican and Franciscan orders.
In 1311 Eckhart returned to Paris,
and in 1314 went to Strasbourg, where
he launched his brilliant career as a
preacher and teacher. He was enormously popular and drew large audiences, to whom he preached in their own
language, not in Latin. He coined many
philosophical and theological words. He
was a prolific writer, composing in Latin.
At around 1322 he went to Cologne.
On September 26, 1326, Eckhart
was formally accused of heresy, in part
because he was one of many victims of
the political turmoil between Louis IV of
Bavaria and Pope John XXII, and the difficulties between the Dominicans and
Franciscans. The king disputed the election of the pope, who in turn excommunicated him. The dispute provided on opportunity for the Archbishop of Cologne,
a Franciscan, to drive out Dominicans
and bring them up before the Inquisition.
Eckhart was found guilty of nearly
one hundred counts of heresy; his teachings were said to be dangerous to the
common people in their own tongue.
Though technically not answerable to the
Archbishop of Cologne, Eckhart felt
obliged to defend himself and his order
and submitted to a trial. The ill-informed
judges were no match for him, but the
trial dragged on for nearly a year. Eckhart appealed to Pope John XXII, who
ordered the documents in question to be

ECKANKAR

sent to Avignon for hearings by a papal

commission. Soon after his arrival there,
Eckhart fell ill and died sometime before
April 30, 1328. The exact circumstances
of his death are not known: he may have
died in Avignon, or on the road back to
Cologne, or in Cologne.
Following Eckhart's death the commission dismissed seventy-one of the
charges but found that seventeen works,
of which Eckhart admitted preaching fifteen, were heretical. Another eleven were
questionable. In 1329 Pope John XXII issued a bull condemning the seventeen
works. The bull also said that prior to his
death, Eckhart had revoked and deplored
the twenty-six articles he admitted
preaching that might be considered heretical. Therefore the pope would not excommunicate him posthumously. Modern theologians see Eckhart's renunciation not as a denial of the truth of his
teachings, but only as an acknowledgment that some of his teachings might
generate heretical opinions.
The condemnation hurt the spread
of Eckhart's teachings, but pupils kept
them alive. His work had a great influence on German and Flemish mystics of
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
then nearly disappeared, but was preserved by the Dominican Order. Beginning in the nineteenth century, Eckhart
was rediscovered, especially by the existential philosophers such as Georg
Wilhelm Frederich Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Martin Heidegger, who
were influenced by him. Later Zen Buddhist scholar D. T. Suzuki compared him
to Zen masters, and the theologian Rudolph Otto analyzed his philosophy
alongside that of the great Indian mystic
and philosopher Sankara (788-820).
Eckhart's philosophy, which presumes a living cosmology, has found
(along with the \vorks of other medieval
mystics) new meaning in the creation
spirituality pioneered by Dominican Matthew Fox. See Creation spirituality.

Eckhart, Johannes (c. 1260-1327)

Eckhart's Theology
Eckhart's theology is complex. The
type of mysticism Eckhart taught is called
"speculative" or "essential." He affirmed
God as the "I am that I am" of the Old
Testament, and distinguished between the
Godhead and God. Godhead is "beingness," and God is creation, the "becoming" of all things. God can be born in and
fill the soul, which in turn reflects the divine back to God while retaining its own
identity. Mystical union between the God
and the soul is achieved in the soul's
depths, from where emanates a spark that
unites the t\VOwhile leaving them separate. The spark, said Eckhart, is indestructible, transcends time and space, and
is the seat of conscience.
Eckhart saw the underlying, unbroken unity of all things existing in an everpresent Now, concepts found in Eastern
mysticism and more recently in quantum
physics. He said the soul is troubled by
perceiving created things as separate. Instead, one must awaken to "Absolute
Seeing," in which all things are appreciated simply for their "beingness" and not
projected upon with our own thoughts.
He emphasized the need to become one
with whatever occurs at the moment.
Eckhart was not impressed with
good works. What matters, he said, is the
inner attitude. Detachment was a fundamental theme of Eckhart's preaching, appearing everywhere in his works. "You
must know that to be empty of all created
things is to be full of God, and to be full
of created things is to be empty of God,"
he wrote in a short treatise, On Detachment. Thus the soul can only receive God
when it is emptied. Eckhart emphasized
an inner detachment, even from external
religious exercises. Those who are "attached to their penances and external exercises" cannot understand Divine truth,
he said in Sermon 52.
Another of his fundamental concepts, and among the most controversial,

175

was the birth of the Son in the soul. The

Father gives birth to the Son in eternity,
and so is always giving birth to the Son.
God's ground is the same as the soul's
ground, so the Father then gives birth to
the Son in the soul. The just man, therefore, takes part in the inner life of the
Trinity. This concept formed the basis for
Eckhart's teachings about the identity of
sonship between the just man and the Son
of God. In the condemnation
of Eckhart,
it was considered "suspect of heresy."
One of his heresies was his refutation
of the prevailing view that humankind is
God's greatest creation. He argued that
all things are equal; they are all the same
in God, and are God himself.
Sources: Anne Bancroft. The Luminous Vision: Six Medieval Mystics and Their
Teachings. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982; John Ferguson. An Illustrated
Encyclopedia of Mysticism and the Mystery
Religions. New York: Seabury Press, 1976;
F. C. Happold. Mysticism: A Study and an
Anthology. Rev. ed. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1970;
Robert
Maynard
Hutchins,
ed. Great
Books of the Western World. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952; C. F. Kelley.
Meister Eckhart on Divine Knowledge.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977;
Louis Kronenberger,
ed. Atlantic Brief
Lives. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971; Bernard McGinn et al. Meister Eckhart:
Teacher Preacher. Ramsey, NJ: Paulist
Press, 1986; Meister Eckhart: The Essential
Sermons, Commentaries,
Treatises, and
Defense. Translated and introduction
by
Edmund
Colledge,
OSA and Bernard
McGinn. New York: Paulist Press, 1981;
Cyprian Smith. The Way of Paradox: Spiritual Life As Taught by Meister Eckhart.
Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press, 1988; Joseph R.
Strayer, ed. in chief. Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1984; Frank Tobin. Meister Eckhart:
Thought, Language. Middle Ages Series.
Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1986; Michael Walsh, ed. Butler's
Lives of the Saints. Concise ed. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985.

176

Ecstasy
The psycho-physical
condition that accompanies the apprehension
of what one
experiences as the ultimate reality. The
ultimate reality may differ, as for Indian
mystics and Christian saints, for example.
Yet, as psychical researcher Frederic W.
H. Myers observed, "the evidence for ecstasy is stronger than the evidence for any
other religious belief" (Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death,
1903).
Religious ecstasy, such as discussed
by the mystic-theologians,
including Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Meister
Eckhart, may be the experience of that
which is presumed by faith to be an anticipating of the beatific vision-the
ultimate and everlasting experience of being
in the presence of God. Typically, there is
a sudden, heightened inner consciousness
of stillness and peace, a loss of sense of
self, and an identification
with God and
all things. Such ultimate religious experience may be best described by the mystic
poets, exemplified by William Blake. See
Blake, William. Related also is the "quietness of the soul" described by the great
Spanish mystics John of the Cross and
Teresa de Avila, and Italian mystic Catherine of Siena, although they often experienced also the "dark night of the soul."
See John of the Cross, St.
The state of ecstasy feels timeless.
One may believe the state endures a long
time, though usually it lasts less than half
an hour; some recorded ecstasies allegedly have lasted several days. The longest
on record is an astonishing
thirty-five
years, claimed by a Tyrolean woman,
Maria von Moerl (1812-1868).
In her book Mysticism (1955), Evelyn Underhill describes three distinct aspects under which the ecstatic state may
be studied: the physical, the psychological, and the mystical. She comments that
many of the misunderstandings
that surround the topic come from the refusal of

Eckhart,

Johannes

(c. 1260-1327)

experts in one of these areas to consider

the results arrived at by the other two.
Physically, ecstasy is a trance, accompanied by a lowered breathing and
circulation, rigidity of limbs, and even total anesthesia. The onset of ecstasy usually is gradual, following a period of contemplation of the Divine. It can occur
suddenly and seem to seize a person, a
condition some mystics call rapture. Psychologically, all ecstasy is a complete unification of consciousness or what Underhill termed "complete mono-ideism,"
that is, the deliberate focus on one idea.
The latter, when an exalted form of contemplation, is related to the "centering"
advocated by Zen meditation masters.
Mystically, ecstasy is an exalted act of
perception - "the last term of contemplation," as described by Underhill: "The
word has become a synonym for joyous
exaltation, for the inebriation of the Infinite."
The study of ecstasy has been called
"the psychology of joy" by Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson, who, in Ecstasy:
Understanding

the

Psychology

of Joy

(1987), approaches the topic in relation

to the myth of Dionysus. The unique
Greek god, being half-mortal and halfgod, is described by Johnson as "the personification of divine ecstasy, who can
bring transcendent joy or madness." But
in the myth of this god we can find also
"the capricious, unpredictable thrill of
joy" as well as the "personification of
wine and its ability to bring either spiritual transcendence or physical addiction."
Such revival of interest in the topic
of ecstasy may be influenced at least
partly by the American humanistic psychologist Abraham H. Maslow (19081978). In fact, ecstasy may be similar to
what Maslow called "peak experiences,"
or sudden moments during which a person experiences a feeling of unity and joy
that surrenders to serenity.
In his classic, Toward A Psychology

Ecstasy

of Being (1962), Maslow observed that it

is the nature of a desire to be replaced by

another desire as soon as the first desire is
satisfied. Moreover, he found the drive
for self-actualization (realizing one's fullest potential) can be observed in exceptional individuals in whom all lower
needs are satisfied. He proposed that selfactualizing people (people who are unusually healthy psychologically) have
had, or appear to have, intense insight,
joy, or awareness, which he termed "peak
experiences." See Peak experiences.
In popular culture visions of ecstasy
may be "heaven on earth." However, not
all visions are ecstatic, as seen in visions
described in the biblical writings of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Micah, Daniel, and
John. Such visions are often vehicles
through a prophet of revelations intended
for the faithful humankind, rather than
primarily personal ecstatic experiences. In
fact, some visions are denounced in the
Bible, such as by Jeremiah (14:14) and
Ezekiel (13:7). See Prophecy.
Ecstasy is also distinct from fantasy,
which may also be a generally pleasant
experience, but is more imagined than
real. These can be experienced while
asleep or while awake, as in daydreams.
They can take on an extreme form,
such as in hallucination, in terms of
being a false perception that may have
the character of a true sense perception,
but without the appropriate physical
stimulation.
Ecstasy in the form of rapture is often accompanied by a "carrying-away"
sensation (related in its concrete form to
levitation of the body), as recorded in detail by John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila,
Bernard of Clairvaux, Marie de l'Incarnation, and other great mystics. This is
distinct from out-of-body experiences.
Popular use of the word "ecstasy"
usually is reserved for peak experiences, including those artificially induced
by a super-tranquilizer called Ecstasy
(MDMA), which became illegal in 1985

177

and then became the model for powerful

"designer drugs" similarly nicknamed.
See Mystical experiences; Mysticism; Psychology; Synchronicity.
Sources: John Ferguson. An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mysticism and the Mystery
Religions. New York: Seabury Press, 1976;
Fred H. Johnson. The Anatomy of Hallucinations. Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1978;
Robert A. Johnson. Ecstasy: Understanding
the Psychology of Joy. San Francisco:

Harper & Row, 1987; Abraham H.

Maslow. Toward A Psychology of Being.
Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1962; Frederic W. H. Myers. Human Personality and
Its SUrL'ival of Bodily Death. Vols. 1 and 2.
1903. New ed. New York: Longmans,
Green & Co., 1954; J. D. Page. Psychopathology: The Science of Understanding
Deviance. 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975; Evelyn Underhill. Mysticism. 1955. New York: New American

Library, 1974; Donald Wigal. A Sense of

& Herder, 1969.

Life. New York: Herder

Ectoplasm
A white, fluidic substance said to emanate from the bodily orifices of a medium
that is molded by spirits to assume phantom physical shapes. Substances purported to be ectoplasm have been photographed, but the existence of the
substance has never been proven. It once
was a frequent characteristic of Spiritualist seances.
According to some mediums, ectoplasm is exuded only under certain conditions, such as in trance states during a
seance. It is damaged by exposure to
light, a reason given why seances are held
in dark or dimly lit rooms.
Ectoplasm supposedly manifests as a
solidified white mist and has a peculiar
smell. In some cases the smell may be due
to chemical trickery. "Ectoplasm" can be
created from a mixture of soap, gelatin,
and egg white, which, when blown into
the air, shimmers and glows in bubble-

Medium Mina Crandon, known as "Margery," allegedly producing ectoplasm at

seance

178

Ecstasy

like forms. Another recipe calls for toothpaste and peroxide. A common trick
among fraudulent mediums in the late
nineteenth century was to use muslin.
Nevertheless, many witnesses have
testified to the actuality of ectoplasm.
The most common manifestation of ectoplasm at early Spiritualist seances was
phantom hands, called pseudopods,
which shook the hands of sitters and felt
icy to the touch. Ectoplasm was the subject of extensive studies by psychical researchers well into the twentieth century.
It is not a phenomenon of channeling. See
Home, Daniel Dunglas; Materialization.
Sources: Richard Cavendish, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Unexplained. New York:

McGraw-Hill, 1974; 1. G. Edmonds. D. D.

Home: The Man Who Talked with Ghosts.

Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1978; John

Godwin. Occult America. Garden City,
NY: Doubleday, 1972; Janet Oppenheim.
The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914. Cam-

bridge, England:
Press, 1985.

Cambridge University

Eddy, Mary Baker

See Church of Christ, Scientist.

Electronic voice phenomenon

The recording on magnetic tape of what
seem to be supernatural voices, some of
which are audible. Some of the voices
identify themselves as the spirits of the
dead. Other theories to explain them propose that they are extraterrestrials, impressions from the Akashic Records, or
an unknown phenomenon of the subconscious mind. Many psychical researchers
believe the voices, at least in some cases,
are merely intercepted radio transmissions or static, or distorted mechanical
nOises.
Electronic voices are also called
"Raudive voices," named after a Latvian
psychologist, Konstantin Raudive, a lead-

Electronic

voice phenomenon

mg researcher into the phenomenon in

the 1960s and 1970s. Raudive was inspired by the experimentation of Friedrich Jurgenson, Swedish opera singer,
painter, and film producer. In 1959 Jurgenson tape recorded bird songs in the
Swedish countryside near his villa. On
playback he heard a male voice discuss
"nocturnal bird songs" in Norwegian. At
first Jurgenson thought he had picked up
a radio broadcast, but thought it strange
that such an accident would be a discussion of bird songs. He made other bird
song recordings. He heard no voices during taping, but playback yielded many
voices, which seemed to have personal information for him, plus instructions on
how to record more voices.
Jurgenson experimented with the
voices for several years. In 1964 he published a book in Sweden, Voices from the
Universe, along with a record. Jurgenson
and Raudive met in 1965.
Raudive recorded over 100,000 electronic voice phrases. The voices speak in
different languages, some very clearly,
others sounding like bad long-distance
telephone connections. Some of the
words and phrases are clear, while other
messages seem to be delivered in code.
Sometimes one or two voices are heard,
at other times a multitude of them. The
voices are identifiable as men, women,
and children. Raudive published his research in German in The Inaudible Made
Audible, translated into English in 1971
under the title Breakthrough.
The phenomenon has been studied
by numerous
psychical researchers
around the world and has generated a
great deal of controversy. Some researchers agree the voices are paranormal, while
others believe they are natural sounds,
such as someone rubbing the case of a
tape recorder, or the white noise that occurs on tape.
Between 1970 and 1972, the Society
for Psychical Research in London commissioned D. J. Ellis to investigate the

179

phenomenon.
Ellis concluded
that the
voices most likely were a natural phenomenon. He said the interpretation
of
the sounds was highly subjective and was
susceptible to imagination.
Raudive, who died on September 2,
1974, expressed no particular theory. At
the time of his death, he was studying a
parakeet that apparently had begun uttering meaningful sentences in German,
in a manner characteristic of the Raudive
voices.
Research into the electronic voice
phenomenon
continues by various individuals
and
groups.
The
American
Association-Electronic
Voice Phenomena,
founded in 1982 by Sarah Estep, has
more than two hundred
members
in
thirty-four states in the United States and
eleven foreign countries. The association
calls itself "a metaphysical
organization
interested in spiritual evolvement as well
as all genuine evidence for postmortem
survival," and focuses on "objective contact with those in other dimensions
through tape recorders, televisions, and
computers." See also Phone calls from the
dead.
Sources: Peter Bander. Carry On Talking:
How Dead Are the Voices? Gerrards Cross,
England: Colin Smythe Ltd., 1972; Peter
Bander. Voices from the Tapes: Recording
from the Other World. New York: Drake
Publishers, 1973; Raymond Bayless. "Correspondence." The Journal of the American
Society for Psychical Research 53, no. 1
(January 1959): 35-38; D. J. Ellis. The Mediumship of the Tape Recorder. Pulborough, England: Self-published, 1978; Alan
Gauld. Mediumship and Survival. London:
William Heinemann Ltd., 1982; Edgar D.
Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge
for Science. Edited by John White. New
York: Paragon Books, 1974; Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. Handbook of
Psi Discoveries. New York: Berkley, 1974;
Konstantin
Raudive. Breakthrough:
An
Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead. New York:
Taplinger, 1971.

180

Elementals
See Nature

spirits.

Emmanuel
See Channeling.

Empathy
Tuning in on an intuitive or psychic level
to the emotions, moods, and attitudes of
a person, group of people, or animals.
Empathy is neither entirely conscious nor
entirely unconscious, but falls in between.
It apparently
involves psi phenomena
such as the telepathic
transmission
of
feelings and thoughts,
sometimes
over
long distances. Empathy in face-to-face
situations may be derived in part from an
unconscious
reading of muscular movements and tension.
Empaths are particularly susceptible
to feelings of suffering and distress. The
physical ills of another may manifest in
the empath's own body in the same place,
while emotional disturbances may manifest as depression. These conditions are
picked up from places as well as people.
For example, an empath may walk into a
church and sense the suffering of all the
people who have corne to the church for
solace: the church itself may seem to cry.
Some empaths can sense illness and disease in another before the other person is
aware of the problem, as in cases of cancer. These empathetic experiences are not
the same as psychometry, which requires
touching objects to gain impressions, or
with Therapeutic Touch, a type of medical diagnosis done by scanning one's
aura with the hands.
Empaths may sense death at a distance, sometimes before it occurs. The
sensations may involve the afflicted part
of the body; an empath may feel chest
pain concerning a person who is about to
die of a heart attack. Empathy at a dis-

Electronic

voice phenomenon

tance is most likely to occur between people who have close emotional ties. Twins
are particularly noted for empathetic or
sympathetic links, and mothers often are
empathetic with their children.
Some empaths find that in addition
to sensing emotions, they absorb them
like sponges. The impact can be devastating in the encounter of distress and depression, sometimes leaving an empath
drained of energy.
Cases have been documented of animals exhibiting empathy at a distance.
Pets sense when their owners are in trouble or have been injured or killed, and
become agitated or depressed. Pets also
sense when something happens at a distance to another animal in the household.
Research indicates that animals retain an
empathetic link to their offspring, parents, and litter mates. See Animal psi;
Clairsentience; Psychic attack.
Sources: Isaac Bonewits. Real Magic. Rev.
ed. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1989;
Craig Junjulas. Psychic Tarot. Dobbs Ferry,
NY: Morgan & Morgan, 1985; Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. The ESP Papers: Scientists Speak Out from Behind the
Iron Curtain. New York: Bantam Books,
1976; D. Scott Rogo. Psychic Breakthroughs Today. Wellingborough, Nonh-

amptonshire, England: The Aquarian Press,

1987; Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook
of Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977.

Encounter phenomenon
Anyone of a wide range of experiences
involving alternate realities and nonphysical beings, as found in folklore, mythology, mysticism, shamanism, parapsychology, and psychology. Seemingly disparate
encounters-such
as visions of angels,
possession, channeling of entities, religious conversions, shamanic journeys,
near-death experiences (l\<1)Es),and UFO
abductions-share some common characteristics. Various theories have been put

Encounter

phenomenon

forward to explain encounters, though

the nature and purpose of such experiences perhaps cannot be accounted for by
any single explanation.
Encounters with alternate realities
may seem arbitrary and accidental, thrust
upon the ordinary consciousness without
warning. Most encounters, however, are
motivated and have intention. For example, some come in response to crises such
as life-threatening situations, or are
brought about deliberately through pursuit of a spiritual path, or are mechanisms by which to escape stressful situations. Whether the motivation comes
from an external source or from within is
a matter of debate.
Despite a great variety in the types
of encounters with alternate realities,
records through the ages show a marked
similarity in characteristics: (1) feelings of
friendliness, love, wonder, awe, fearlessness; (2) being anointed as a messenger to
humanity; (3) instruction, initiation, rite
of passage, or enlightenment; (4) psychokinetic feats such as levitation, flying,
passing through material objects; (5) the
appearance of unusual or overpowering
light, or of beings of light; (6) transportation to a nonordinary realm; (7) passage across a threshold or border; (8) an
inkling of the ineffable; (9) revelations;
and (10) extrasensory perception (ESP).
Not all encounters necessarily have all
characteristics.
Theories to explain encounters fall
into three general categories: (1) literal;
(2) projections from the unconscious; (3)
interaction with a higher realm of conSCIOusness.
Literal
The simplest explanation of encounters is that they are what they appear to
be and must be taken at face value. Probably the majority of people who have encounters interpret them accordingly (assuming the experiences are not denied).

181

Therefore, a meeting with a fairy is just

that, as is a vision of the Virgin Mary, or
an encounter with a flying saucer full of
extraterrestrials.
However, cultural and personal beliefs playa powerful role in shaping the
nature of an encounter and one's interpretation of it. Thus the Devil of the Middle Ages perhaps becomes the UFOrelated Man in Black of modern times.
See Men in Black. The NDE, with its
characteristics of tunnels, overpowering
light, the feeling of a divine presence, and
clairaudient voices, closely resembles
many mystical experiences and religious
conversions, such as that of St. Paul. See
Paul, St. Even extraterrestrials, many of
whom purport to come as helpers to humankind, resemble the helping angels of
earlier ages. UFO abductee Betty Andreasson, under hypnosis, drew pictures of
her alien kidnappers that resembled other
pictures drawn by other abductees; pearshaped heads, cat's eyes, nostril holes,
and a slash for a mouth. Yet Andreasson's own religious orientation led her to
interpret them as "angels."
As culture and personal belief shape
the nature of encounters, so do encounters reinforce culture and personal belief.
A repetition of a type of encounter makes
it more likely that other individuals in the
same culture who find themselves open to
alternate realities will have the same type
of experience.

Projections from the

Subconscious
The influence of culture and personal belief lends some credence to the
second group of theories that hold that
encounters involve no literal external
agents such as aliens or angels, but are
exteriorizations of the unconscious. The
encounter is said to happen when the unconscious deems a flight from reality necessary to relieve stress. The individual
experiences a depersonalization and iden-

182

tifies with a culturally acceptable role

model. The unconscious decides what
kind of encounter will take place. Some
encounters are so powerful that the person's life is permanently changed. Such
experiences may be the result of a longterm germination deep within the unconscious. Collective encounters, such as
mass visions of the Virgin Mary, may
then be viewed as projections from the
collective unconscious symptomatic of a
racial struggle for spiritual development.
Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung thought UFOs
might be collective archetypal expressions
of a great transformation in human conSCIOusness.
Reliance upon this type of escape
from reality can lead to chronic altered
states of consciousness and mental illness,
as seen in schizophrenia and multiple personality, in which encounters are of a
negative nature.

Interaction with a Higher

Realm of Consciousness
From this viewpoint at least some
encounters are genuine interactions with
the Mind at Large, a divine creative
power permeating the universe, and are
intended to further the spiritual development of human consciousness. Thus they
are archetypes of enlightenment, preparing the way for a new psychophysical adaptation to the environment, as described
in Teilhard de Chardin's "noosphere," or
for postmortem survival in a new form of
consciousness.
Encounters with alternate realities
involve psi in various forms, as well as
(on occasion) supernormal physical abilities. Some parapsychologists state that
psi shows the presence of an alternate
and deep level of psychic functioning, one
that has little value and presence in the
ordinary world, but which seems more
appropriate for alternate realities toward
which humankind might be evolving.

Encounter phenomenon

The matter

of survival

after

death

has vexed psychical researchers for more

than a century. No scientific proof of survival has been found, leaving belief in
immortality
of the soul to religion and
personal conviction. NDEs provide convincing evidence of survival to many, yet
still are not considered scientifically evidential.

The "Encounter-Prone
Personality"
Research

Walpole, NH: Stillpoint Publishing, 1985;

Kenneth Ring and Christopher J. Rosing.
"The Omega Project: An Empirical Study
of the NDE-Prone Personality." Journal of
Near-Death
Studies 8, no. 4 (Summer
1990): 211-39; Peter M. Rocjewicz. "The
Extraordinary
Encounter Continuum Hypothesis and Its Implications for the Study
of Belief Materials." Folklore Forum 19,
no. 2 (1986): n.p.

Enlightenment
See Mystical

experiences;

Mysticism.

shows that some individu-

als are more likely to have encounters

with alternate realities than are others,
raising more questions as to the source of
the phenomenon.
The most significant
factor seems to be excessive stress and
trauma in childhood, including physical,
sexual, and psychological abuse, neglect,
a negative home atmosphere, and serious
illness. These findings do not necessarily
mean that these stresses cause encounters,
only that individuals who report encounters are more likely to have these factors
in their backgrounds.
Such stresses can
result in dissociation, in which part of the
psyche splits off from itself as a means of
self-defense. Children under these conditions seem more likely to have early alternate realities encounters, such as seeing nonphysical beings ,vhile awake.
Some studies,
but not all, have
shown that childhood tendencies toward
fantasy and imagination also are factors.
Some researchers
believe that encounters with alternative realities are all
or predominantly
fantasy, while others
disagree. See Extraterrestrial
encounters;
Mystical experiences; Near-death experience (NDE);
Planetary
consciousness;
Shamanism.
Sources: Hilary Evans. Alternate States of
Consciousness: Unself, Otherself, and Superself. Wellingborough,
England:
The
Aquarian Press, 1989. Michael Grosso. The
Final Choice: Playing the Survival Game.

ESP (extrasensory

perception)

Enneagram
See Gurdjieff,

Georgei Ivanovitch.

Erhard, Werner
See est.

Erlendur, Haraldsson
See Deathbed

visions;

Sai Baba.

ESP (extrasensory perception)

A so-called "sixth sense," in which sensory information
is perceived through
means beyond the five senses of sight,
hearing,
smell, touch, and taste. ESP
brings a person information
about the
present, past, or future. It seems to originate in a second, or alternate, reality.
The term "ESP" was used as early as
1870 by Sir Richard Burton. In 1892 Dr.
Paul Joire, a French researcher, observed
people who were hypnotized or in trance,
and used ESP to describe the ability to
externally sense without using the known
senses.
In the 1920s
Dr. Rudolph
Tischner,
a Munich
ophthalmologist,
used ESP to describe "externalization
of
sensibility." The term was popularized in
the 1930s by American parapsychologist
J. B. Rhine to cover psychic phenomena

183

analogous to sensory functions. Rhine

was one of the first parapsychologists to
test for ESP in the laboratory.
The term ESP is sometimes applied
in popular usage loosely, and sometimes
inaccurately, to any psychic or paranormal phenomena. ESP may be divided into
two broad categories: telepathy and clairvoyance, both of which may be directed
forward (precognition) and backward
(retrocognition). ESP does not include
psychokinesis (PK) or out-of-body expenences.
In

New

Frontiers

of

the

Mind

(1937), Rhine notes that historically

learned people long held a common assumption that nothing enters the human
mind except through the five senses, and
that therefore the mind is subject to the
laws of the mechanical world. Since the
birth of psychical research in the late
nineteenth century, researchers have devoted a great deal of effort to trying to
prove in the laboratory that ESP exists,
and to discover the physical mechanism
by which it operates. The mind has been
equated with the brain, and scientists
have searched to discover how ESP registers in the brain/mind.
However, mounting evidence has
demonstrated that ESP exists, but that it
cannot be explained or quantified by
physical laws; and, furthermore, that
mind (consciousness) and brain are two
distinct entities. At the same time, research in quantum physics points to the
existence of a second, nonmaterial universe. Thus the Western scientist increasingly must come to terms with an Eastern
mystical concept: that an extrasensory
force exists in another reality, and intersects and integrates with the physical
world.
ESP does not function like a sense.
There is no localization, which governs
other senses that receive information
through various parts of the body; and it
does not depend on any of the other five
senses. Nor does ESP depend upon such

184

factors as geography, time, intelligence,

age, or education.
Explanations

of ESP

Prior to Rhine's research at Duke

University in North Carolina, other psychical researchers had attempted to name
and define the "hidden sense." In the
nineteenth century, Professor Charles
Richet coined the term "cryptesthesia."
Frederic W. H. Myers, one of the
founders of the Society for Psychical Research, used "telesthesia" for what later
came to be called "clairvoyance" or "seeing at a distance." At one time researchers generally believed that any psychic
transfer of information required two people, one to send and one to receive. This
premise was subsequently disproved, for
clairvoyance involves the perception of
information that doesn't seem to be
in anyone's mind. Rhine coined the
term "general extrasensory perception"
(GESP) to include both telepathy and
clairvoyance. Later the term "psi" was
designated to cover ESP, or GESP, and
PK. See Psi. Some Russian scientists call
ESP "bioinformation."
Researcher Louisa E. Rhine proposed that ESP begins in the deep unconscious, the storehouse of memories,
hopes, fears, and so on. Here contact is
made between the objective world and
the center of the mind. The individual is
unaware of the contact until and unless
information filters up to the conscious
mind. Similarly, psychiatrist Carl G. Jung
proposed that the conscious mind has
subliminal psychic access to the collective
unconscious, a vast repository of accumulated wisdom and experience of the
human race. See Collective unconscious.
In a theory published in 1960, Dr.
Hilda Gertrud Heine of the University of
New Zealand proposed that macrophages, a type of cell present in connective tissue, lymph nodes, and bone marrow and tied to nerve endings, are the

ESP (extrasensory

perception)

body's ESP organs, sending and receiving

impressions below the level of normal
perception. Such cells are more sensitive
and active in childhood, and deteriorate
without proper diet.
More recently, other theories have
focused on the existence of a second consciousness that integrates with both physical and second realities. This second consciousness may be called soul, subliminal
self, superconsciousness, transcendent
ego, dream self, or a host of similar
names. Subliminal barriers exist between
the two consciousnesses, otherwise the
waking conscious would be bombarded
with information rising up out of the second reality. (A further discussion of metaphysical and physical theories of ESP is
incorporated with PK under Psi.)

Forms of ESP
How information from the second
reality reaches the conscious mind depends upon the following: the conditions
that exist at the moment the information
becomes available; the natural ~oclivities for ESP in the individual; and the colorations and distortions created by prejudices, thoughts, and conditionings. In a
study of 10,000 cases involving ESP, the
findings of which were published in
1963, Louisa E. Rhine divided ESP into
four basic forms: realistic dreams (39 percent); intuition (30 percent); unrealistic
dreams (18 percent); and hallucinations
(13 percent). Realistic dreams contain
vivid, detailed imagery of the information
conveyed. Intuition includes "gut feelings," forebodings, and premonitions.
Unrealistic dreams contain fantastical imagery and symbols. Hallucinations include visual and auditory sensations that
relay information. Rhine suggested that
dreams may be the most efficient carriers
of ESP messages, because in sleep the barriers to the conscious mind appear to be
thinnest.

Rhine also said the ESP that proves

to be inaccurate may be the result of distortions and blockages of the conscious
mind. Most ESP incidents occur spontaneously, and a high percent concern crises, accidents and deaths of loved ones,
and major disasters. Perhaps trauma and
shock enable negative information to
break through the subliminal barriers
more easily than positive, happy information.
Who Has ESP?
In all types of paranormal gifts, the
evidence is strong that the exceptional
ability is inherited. Certainly in ages past,
those who were renowned as seers,
prophets, and diviners appeared to have
been born with exceptional ESP gifts, and
often to have other family members who
were similarly gifted. That does not
mean, however, that only selected individuals possess ESP and the rest of the
population does not. One theory holds
that ESP is a primordial sense that has
become less accessible as civilization and
technology have advanced; another theory holds that it is a supersense that is
evolving in the nervous system.
Psychical research supports the theory that all people have the capacity for
ESP, though some are born more talented
than others. Most people have at least
one ESP experience in their lives. According to a survey published in 1987 by the
University of Chicago's National Opinion
Research Council, 67 percent of all adult
Americans believe they have experienced
ESP. Eleven years earlier the figure was
58 percent. The increase may be indicative of an increasing acceptance of the
possibility of ESP among the general
public.
Studies have shown that certain environmental, emotional, and attitudinal
factors affect ESP performance in the laboratory. People who are relaxed, believe
in the possibility of ESP, and are intuitive

185

ESP (extrasensory perception)

+\ ~ ~~

..\~, '0\'\:_\-\\ -

0...

-\U\. ~~~

<Vr 'VIII

0..-'1A..~0\\ .

by nature tend to perform better than

those who are tense, skeptical, and analytical. See Sheep/goat effect. ESP ability
can be developed and strengthened with
training, although talented subjects who
are repeatedly tested in the laboratory begin to decline in performance,
perhaps
due to boredom. See Decline/incline
effects. Some individuals say they discover
or are able to enhance their ESP through
meditation,
yoga, and the use of mindaltering drugs. See Clairvoyance;
Drugs
in mystical and psychic experiences; Intuition; Meditation; Precognition;
SuperESP; Telepathy; Yoga.
Sources: Hugh Lynn Cayce. Venture Inward. New York: Harper & Row, 1964;
Hoyt L. Edge, Robert L. Morris, John
Palmer, and Joseph H. Rush. Foundations
of Parapsychology.
Boston:
Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1986; Andrew Greeley.
"Mysticism Goes Mainstream." American
Health (January/February
1987): 47--49;
Hilda Gertrud Heine. The Vital Sense: The
Implication and Explanation of the Sixth
Sense. London: Cassell & Co., 1960; Lawrence LeShan. Alternate Realities. New
York: M. Evans & Co., 1967; Gardner
Murphy. "Direct Contacts with Past and
Future: Retrocognition and Precognition."
The Journal of the American Society for
Psychical Research 61, no. 1 (January
1967): 3-23;]. B. Rhine. New Frontiers of
the Mind. New York: Farrar & Rinehart,
1937; Louisa Rhine. ESP in Life and Lab:
Tracing Hidden Channels. New York: Collier Books, 1967; Ingo Swann. Natural
ESP. Nevi York: Bantam Books, 1987;
Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook
of
Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold, 1977.

ESP

cards

A deck of twenty-five cards of five symbols: a star, a cross, a square, a circle,

and a set of three wavy lines. Formerly
called Zener cards, ESP cards once were a
standard tool in laboratory psychical research for testing telepathy, clairvoyance,

186

ESP cards
and precognition. The cards are occasionally used in the lab, but they have virtually been replaced by the computer.
Before an experiment the cards are
thoroughly shuffled. In a telepathy test, a
tester goes through the deck, concentrating on each symbol one at a time; the
subject, or percipient, writes down the
symbols as they are perceived. In clairvoyance a tester picks cards out of the
pack face down and places them down;
the percipient records the hidden symbols
as they are perceived. In precognition the
percipient attempts to name the cards in
order before they are shuffled by the
sender.
Going through the entire deck constitutes a "run." The score is measured
against mean chance expectation (MCE);
a percipient may be expected to hit one
out of five correctly.
Precautions
are
taken to guard against fraud and accidental invalidation
by sealing the cards in
opaque containers or envelopes and placing the tester and percipient in separate
rooms, sometimes separate buildings.
ESP cards were first used in 1930 at
Duke University in North Carolina. They
were created by two Duke faculty members, ]. B. Rhine and Karl Zener, as a
simplification
of psi tests using regular
playing cards. As early as 1884, such tests
had been conducted
by Dr. Charles
Richet of France, and others.
By 1932, after exhaustive
testing,
Rhine found eight subjects who consis-

ESP (extrasensory

perception)

tently scored better than chance. Out of a

total of 85,724 tests, the eight had scored
24,364 hits, or 7,219 more than could be
expected by chance. From 1933 to 1934,
Rhine conducted long-distance tests involving his highest scorer, Hubert Pearce,
a Duke divinity student, and J. Gaither
Pratt, a graduate student. With Pratt and
Pearce in separate buildings, Rhine conducted 1,850 clairvoyance tests over eight
months. Pearce's score was so high that
the odds against it were 10 followed by
21 zeros to 1, definitely ruling out chance
as an explanation.
In 1934 Rhine published these and
other results in a controversial monograph, Extra-Sensory
Perception. Other
researchers tried to replicate the results,
with mixed results. Critics claimed the
tests were invalid because too much potential for fraud existed in the way the
cards were shuffled or handled; under
certain light the symbols could be vaguely
discerned through the backs of the cards.
Critics also said there was a possibility
that the subjects could have picked up
sensory clues, such as body language,
from the testers. To avoid such hazards,
test procedures were altered, and sender
and receiver were placed in separate
rooms or buildings.
In 1936 ESP cards were made available to the public. Rhine continued to use
them for decades in psi tests, after changing his procedures to eliminate any possibility of fraud or unconscious influence.
Test results using ESP cards have scored
consistently high overall. One interesting
phenomenon is displacement; some subjects correctly identify the card immediately before or after the target card. In
modern psychical research laboratories,
ESP card images and random orders are
generated by computer. See Displacement; Ganzfeld stimulation; Remote
vlewmg.
Sources: Into the Unknown. Pleasantville,
NY: Reader's Digest, 1981; Edgar D.
Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge

Essenes

for Science. Edited by John White. New

York: Paragon Books, 1974; J. B. Rhine.

New Frontiers of the Mind. New York:
Farrar & Rinehart, 1937; Carl Sargent and
Hans J. Eyseck. Know Your Own Psi-Q.
New York: World Almanac Publications,
1983; Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook
of Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977.

Essenes
Members of an ascetic sect, Jewish in heritage, most of whom lived in the Qumran
settlement on the western shore of the
Dead Sea during the century before and
the century after the birth of Jesus. Modern interest in them is due mainly to the
discovery in the Qumran caves in the
1940s of the documents popularly called
the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Modern research on the Essenes in
general and the Qumran community in
particular is based not only on the Dead
Sea Scrolls, but also on the writings of
first-century historians, including Philo
of Alexandria. According to these descriptions, the Essenes were a peaceful,
primarily religious community of about
four thousand members who shared their
possessions. Their livelihood centered on
agriculture and handicrafts. They rejected
slavery and believed in the immortality of
the soul. After two to three years of preparation, each person took an oath of piety, justice, and truthfulness.
The community had a regular schedule of solemn meals, prayer, and study,
especially on the Sabbath. There was a
central teacher and titles for various officeholders. The central group opposed
marriage. Transgressors were excluded.
Because of the similarity of these
practices and those of the early Christian
communities, the assumption often is
made that there was some relationship
between the two. It has even been proposed that some members followed John
the Baptist or even became, or were also,

187

Christians. However, various contemporary writers, such as Nahum N. Glatzer,

hold that other direct connections
between the Essenes and the early Christians seems unlikely. Still, connections
continue to be made, such as in commentaries on the Edgar Cayce readings.
Cayce's readings depict the Essenes,
for example, as playing an important part
in the spiritual preparations
of the Jews
for the birth of the Messiah. Cayce saw
them as "the outgrowth of the periods of
preparations
from the teaching of Melchizedek, as prolonged
by Elijah and
Elisha and Samuel" (Reading 254).
Recent studies do show the importance of Melchizedek in the Essene faith.
But Cayce goes further, to propose that
Anne (the mother of Mary) and Mary
and Joseph (the parents of Jesus) were
members of the Essene community,
and
that Mary and Joseph were married at
the Essene temple on Mount
Carmel
(Reading 5749-15).
The Essenes and the Dead Sea Scrolls
are the subjects of ongoing study in the
fields of theology and religion. An appreciation of this community, which existed
at the most dynamic
era of JudeoChristian history, is vital to the understanding of Western and Eastern religious
lifestyles in general. Also important is its
influence on the letter and spirit of many
of the most important
documents
of
Western civilization. Among these are the
Rule of the Master, a sixth-century monastic document,
which in turn influenced St. Benedict in his Regula Monachorum, a work that set the standard for
all monastic life and influenced medieval
university teachings.
See Benedict,
Dead Sea Scrolls; Gnosticism.

St.;

Sources: Philip Davies. Qumran. New

York: State Mutual, 1982; Glenn Sanderfur. Lives of the Master: The Rest of the
Jesus Story. Virginia Beach, VA: ARE
Press, 1988; Marcel Simon. Sects at the
Time of Jesus. Translated by James Farley.
Minneapolis:
Augsburg Fortress,
1980;

188

Krister Stendahl. The Scrolls and the New

Testament. Westport,
CT: Greenwood,
1975.

est (Erhard Seminars Training)

A human potential system launched in
1971 by Werner Erhard, the pseudonym
of John Paul Rosenberg, a Philadelphiaborn sales training executive. The core est
program consists of a sixty-hour seminar,
the purpose of which is to force participants to take responsibility for their lives
and to transform their ability to "experience" life. Thus problems in life are supposed to resolve themselves. Est is based
on various Eastern and Western philosophy systems and motivational
training
concepts. It peaked in popularity during
the 1970s, when tens of thousands
of
people, including numerous
celebrities,
rushed to undertake the program. It continues to have adherents,
though
no
longer enjoys fad interest.
The name "est" (always written in
lower case) stands for Erhard Seminars
Training; in Latin it means "it is." According to Erhard the est system is neither psychology nor group therapy, but a
way to open a new awareness of living.
Every person, Erhard says, possesses the
power to transform his or her life.
Hallmarks of early est seminars included physical discomfort
(infrequent
breaks) and verbal abuse, including obscenities, heaped upon the participants by
the trainers. Early est sessions provided
breaks only about every seven hours; this
was later improved to about every four
hours. According to Erhard physical discomfort is a valuable part of training.
The verbal abuse is intended to challenge
and break down participants'
defense systems and the psychological
games they
play. The core program is preceded by
"pre-training,"
which sets the ground
rules, and various follow-up programs,
including a "graduate"
program.

Essenes

Critics say est is narcissistic and

leads to simplistic beliefs and inadequate
conceptualizations. However, some individuals who have gone through the program say they became freed of all sorts of
emotional and psychological complaints,
even physical conditions such as migraine
headaches.
Erhard was born John Paul Rosenberg in Philadelphia on September 5,
1935, to a Jewish family. His father
owned a restaurant. Following graduation from high school in 1952, he married his school sweetheart, Pat, with
whom he had three girls and two boys.
He worked in a succession of blue-collar
jobs, then became a sales manager for a
used auto dealer, and then managed a
business that sold industrial equipment.
In 1959, at age twenty-four, he left
his wife and children and went to St.
Louis with another woman, Ellen. To
avoid being traced by his family, he
adopted a pseudonym formed from the
names of physicist Werner Heisenberg
and West German finance minister (and
later chancellor) Ludwig Erhard. Ellen
became his second wife; they had two
girls and one boy.
Erhard eventually moved to California, where he worked in various jobs
training and developing executives. He
studied Zen, yoga, Scientology, Gestalt,
Dale Carnegie, Mind Dynamics, and hypnosis. One day while driving on a freeway, he had a transformational experience and soon thereafter quit his job to
start est. The Church of Scientology,
which automatically expels any member
who becomes involved in other disciplines, expelled him.
Following its launch in 1971, est became an immediate hit; it was soon established in Europe. By 1975 est grossed
$9.3 million and had a paid staff of 230
plus over six thousand volunteers. Est
claimed to have seventy-five thousand
graduates, among them Yoko Ono, John
Denver, Valerie Harper, Jerry Rubin,

Evil eye

Cloris Leachman, Joanne Woodward,

and other celebrities. Erhard predicted
that 40 million Americans would take est,
but the numbers have fallen far short of
that goal.
In 1973, after a thirteen-year silence
with his first family, Erhard resumed contact with them, and his ex-wife took est
training. The same year he established
The est Foundation to make grants in endeavors concerning consciousness and
human potential. The Foundation sponsored Swami Muktananda.
Erhard has established other organizations and devoted his attention to
working as a foundation administrator.
He established the Hunger Project in
1977; the Breakthrough Foundation in
1980; Werner Erhard and Associates in
1981; the Forum in 1985; and Transformational Technologies in 1985. His offices are located in Sausalito, California.
Erhard is the subject of a 1978 biography, Werner Erhard: The Transformation

of a Man, the Founding

of est, by

William Warren Bartley.

Sources: Adelaide Bry. est: 60 Hours That
Transform Your Life. New York: Harper
& Row, 1976; Robert A. Hargrove. est:
making life work. Garden City, NY: Dela-

coutte Press, 1976; Leslie A. Shepard, ed.

Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. 2d ed. Detroit: Gale Research Co.,

1984.

Etheric body
See Aura; Healing, faith and psychic.

Evil eye
An ancient and nearly universal belief
that certain individuals possess the supernatural power to wreak disaster, calamity, illness, and even death with a glance
or lingering look. The evil eye, also called
"fascination," "overlooking," mal occhio, and jettatura, is greatly feared in
many parts of the world.

189

The oldest records of the evil eye

date back to about 3000 B.C. in the cuneiform texts of the Sumerians and Assyrians. The Babylonians believed in it, as
did the ancient Egyptians and Greeks.
The Romans were particularly
afraid of
it. It is mentioned
in the Bible. Most
tribal cultures fear it, and it is part of the
black magic of Vodoun.
Superstitions
about the evil eye are still prevalent in
Europe, especially in the Mediterranean
region, and in Mexico and Central Amer!Ca.

The evil eye falls into two categories.

Witches, sorcerers, witch doctors, and
medicine men are said to cast deliberate
evil eyes. Most cases of evil eye are unintentional,
however; a person may be
cursed with evil eye from birth and not
know it. Pope Pius IX and Pope Leo XIII
were both said to possess the evil eye.
Consequently,
believers must be on constant guard against the inadvertent
malevolent glance. It may come from a
stranger
who admires one's children;
children, along with women and animals,
are particularly vulnerable to its effects.
The evil eye is most likely to strike when
one is at the peak of prosperity and happmess.
Numerous amulets exist to ward off
the evil eye. The most common are two
phallic symbols, the como,
a curved
horn, and the "fig," a clenched hand with
thumb stuck through middle and fourth
fingers. The ancient Romans used phallic
amulets after their phallic god, Priapus,
also called Fascinus, from which comes
"fascination"
or bewitchment. Other amulets include eyes, bells, brass, red ribbons, garlic, and shamrocks.
If an unprotected person is hit with
the evil eye, immediate action must be
taken to avoid disaster. In Italy men grab
their genitals. Spitting \vill nullify the evil,
as will making the signs of the como or
fig with the hand. Some victims rush to a
witch, wise woman, or sorcerer for a
counter-spell.

190

The death-dealing
evil eye is possessed by various tribal shamans
and
witch doctors, and appears frequently in
Native American folklore. The fatal look
may be used in conjunction
with the
pointing of the shaman's finger, stick, or
wand,
which
sends negative
energy
streaming toward the victim. See Eye of
Horus; Psychic attack.
Sources: James Bonwick. Irish Druids and
Old Irish Religions. 1894. Reprint. Dorset
Press, 1986. E. A. Wallis Budge. Amulets
and Superstitions. 1930. New York: Dover
Publications,
1978; Lawrence Di Stasti.
Mal Occhio/The Underside of Vision. San
Francisco: North Point Press, 1981; Martin
Ebon. Psychic Warfare: Threat or Illusion?
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983; Frederick
Thomas Elworthy. The Evil Eye. 1895. Secaucus, NJ: University Books/Citadel Press,
1987; Douglas Hill and Pat Williams. The
Supernatural. London: Aldus Books, 1965;
Maria Leach, ed., and Jerome Fried, assoc.
ed. Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary
of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend. San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979.

Exorcism
The expulsion of troublesome or evil spirits, ghosts, demons, or other nonphysical
entities. Exorcism rites exist universally,
and their use is common in many societies where spirits are believed to interfere
frequently in earthly affairs, causing illness, bad luck, and disasters. Exorcisms
are performed by the appropriate, trained
individual, usually a religious official or
magical or occult adept. Western psychologists and psychiatrists also perform
a sort of exorcism in the treatment of patients who feel taken over by alien and
external personalities.
"Exorcism"
derives from the Greek
exousia, "oath," and refers to "putting
the spirit or demon on oath," or invoking
a higher authority to bind the entity and
compel it to act in a way contrary to its
wishes.

Evil eye

Jesus exorcising unclean spirits (Mark 5:8)

Rites vary from simple invitations to
leave, to elaborate ceremonies, some involving dance and trance, in which deities
are petitioned for help in forcibly expelling the offending entity. Techniques also
include prayer, invective, foul odors, incense, and the use of holy substances, such
as sacred herbs, blessed water, Ot salt.
Christianity associates exorcism with
demonic possession, which is believed to
be caused by Satan. The exorcism is considered a battle for the victim's soul. Only
the Roman Catholics offer a formal rite
of exorcism: the Rituale Romanum, dating back to 1614. Before the rite can be
performed, certain symptoms must manifest, such as levitation,
superhuman
strength, clairvoyance, the forswearing of
all religious words or articles, or speaking
in tongues. The rite is characterized
by
violence: the victim suffers pain, extraordinary
contortions,
disgusting
body
noises, diarrhea, spitting, vomiting, and
swearing. The room may be plunged al-

Exorcism

ternately into heat or cold, and objects

may fly about.
Some Protestants perform exorcisms
as well. The Pentecostals and other charismatics practice "deliverance ministry,"
where gifted people drive out devils and
heal through the laying on of hands.
In Judaism rabbinical literature dating to the first century refers to exorcism
rituals. Perhaps the best-known rite concerns the dybbuk,
an evil spirit or
doomed soul that possesses the soul of
the victim and causes mental illness and a
personality
change. The dybbuk is expelled through the victim's small toe, and
is either redeemed or sent to hell.
In Hinduism,
Buddhism,
Islam,
Shinto, and many other religions, spmts
and ghosts are routinely blamed for a
host of ills and are cast out of people and
places. Most such afflictions are not considered all-or-nothing
battles for souls.
Typical Hindu exorcism techniques, for
example,
include
blowing
cow-dung

191

smoke, pressing rock salt between the fingers, burning pig excreta, beating the victim or pulling the victim's hair, using
copper coins as an offering, reciting
prayers or mantras, and offering gifts of
candy or other presents.
In some shamanic traditions, it is believed that demons or spirits cause maladies and misfortune by stealing souls. The
shaman enters an ecstatic trance to search
for and recover the soul and drive the demon out.
See Depossession; Feng shui; Possession; Shamanism; Watseka possession.
Sources: Julio Caro Baroja. The World of
the Witches. Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press, 1964; Richard Cavendish,

ed. The Encyclopedia

of the Unexplained.

New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974; Adam

Crabtree. Multiple Man: Explorations in
Possession and Multiple Personality. New
York: Praeger, 1985; Martin Ebon. The
Devil's Bride: Exorcism,

Past and Present.

New York: Harper & Row, 1974; Mircea

Eliade. Shamanism. 1951. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1964; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The Encyclopedia of
Witches and Witchcraft. New York: Facts
On File, 1989; Douglas Hill and Pat
Williams. The Supernatural. London: Aldus Books, 1965; Bruce Kapferer. A Celebration of Demons. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1983; Francis X. King.
Witchcraft and Demonology. New York:
Exeter Books, 1987; Malachi Martin. Hostage to the Devil. New York: Harper &
Row, 1976; Derk Kinnane Roelofsma.
"Exorcism and Rites of Deliverance." Insight (September 28, 1987); D. Scott Rogo.
The Infinite Boundary. New York: Dodd,
Mead & Co., 1987; Gershom Scholem.
Kabbalah. New York: New American Library, 1974.

Experimenter effect
In laboratory tests for psi, the unwitting
psychic influence of the experimenter
upon the subject, thereby influencing the
results to fit the expectations of the ex-

192

perimenter. The experimenter effect may

be due to the experimenter's bias toward
confirming or disproving a hypothesis, or
his or her subconscious attitude toward
the subject. The effect may manifest in
both parapsychological and psychological
ways: in an unconscious telepathic communication to or use of psychokinesis
(PK) on the subject; or behavior, body
language, or attitudes communicated to
the subject. As a result the subject may
perform exceptionally well or exceptionally poorly.
The experimenter effect was observed in psychical research as early as
the 1930s. Before that it was noticed in
psychology, in the tendency of patients
and therapists to establish a seemingly
telepathic rapport. The experimenter effect has been studied and tested by some
parapsychologists.
In a psi test, the experimenter has the
potential to be the single determining factor in obtaining any significant results.
Ideally, the experimenter should be able
to ensure an atmosphere in which psi can
freely function. Some experimenters are
naturally good at inducing this state and
others are not.
The first test of the experimenter effect was done in 1938 by researchers
Gaither Pratt and M. M. Price. Both researchers had carried out independent
tests of the same subjects under similar
conditions, but Pratt's subjects scored at
chance, while Price's did much better.
The experimenters had significantly different approaches to their work: Price
gave her subjects minimal explanations of
the tests, let them work at their own
pace, and encouraged social conversation
as a diversion. Pratt was much more serious. He delivered more explanations
than necessary, did not encourage social
conversation, and kept his subjects focused on the test. Price's subjects apparently felt little or no pressure to score
hits; anxiety did not inhibit their psi.
Pratt's subjects apparently felt pressured,

Exorcism

and as a result did not achieve high

scores.
Subsequent tests by other researchers
demonstrated that experimenters who
seem negative and unsupportive elicit
poorer results than experimenters who
are positive and friendly. Subjects also
appear to be influenced by their perceptions of how much the experimenter believes in psi, and whether or not they like
the experimenter or think the experimenter likes them.
Parapsychologist
Gertrude Raffel
Schmeidler's first tested the sheep/goat effect in 1943. She gave positive reinforcement to the sheep, with a friendly environment, and negative reinforcement to
the skeptics. Later she tested both sheep
and goats under similar conditions, and
found that while the sheep scored highly,
their results were less than when they had
been given favorable treatment. Interestingly, the goats scored far worse under
the positive conditions.
In 1949 American psychologist and
psychical researcher Gardner Murphy
suggested that certain brilliant test results
were due to the intense feelings of the experimenters. The motivation of the experimenter in carrying out tests has not been
tested. Some experimenters routinely get
results that others do not. American parapsychologist Rhea White concludes that
the expectations of the experimenter may
be necessary to induce psi, and the more
unconscious they are, the more effective
they will be. It has been advised that researchers first test themselves to find out
if they can administer tests that get significant results. See Sheep/goat effect.
Sources: Gertrude Raffel Schmeidler and R.
A. McConnell. ESP and Personality Pat.terns. New Haven: Yale, 1958; Charles T.
Tart. Psi: Scientific Studies in the Psychic
Realm. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1977;

Charles T. Tart. "Effects of Electrical

Shielding on GESP Perfotmance." The
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 82, no. 2 (April 1988): 129-

Extraterrestrial

encounters

46; Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook of

Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold, 1977.

Extraterrestrial encounters
Various psychic, paranormal, and mysterious phenomena are reported in conjunction with alleged sightings of, or encounters with, extraterrestrial spacecraft
and beings. Extraterrestrial (ET) encounters are a global phenomenon and may
have been taking place over millennia.
See Ancient astronauts, theory of. As a
social phenomenon ET encounters are as
significant as encounters with the Devil
during the witchcraft hysteria of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and reported
sightings of the Virgin Mary. There has
been virtually no scientific investigation
of ETs, however; most scientists take a
highly skeptical stance on the subject, as
do government agencies.
The age of modern interest in ETs
began in 1947. On June 26 a Boise,
Idaho, businessman and pilot, Kenneth
Arnold, sighted a chain of nine bright objects while flying over the Cascade Mountains in Washington. He estimated their
speed to be at 1,600 miles per hour. Arnold said the objects' motion resembled
saucers that had been skipped over water,
which gave rise to the popular term "flying saucer" to describe unidentified flying
objects (UFOs). The famous "Roswell incident" also occurred in 1947. Three
UFOs reportedly crashed near Roswell,
New Mexico. The United States government claimed the crash was a weather
balloon. Although witnesses years later
claimed to have seen the bodies of alien
beings, the incident remains inconclusive.
Since these incidents an estimated
70,000 sightings and encounters have
been reported-probably
but a small
fraction of the actual number. Approximately 95 percent of the cases have been
explained by natural phenomena, aircraft, weather balloons, or hoaxes. The

193

US Air Force set up a project in the late

1940s to analyze UFO reports; the project ended in 1969. It was advised by J.
Allen Hynek, chairman of the Astronomy
Department at Northwestern University.
Even though most cases appeared to have
natural explanations, the minority which
did not eventually led Hynek to conclude
that UFOs were a reality.
Much controversy surrounds ETs
and UFOs. In America the extraterrestrial
hypothesis, or ETH, is dominant, holding
that aliens are real and encounters with
them and their spacecraft must be accepted at their face value-a meeting with
a being from another planet whose culture is superior to that of humans. Governments have been charged with conspiracy to conceal the truth about ETs.
Skeptics contend that unexplained UFO
sightings, especially those in the years immediately following World War II, most
likely were real round and wedge-shaped
experimental aircraft that were kept secret during the war. European ufologists
are more inclined to view ETs as part of
the "encounter theories," which hold that
ETs are mythical projections from the
collective human unconscious, designed
to fill a psychological need, and which
take on a framework that can be accepted
by modern society. Psychiatrist Carl G.
Jung did not believe in the physical reality
of UFOs, but was interested in their psychological and parapsychological implications, observing that they are "a modern myth of things seen in the sky," and
perhaps portents of changes to a new age.
Types of ET and UFO
Experiences
Hynek classified UFOs into two major categories based on the distance of the
sighting: those seen at more than five
hundred feet away, and those seen at five
hundred feet or less. The over-fivehundred-feet sightings are subdivided
into three classes: (1) nocturnal lights, the

194

most frequently reported, which include

objects that either hover or dart around
the sky; (2) discs or saucer-shaped objects
seen in daylight and which often give off
a fluorescent glow; and (3) radar-visual
sightings.
Hynek called the sightings made at
less than five hundred feet close encounters, and subdivided them into first, second, and third kinds. A close encounter
of the first kind involves simply a sighting
of a mysterious object. A close encounter
of the second kind has visible evidence,
such as scorched earth or huge holes or
rings marking the spot where the UFO
might have landed; sometimes there is interference with electrical circuitry. Close
encounters of the third kind involve two
types of eyewitness contact with alien beings: straight encounters, in which ETs
are seen and perhaps communicated
with; and abductions, in which individuals are kidnapped and then returned.
Abductions fall into two categories,
planned and random. People who say
their abductions were planned cite their
first ET experience in childhood, when
mysterious events left them with unaccounted for "missing time" or inconspicuous scars, usually on their legs. Such
people feel they have been chosen and
programmed for some sort of ET project,
and have been implanted with monitoring devices. Random kidnappings occur
in lonely spots, usually at night, to people
who happen to be there. Reports of abductions have constituted the majority of
close encounters of the third kind since
the 1960s.
Widely disparate eyewitnesses have
given similar descriptions of aliens as
small, humanoid beings with enlarged
heads, enormous, slanted metallic eyes,
and gray and green skin. There are also
reports of huge, hairy beings, and angeliclike beings. Strangely, with the tens of
thousands of reported sightings, no two
cases appear to involve exactly the same
ship or crew.

Extraterrestrial encounters

Paranormal Phenomena
Some eyewitnesses assert that prior
to their encounter they acquired or enhanced existing psychic abilities that
helped to bring about their encounter, or
to perceive certain of its aspects, or to
communicate telepathically with the ETs.
Other eyewitnesses claim that psychic or
healing abilities manifested after the encounter. The rays of light that emanate
from the spacecraft sometimes have been
said to be the source of healing powers.
Witnesses have claimed that old or recent
wounds healed shortly after an encounter. Many encounters are characterized
by a hypnotic-like trance before, during,
and after the episode. Some witnesses feel
compelled to make the contact by going
to a certain location or looking out their
window. The compulsion may be a physical sensation, like a tingling or a vibrating, or clairaudient voices, or some sort
of telepathic command. There may be accompanying strange noises or poltergeist
effects, or unusual behavior among animals.
At contact the witness is often
bathed in light from the spacecraft. If the
witness sees alien beings, there may be
communication, either in the witness's
own language or by telepathy.
Witnesses who are abducted typically have no recollection of the details,
only missing time. Details are recovered
under hypnosis. Witnesses then recall being levitated, some in their cars, aboard
spacecraft, or floating or flying into the
ship. Some are transported to remote locations in wooded areas. After abduction
they are subjected to pulsating lights and
a physical examination; some report sexual intercourse with the aliens or surgery
for the implantation of devices. The ETs
try to soothe the witnesses, who feel uncomfortable but not terrified. Witnesses
may be given a weighty message to impart to other human beings, or warned
not to remember or speak of their experience. Some witnesses claim to have been

Extraterrestrial encounters

taken on a trip aboard the spacecraft to

the ETs' home planet, or to have been
shown various wonders of the universe.
The abduction may last only a few hours,
or may last weeks. Witnesses are returned
to their original setting, sometimes with
clothing disturbed. They may have subsequent telepathic communication with
the ETs or additional encounters; witnesses may serve as channels or mediums
for messages and warnings.

Aftermath
An encounter or abduction generates
real emotional stress that continues to act
on the person long after the event. Repercussions may include nightmares, anxieties, or depressions, as well as physiological changes. Many witnesses feel
transformed and effect major changes in
their life-styles, such as adopting a vegetarian diet or becoming active in environmental concerns. Some begin preaching
new versions of the age-old messages of
impending doom unless greedy humans
change their ways.
The "encounter theories" view of ET
encounters as a psychological projection,
perhaps in response to a mass yearning to
raise the consciousness of humankind,
has credence. Many ET encounters fit a
pattern of encounters with supernatural
and divine beings throughout history.
Furthermore, modern research shows
that ET encounters tend to fit a psychological profile called the "encounterprone personality." See Encounter phenomenon.
Many descriptions of ETs resemble
those of sick and starving children-small
beings with enlarged heads, big eyes, and
spindly limbs, as portrayed in Steven
Spielberg's film, Close Encounters of the
Third Kind. Philosopher Michael Grosso
suggests that ETs are mythical projections of the Child archetype, who in myth
is the bearer of extraordinary powers, the
harbinger of the future, and always under
threat. ETs, then, may be symptoms of a

195

racial self-healing (human beings putting

themselves on the operating table) and
the emergence of a new mythology.
The encounter theories do not discount the possibility of genuine ET encounters, but may explain why so many
have occurred since the middle of the
twentieth century and the advent of the
threat of nuclear annihilation. However,
there may never be satisfactory answers
to the question of whether or not ET encounters are objective or subjective. See
Archetypes; Collective unconscious; Marian apparitions; Mystical experiences;
Mythology.
Sources: Thomas E. Bullard. "The Ameri-

can Way: Truth, Justice and Abduction."

Magonia no. 34 (October 1989): 3-7; Hilary Evans. Gods, Spirits, Cosmic Guardians: A Comparative Study of the Encounter Experience. Wellingborough, North-

amptonshire, England: The Aquarian Press,

1987; Curtis G. Fuller. Proceedings of the
First International
UFO Congress. New
York: Warner Books, 1980; Bruce Goldman. "Something Strange: An Interview
with Dr. Peter Sturrock." New Realities 9,
no. 5 (May/June 1989): 35-41; Michael
Grosso. "UFOs and the Myth of the New
Age." ReVision 11, no. 3 (Winter 1989):
5-13; Budd Hopkins. Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Coply Woods. New
York: Random House, 1987; Gary Kinder.
Light Years: An Investigation into the Extraterrestrial Experiences of Eduard Meier.

New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987;

John Rimmer. "Abductions: Who's Being
Taken for a Ride?" Magonia no. 36 (May
1990): 3-5; Whitley Strieber. Communion.
New York: William Morrow, 1987.

Eyeless vision
The perception of images and colors
through the skin, especially in touching
with the fingers. Other terms for eyeless
vision are "skin reading," "skin vision,"
and "derma-optics"; the French call it
"para-optic ability" and the Soviets call it
"bio-introscopy." Eyeless vision mayor

196

may not be accompanied by other psychic abilities, such as clairvoyance or telepathy.

Eyeless vision was reported as a
higher phenomenon of mesmerism in the
eighteenth century. In 1920 an original
study of it was published by French physiologist and novelist Jules Romains, who
stated that all skin has the capability for
eyeless sight, with hands and face the
most sensitive. In the early 1960s, eyeless
vision became a wonder and a fad in the
Soviet Union, where researchers reportedly trained hundreds of blindfolded and
blind people to read colors, images, and
words through their skin. Less attention
has been paid to it in the West.
Various explanations for eyeless vision have been advanced, but none
proven. Some researchers theorize that
gifted skin readers possess special but unknown cells. Others suggest the phenomenon acts like sonar, in which infrared or
radioactive rays from isotopes in the
body bounce off objects and are sensed
by the skin. The most plausible theory
may be that eyeless vision interacts with
electromagnetic energy and the meridian
energy points on the body. Eyeless sight
works best in bright light and usually not
at all in pitch darkness. It also fades if
objects or people are grounded.
Sources: Henry Gris and William Dick. The
New Soviet Psychic Discoveries. Engle-

wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978;

Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. The
ESP Papers: Scientists Speak Out from Behind the Iron Curtain. New York: Bantam

Books, 1976; Sheila Ostrander and Lynn

Schroeder. Psychic Discoveries Behind the
Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Iron
Curtain.
Prentice-Hall, 1970; Russell Targ and
Keith Harary. The Mind Race. New York:
Villard Books, 1984; Benjamin B. Wolman,
ed. Handbook of Parapsychology. New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977.

Extraterrestrial

encounters

Eye of Horus
One of the most common amulets of ancient Egypt. The highly stylized eye of the
falcon-headed solar and sky god Horus
(the Latin version of Hor) is associated
with regeneration, health, and prosperity.
It has become commonly associated with
esoteric a and the occult. It is also called
the udjat eye or utchat eye, which means
"sound eye."
Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis,
was called "Horus who rules with two
eyes." His right eye was white and represented the sun; his left eye was black
and represented the moon. According to
myth Horus lost his left eye to his evil
brother, Seth, whom he fought to avenge
Seth's murder of Osiris. Seth tore out the
eye but lost the fight. The eye was reassembled by magic by Thoth, the god of
writing, the moon, and magic. Horus presented his eye to Osiris, who experienced
rebirth in the underworld.
As an amulet the Eye of Horus has
three versions: a left eye, a right eye, and
two eyes. The eye is constructed in fractional parts, with 1/64 missing, a piece
Thoth added by magic. The symbol of
modern pharmacies and prescriptions, :ijc,
is derived from three pieces of the Eye of
Horus.
The Egyptians used the eye as a funerary amulet for protection against evil
and rebirth in the underworld, and decorated mummies, coffins, and tombs with
it. The Book of the Dead instructs that
funerary eye amulets be made out of lapis
lazuli or a stone called mak. Some were
gold-plated.
Worn as jewelry fashioned of gold,
silver, lapis, wood, porcelain, or carnelian, the eye served to ensure safety, pro-

Eye of Horus

Eye of Horus

teet health, and give the wearer wisdom

and prosperity. It was called the "allseeing Eye." Other attributes associated
with it are terror and wrath. According to
some myths, the eye took on a personality of its own, swooping down out of the
sky to right wrongs.
A variation of the Eye of Horus is
the all-seeing eye, or mystical eye, in the
Great Seal of the United States. In the
mysteries teachings, an open eye symbolizes intellectual power and the pineal
gland, the supposed seat of psychic powers. See Amulet.

Sources: Sharon Boyd. "The US, Founded

on Occultism, Not Christianity." What Is
1, no. 2 (1987): 10-14; Bob Brier. Ancient
Egyptian Magic. New York: Quill, 1981;
E. A. Wallis Budge. Egyptian Magic. 1901.

New York; Dover Publications, 1971;

Richard Cavendish, ed. The Encyclopedia
of the Unexplained. New York: McGrawHill, 1974; Manly P. Hall. The Secret
Teachings of All Ages. 1928. Los Angeles:
The Philosophic Research Society, 1977;
New Larousse Encyclopedia

of Mythology.

1959. New ed. New York: Crescent Books,

1968.

197

F
Fairies
A wide variety of supernatural beings
that help or harm humankind. Fairy beliefs are widespread and similar, and are
strongest in the Celtic lore of Britain, Ireland, and Europe. Fairy lore may have
originated to explain bad luck, natural disasters, epidemics, birth defects, and child
illnesses and death.
The word "fairy" derives from the
Latin fata, or fate, which refers to the
mythical Fates, three women who spin
and control the threads of life. An archaic
English term for fairies is fays, which
means "enchanted" or "bewitched."
The main theories about the origins
of fairies propose that they are: (1) unbaptized, earthbound souls; (2) guardians
of the souls of the dead; (3) ghosts of venerated ancestors; (4) Lucifer's fallen angels, condemned to remain on earth; (5)
nature spirits; or (6) small human beings.
Medieval romances portrayed fairies
as little humans who intermarried with
nonfairy people. These stories may refer
to diminutive races such as the Lapps or
Picts, who were pushed into isolation in
woodlands or were pressed into servitude
by the Celts and other larger races.
Fairies are said to possess magical
powers and consort with witches and
other magically empowered humans.
They have many names and come in all
manner of sizes, descriptions of beauty or

198

ugliness, and demeanor from benevolence

to turpitude. Most are small or tiny.
Some resemble humans, and some have
wings. Some always carry about a magical wand or a pipe. According to lore
fairies are invisible, except to humans
with second sight or whenever fairies
choose to make themselves seen.
Fairies are generally believed to live
as a nation in an underground location,
similar to the underworld of the dead,
where time does not exist. The Land of
Fairy, or Elfland, as it is called, is accessed through barrows and mounds. The
fairies come out at night to frolic and
make mischief. They are fond of kidnapping human women for wives, and
human children, who are much more
beautiful than the fairy children, or
changelings, they leave behind in exchange. They pester humans who keep
messy houses, or who do not leave out
offerings of food and drink. Grateful fairies reward humans with money and gifts.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator
of Sherlock Holmes, was a supporter of
Spiritualism and a fairy lore enthusiast.
In the early 1920s, Doyle was duped by
fake photographs of fairies. The photos
showed tiny, winged female figures
dressed in fashionable gowns, holding
tiny pipes and hovering in the air. They
allegedly were taken during the summer
of 1917 by two young sisters, Elsie and
Francis Wright, of Cottingley, Yorkshire.
The girls attested the photos were genu-

Fairies

ine, and said they had the clairvoyant

ability to see the fairies.
Doyle wrote about the photos as
proof of fairies in a book, The Coming of
the Fairies (1922). When experts declared
the photos were fake, Doyle was ridiculed
in the press on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Wright sisters did not admit the hoax
until the early 1980s. It began as a simple
trick on adults, they said, but escalated
out of control with the involvement of
Doyle. Compare to Nature spirits.
Sources: Katherine Briggs. The Vanishing
People. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978;
Katherine Briggs. An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins,
Brownies, Bogies, and
Other Supernatural Creatures. New York:

Pantheon Books, 1976; Arthur Conan

Doyle. The Coming of the Fairies. London:
Hodder & Stoughton, 1922; Rosemary
Ellen Guiley. The Encyclopedia of Witches
and Witchcraft. New York: Facts On File,
1989; Charles Higham. The Adventures of
Conan Doyle: The Life of the Creator of
Sherlock Holmes. New York: W. W.

Norton & Co., Inc., 1976; Geoffrey Hodson. Fairies at Work and Play. 1925. London: Theosophical Publishing House,
1982; Maria Leach, ed., and Jerome Fried,
assoc. ed. Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979;
Dora Van Gelder. The Real World of Fairies. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing

House, 1977.

Fairy tales

sides are double), and making a mango

appear to grow from a seed to a plant
within minutes (a mango plant is folded,
compressed, and concealed). The most famous trick, seldom seen outside of India,
is the "rope trick," in which a fakir appears to cause a rope to hang suspended
in midair without visible support. The fakir then shimmies up the rope. This is
said to be accomplished by a kind of hypnosis the fakirs call maya, a Sanskrit term
referring to the illusory nature of the phenomenal world.
Some fakir feats, however, require
yogic training involving breath control
(pranayama), use of mantras, and meditation to induce altered states of consciousness and lower bodily functions.
Such feats include lying on a bed of nails
or thorns, sometimes for hours or days;
immersing feet and limbs in hot ash (see
Firewalking); and being "buried alive."
Fakirs practice asceticism and live in
extreme poverty. The term "fakir" derives from the Arabic term faqir, which
means "poor person." In Islam a faqir renounces money and the material world,
and follows Allah as a beggar. In India
fakirs are generally called sadhus. See
Yoga. Compare to Avatar.
Sources: The Illustrated Guide to the Supernatural. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986. Louis
Jacolliot. Occult Science in India and
Among the Ancients. 1884. New Hyde

Park, NY: University Books, 1971; Ormond McGill. The Mysticism and Magic of
India. Cranbury, NJ: A. S. Barnes & Co.,
1977.

See Mythology.

Fakir
In India a type of holy man who allegedly
performs magical, miraculous, or paranormal feats. Many fakir tricks are conjurations done with cleverly disguised
props and quick sleight of hand. Such
tricks include conjuring scalding water
into a seemingly empty brass bowl (the

False Face Society

False Face Society

An Iroquois medicine society, so named
because wooden face masks are used in
its healing rituals. The masks are believed
to be animated by spirits; as sacred objects they are not to be displayed in public, though some are. The False Face Society is one of the best known of Native
American medicine societies.

199

Members are individuals who have

been cured by the society's rituals. Most
members are men; women who have been
cured of certain ailments may join,
though they rarely wear the masks and
never perform the healing rituals. Instead
the women cook while men do the rituals.
The mythical origins of the False
Face Society are explained in the cosmology of the Seneca, an Iroquois tribe. The
Great Defender is a giant with a grotesque face, an evil-minded, diseasecausing whirlwind who loves to wander
the earth. Defender, as he is called, meets
Good Mind, the culture hero who is creator of humankind, and bows to the
greater power of Good Mind. Good
Mind proclaims that henceforth it shall
be the duty of Defender to move over the
earth and stir things up. Furthermore,
Defender shall abandon his evil nature
and dedicate himself to benefiting humans, who are about to be created. Defender agrees, saying:
Then shall men-beings offer incense
tobacco to me and make a song that is
pleasing to me, and they shall carve my
likeness from the substance of trees, and
my orenda [animating life force or supernatural power] will enter the likeness of
my face and it shall be a help to menbeings and they shall use the face as I
shall direct. Then shall all the diseases
that I may cause them depart [sic] and I
shall be satisfied. (Native North American Spirituality of the Eastern Woodlands, 1979)
In the rituals of the False Face Society, the men don grotesque masks to symbolize supernatural beings. Female caricatures usually have ears, while male
caricatures do not. Carrying tortoise-shell
rattles, the medicine men accept tobacco
offerings from villagers, crawl into
houses of the sick, and throw ashes to
drive out diseases.

200

If the spirit in a mask dies, the mask

loses its healing power. See Masks; Medicine societies; Tobacco.
Sources: Ake Hultkrantz. The Religions of
the American Indians. 1967. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979; Elisabeth
Tooker, ed. Native North American Spirituality of the Eastern Woodlands. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1979; Ruth M. Underhill. Red Man's Religion. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1965; The
Museum of the American Indian, New
York City.

Fatima
See Marian apparitions.

Feldenkrais Technique
See Bodywork.

Feng shui
An ancient and complex Chinese art that
combines mysticism, science, and superstition to determine health, luck, and
prosperity according to natural landscapes and the placement of dwellings,
buildings, and graves. In the West feng
shui is sometimes alternately called "geomaney," which is divination by the earth
and is not precisely the equivalent of feng
shui.
Feng shui translates as "wind" and
"water." Its fundamental concept is that
in order to be healthy and prosper, one
must be in harmony with the earth and
receive the benefit of ch'i, the universal
life principle, which exists in all things
and flows through the earth and nature.
The yin (female) and yang (male) components of ch'i must be in balance. The flow
of ch'i and the yin-yang balance are affected by contours of the landscape, the
presence or absence of water and vegetation, the weather conditions, and the sitings and shapes of buildings and the

False Face Society

placement of furnishings in them. Some

locations, by their natural virtues, have
"good" feng shui, while others have
"bad" feng shui. Alterations to the landscape, such as the construction of roads
and cities, affect the flow of ch'i, and
therefore influence the feng shui.
Crucial to good feng shui is the presence of protective mountains of certain
shapes, especially those evocative of dragons; the proximity of life-giving water
(also associated with money), especially
streams or rivers that flow neither too
fast nor too slow; and the presence of
rich, green trees and vegetation. If ch'i
flows too fast or in the wrong direction,
all a household's fortunes will roll away
with it. Straight lines, such as fast-flowing
rivers or roads, are detrimental, for they
carry a destructive energy called sha. The
Chinese believe that the best ch'i winds
and meanders along natural contours;
thus there is an aversion to straight roads
in modern construction. To live at the
end of a straight road is to invite disaster.
Ideally, houses, palaces, and tombs
should face the south and be located near
yang energies of strength, and be protected at the rear by yin energies.

The Origins of Feng Shui

The origins of feng shui date to
about the second century B.C., according
to surviving evidence. The roots come
from (1) Taoism, a philosophy that
stresses the holistic nature of the cosmos
and is based on patterns in nature. Humanity is a microcosm that reflects Tao,
the universe; (2) divination practices
based on patterns in nature; and (3) astrology, numerology, and other methods
used by the Chinese to determine the correct place of all things. The Chinese have
always been concerned with place; the
name of the country itself, Chung-guo,
means "Middle Kingdom," connoting the
heart of the universe.

Feng shui

Many of the early feng shui masters

were priests and holy men, whose advice
was sought for the siting of all things, including the auspicious location of graves.
Problems with money, health, luck, and
so on were treated with feng shui cures,
the most drastic of which was to abandon
the site altogether. The art was taught
orally from man to man; in the Confucian tradition, one taught only sons, not
daughters.
Around A.D. 300 feng shui split into
two main schools, one of which is based
on the landscape contours and one of
which uses a cosmic compass to chart astrological factors, I Ching hexagrams, the
Five Phases, and other elements. Around
the eleventh century, further metaphysical refinements were added to the art.

Feng Shui Today

Feng shui is still actively practiced in
various forms in China and other Pacific
countries, such as Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. In Tibet it
evolved as Tantric Black Hat feng shui,
an eclectic form incorporating animism,
ancestor worship, and folk cures. Feng
shui has been imported to the West but is
not widely practiced there, perhaps because it is a closely guarded art. In the
East some individuals are professional
feng shui masters.
Feng shui requires keen observation,
but also is highly intuitive and involves
subtle psychic skills. By visiting a site, a
feng shui master determines the existing
flow and state of ch'i and makes recommendations for constructing a home or
building that will maximize it; or, if
problems exist, he makes recommendations to overcome or minimize them.
Mirrors are the most common remedy;
strategically placed, they reflect negative
ch'i. Other common remedies are lighting, wind chimes, hexagrams, and plants,
which can divert the flow of ch'i to more

201

beneficial channels. Fish tanks repel evil

energies. Sometimes problems are solved
by moving furniture to face another direction. Associations with the cardinal
points are: north - business success;
east-good family life; south-fame; and
west-children's fame.
Another function of feng shui masters is to cleanse homes and buildings of
spirits prior to new occupancy. This is accomplished with an exorcism ceremony
called the Tun Fu.
In the East feng shui beliefs have affected modern development. For example, roads have been diverted around locations where residents insist that to tear
into the earth would be to cut into their
dragon spirit that resides in the land, thus
harming their local feng shui.
Western versions of feng shui (which
are not equally comparable) are the theory of leys, invisible lines of earth energy
said to link sacred sites; the theory of the
Hartmann network, a grid of telluric energy lines in accordance to underground
streams; sacred architecture, the execution of perfect form through mystical formulae of numbers; and "geobiology," the
study of the Earth's influence at a precise
point on everything that lives there: people, animals, plants, and so on. Like feng
shui these concepts are based on understanding and maximizing the life force
that flows through the planet and the cosmos. See Leys; Power point; Universal
life force.
Maria Leach, ed., and Jerome
Fried, assoc. ed. Funk and Wagnalls StanSources:

dard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology,

and Legend. 1949. San Francisco: Harper

& Row, 1972; Michael Loewe and Carmen

Blacker. Oracles and Divination. Boulder,

CO: Shambhala, 1981; Blanche Merz.
Points of Cosmic Energy. Saffron Walden,
England: C. W. Daniel Co. Ltd., 1985;
Sarah Rossbach. Feng Shui: The Chinese
Art of Placement. New York: E. P. Dutton,
1983.

202

Fetish
An object representing spirits that is used
to create a bond between humans and the
supernatural. Fetishes are common in animistic societies, and were prevalent in
predynastic Egypt. They are often worn
on the body to impart their magical powers, such as for protection, luck, love,
curing, warding off evil, money, good
hunting, gambling, or curses on enemies.
Typical fetishes are dolls, carved images,
stones, or animal teeth, claws, or bones.
They embody specific spirits or are inhabited by them.
The term "fetish" may derive from
the Latin factitius, made by art, or the
Portuguese feitico, charm or sorcery.
Other terms associated with fetishes are
"juju" and "gris-gris," both of which
may have derived from a West African
term, grou-grou, for sacred objects. Early
European traders commonly called the
grou-grou they encountered juju, meaning dolls or playthings. The gris-gris
evolved out of the African American slave
culture in the American South, and refers
to charm bags filled with magical powders, herbs, spices, roots, bones, stones,
feathers, and so on. Gris-gris are used in
Vodoun magic. In Santeria such charm
bags are called resguardos, or "protectors." See Santeria; Vodoun.
Various North American tribes have
fetish traditions. Some fetishes are personal, while others are collective, serving
a clan, secret society, village, or tribe. See
Medicine societies. The most elaborate
traditions exist among the Zuni and other
Pueblo tribes. Zuni fetishes are considered to be petrified supernatural beings
from the creation myth. According to the
story, the first humans came out of four
caves in the underworld, called the Lower
Regions. The Earth's surface was a frightening place, covered with water, shaken
by earthquakes, and filled with beasts of
prey. Out of pity for the humans, the
Children of the Sun dried and hardened

Feng shui

the Earth with lightning arrows, then

touched animals to shrink them and turn
them to stone. The animals that escaped
were the ancestors of today's animals.
Most Zuni fetishes are animals, reptiles, and birds carved from stone, horn,
or shell; small pieces of turquoise, shell,
beads, or arrow points tied to the fetish
backs increase their power. The most
powerful of all are natural stones in animal shapes, which are believed to be the
original petrified beings. Some fetishes
represent deities, such as the Earth
Mother and Creator God, or the Beast
Gods, the gods of the most sacred animals. The fetishes are kept either in
leather pouches or jars. They require
feeding and care, lest ill fortune result.
All Zuni fetishes are used only for
sacred purposes. The ceremonial societies
own the most powerful collective fetishes.
For example, the fetish of the Rain Priests
is the ettowe, which represents the nourishment of the Earth Mother and the lifegiving breath of Awonawilona, the bisexual Creator God, and which provides the
priests' source of rainmaking magical
power.
A collector's market for genu me
Zuni fetishes developed during the late
nineteenth century. Around 1945 the
Zuni began producing replica fetishes for
sale to the public.
Sources: Biren Bonnerjea. A Dictionary of
Superstitions and Mythology.
1927. De-

troit: Singing Tree Press, Book Tower,

1969; E. A. Wallis Budge. From Fetish to
God in Ancient Egypt. 1934. New York:
Dover Publications, 1988; Melita Denning
and Osborne Phillips. Voudoun Fire: The
Living

Reality

of Mystical

Religion.

St.

Paul: Llewellyn Publishing, 1979; Rod

Davis. "Children of Yoruba." Southern
Magazine (February 1987); Migene Gonzales-Wippler. Santeria: African Magic in
Latin America. New York: Original Products, 1981; Ake Hultkranrz. Native Religions of North America. San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1987; Ake Hultkrantz.
The Religions

Findhorn

of the American

Indians.

1967. Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1979; Hamilton A. Tyler. Pueblo
Gods and Myths. Norman, OK: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1964; Ruth M. Underhill. Red Man's Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.

Findhorn
Experimental spiritual community located in northern Scotland near the Arctic
Circle, and the site of a garden seemingly
endowed with special powers. At its peak
in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Findhorn yielded forty-pound cabbages and
other plants and flowers that sometimes
grew twice their normal size, despite the
fact that the soil was nothing more than
sand and gravel and the cold climate of
the North Sea made for poor growing
conditions. Findhorn residents claimed
that they received the directions for planting, cultivating, and managing their gardens from spirits that inhabit the natural
world. The Findhorn experiment has
come to be viewed as a demonstration of
the power and potential of human beings
and the natural world living and working
together in harmony.
The Findhorn phenomenon began in
1962 when Peter Caddy, an out-of-work
hotel manager without prospects for employment, his wife, Eileen, and friend and
coworker Dorothy Maclean, moved to
the Findhorn Bay Caravan Travel Park.
Although the trailer park was a desolate
place to live-situated next to a rubbish
dump and a rundown building-Caddy
felt he had been directed there for a purpose through spiritual guidance his wife
had received in meditation. According to
Caddy this same voice had been directing
every action of their lives up to that
point.
Thwarted in all attempts to find
work, Caddy started the garden in 1963
to pass the time, even though Findhorn
seemed the worst place imaginable to
grow anything. Located on a narrow,

203

Peter and Eileen Caddy, mid-1970s

sandy peninsula jutting into the North
Sea, it is exposed to near-constant winds
from all sides and its soil is hardly suited
for gardening. Still, Caddy went ahead
with his planting.
The first sign that they were engaged
in a unique undertaking came a few
months later. While she was meditating,
Maclean made contact ,,'ith a spirit of the
plant kingdom, which she called a
"deva," said to hold the archetypal pattern for each individual plant species. The
devas provided specific information
about every aspect of the garden: how far
apart to plant seeds, how often to water,
and how to remedy problems. Faced with
a question about the garden, Caddy
would ask Maclean to seek an answer
from the proper deva.
Within a year Findhorn had been
transformed. Caddy described the gardens as "overflowing" with life. Cab-

204

bages, which normally reach four pounds

at maturity, weighed over ten times that
amount. Broccoli grew so large the plants
were too heavy to lift from the ground.
In 1966, when the garden was in full
flower, the second major development
took place at Findhorn in the person of
sixty-six-year-old scholar R. Ogilvie
Crombie, a friend of Caddy's. Crombie
made his first visit to Findhorn that year.
Shortly afterward Crombie was sitting in
the Royal Botanic Gardens near his home
in Edinburgh, Scotland, when he saw a
nature spirit-a
three-foot-high, halfman, half-animal-dancing
in front of
him. Crombie spoke with the creature,
who said his name was Kurmos. The
spirit explained that he lived in the gardens and helped trees grow. According to
Crombie this meeting with Kurmos was
preparatory for one that followed with
the most important spirit of the entire na-

Pindhorn

ture kingdom, Pan. Crombie said that

Pan explained that he had been chosen to
help renew the lost contact between humankind and the nature spirits. Crombie
reportedly passed on to Caddy and the
others at Findhorn what he learned from
Pan about the elves, gnomes, and fairies
like Kurmos who lived and worked in the
garden helping things grow. This knowledge was applied to ongoing development
at Findhorn.
As word of the garden spread, it became a model community for proponents
of the New Age movement. By the early
1970s, more than three hundred people
lived, worked, and studied in Findhorn.
Residents viewed themselves as the vanguard of a new society based on the principles of cooperation between people and
the kingdom of nature.
Of the original members of the Findhorn community, only Eileen remained
by the mid-1980s; she and Peter had separated. Peter and some other members
moved to Northern California, where
they founded a retreat center called Shenoa. Findhorn was left to the care of the
next generation. Apparently passing
through another phase of development,
plants, fruits, and vegetables returned to
normal sizes and none of the remaining
gardeners reported direct contact with
the natural world Maclean and Crombie
had experienced in prior years.
Nevertheless, newer members of the
community preserve the original spirit
and ideas of the founders. Findhorn has a
democratic government, a garden school,
and a company to help small businesses
within the community. A small group of
people live in self-sufficiency on the island of Erraid.
Findhorn has spawned at least one
imitator-Perelandra,
a twenty-two-acre
garden and woodland area located sixty
miles southwest of Washington, DC. Site
of the Center for Nature Research, Perelandra was founded in the mid-1970s by
Machaelle Small Wright, who also claims

Firewalking

to be in contact with devas and nature

spirits. Unlike some of the surrounding
farms and gardens, Perelandra appears
abundant regardless of season. Roses and
vegetables have been grown without any
kind of chemicals or organic compounds
to repel pests or insects.
Wright's experiences parallel those
of Dorothy Maclean's at Findhorn.
Wright said she, too, contacted plant devas through meditation. And from the devas she learned everything about her
garden - from types of seeds to plant to
what fertilizer to use. Wright said that
without the devas and nature spirits to
guide her work in the garden, she would
only be guessing about what to do. See
Deva; Nature spirits; Spangler, David.
Sources: M. H. Atwater. "Perelandra: Co-

operating Co-creatively with Nature." New

Realities (May/June 1988): 16-20+; Findhorn Community. The Findhorn Garden.

New York: Harper & Row, 1975; Paul

Hawken. The Magic of Findhorn. New
York: Bantam Books, 1976; Leslie A. Shepard, ed. Encyclopedia of Occultism and
Parapsychology. 2d ed. Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1984.

Firewalking
A centuries-old rite practiced around the
world, consisting of walking barefoot
across thirty- to sixty-foot-Iong beds of
glowing coals, white-hot stones, or pits of
fire. Despite temperatures of 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit to 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit or more, firewalkers are able to
traverse this distance without suffering
any pain or showing any signs of burns
or other bodily damage. Firewalkers prepare for their feat by chanting, praying,
or meditating, which brings either a
trance-like state or intense beliefs that
they will not be burned. In the United
States, where it has grown in popularity
since the early 1980s, firewalking is promoted as a means for overcoming fear
and developing personal power.

205

Firewalking is universal, occurring in

history, legend, folklore, law, and early
religion. The tradition, almost always
performed within a religious context, belongs primarily to India, Japan, Greece,
Fiji, Tahiti, Hawaii, the Phillipines, New
Zealand, and the Balkans. The kahuna of
Hawaii walk across fiery, hardened lava
with nothing but the leaves of the ti plant
strapped across the soles of their feetprotected, they believe, by the goddess
Pele. See Huna. Similarly, firewalking in
China tests the protection of devotees by
their deities. In Singapore the Tamil
"walk on a bed of flowers" by the hundreds on a certain day of the lunar year,
to fulfill a vow and express gratitude for
blessings from Amman, the Mother Goddess. The rite is preceded by days of fasting and prayer.
Firewalking was known in Rome in
the first century A.D., when Pliny the
Elder recorded it as part of annual sacrificial rites to Apollo. Jumping over or
running through fires was a rite of purification of the Celts, especially in Britain
where it was performed at the midsummer solar festivals.
Ordeal by fire-walking
over or
handling red-hot irons, or walking
through fire-is an ancient practice of
judging guilt or innocence. The ability to
do so without being burned proved one's
innocence. The practice was widespread
in India from early times, and in Europe
during the Middle Ages. Ordeal by fire
also was part of the initiation into the
ancient mysteries.
The practice of firewalking over hot
coals began spreading throughout the
West in the 1970s. In the United States,
it was practiced for many years by religious/spiritual organizations. In the
early 1980s, it was introduced to the lay
public primarily by California teacher
Tolly Burkan. Burkan, who made his first
firewalk years earlier during a personal
spiritual odyssey, said that firewalking
was a means for individuals to overcome

206

fear and free themselves from its restraints on personal growth, as well as
to demonstrate the mind's power over
matter.

Firewalking Theories
Firewalkers, as well as scientists,
have been unable to explain how people
can walk on hot coals or white-hot stones
without damage. Doctors say human
flesh exposed to 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit
should suffer devastating third-degree
burns.
Dr. Myrne Reid Coe, Jr., an American scholar, who once walked thirty feet
through a fire pit and on another occasion licked red-hot iron bars, has theorized that vaporized moisture from saliva
or perspiration forms a protective air
cushion that prevents flesh from burning
when exposed to extreme temperatures
for brief periods. This is called the "Ledenfrost effect," and may be demonstrated by sprinkling water on a hot grill:
the droplets dance on the surface.
Dr. Bernard Leikind, an American
plasma physicist, has contended that firewalking is not a paranormal experience.
The difference between the temperature
of the coals and the lesser amounts of actual heat they contain explains why people have not been burned. He compared
firewalking to sticking a hand into a hot
oven-the air doesn't give off enough energy to cause burns. Touching a cake pan
baking in the same oven, however, brings
immediate pain and bodily damage. Leikind noted that while both are hot, each
contains different heat or thermal energy.
He said that coals are like the air in an
oven-they do not contain enough heat
to burn the soles of a walker's foot.
Both these theories seem to be disproved by the fact that many people have
been burned the instant they've set foot
onto the hot coals-some so badly that
they required skin grafts. Also, some re-

Firewalking

searchers have observed firewalkers

standing in place in glowing coal pits for
as long as twenty seconds; in Greece firewalkers have been observed kneeling on
white-hot coals for several minutes.
Another theory suggests that electrostatic cooling, a phenomenon discovered
in the eighteenth century, is involved. The
psychokinesis of medium Nina Kulagina
of Russia was associated with electrostatic fields; perhaps firewalkers, in their
altered states, produce electrostatic fields
around their feet and legs that cool the
coals.
Firewalkers say the ability to withstand the sizzling temperatures is all internal, a demonstration of the power of
the mind over the body. Burkan has suggested that a person's intense beliefs that
he or she can walk across hot coals
causes the brain to secrete neuropeptides
that alter the body's overall chemistry.
These chemical changes in the body are
what prevent firewalkers from being
burned. Andrew Weil suggests that a psychoneurological mechanism is responsible: In a certain state, in which the firewalker is free of fear and in a state of
deep relaxation, the body's nervous system absorbs physical energy and electrochemically transmutes it so that the brain
experiences it as a euphoric "peak experience. "
In a study of ninety-eight first-time
firewalkers published in 1985 by Julianne
Blake, the majority of successful firewalkers attributed their success to three main
factors: group energy and power; charisma of the leader (resulting in a willingness to surrender control to the "powerful other");
and visualization of
successful firewalking. Participants used
such terms as "alternate reality," "another level," and "energy body" in attempts to explain the process; some compared it to being in a state of hypnosis.
Differences in techniques by different
leaders did not seem to influence results.
The firewalkers ranged in age from four-

Firewalking

teen to seventy-three; the median age was

thirty-seven.
Blake's results corroborate the theory held by Burkan, Weil, and others that
firewalking is similar or the same in process to nonordinary, innate healing.
Larissa Vilenskaya, a veteran firewalker
who has taken her workshops to Europe,
notes several common characteristics in
the states of consciousness in both firewalking and mental healing: a feeling of
timelessness; a shift in energy during the
process; a state of becoming one with the
fire or healer; a state of total concentration to the exclusion of all else; a release,
letting go, or surrendering to the process;
a sense of motivation.
Others compare the state of mind of
firewalkers to yogis in a deep trance. In a
1961 electroencephalogram (EEG) study
of four yogis, researchers found that neither light, noise, vibration, nor heat stimulation could disrupt their alpha state.
Also, hypnotic trances have been known
to reduce pain. In such a state, yogis reputedly have immunity to fire.
In Christianity fire immunity is associated with religious miracles. It also was
a phenomenon of Spiritualism. See Healing, faith and psychic; Home, Daniel
Dunglas; Peak experiences.
Julianne Blake. "Attribution of
Power and the Transformation of Fear: An
Empirical Study of Firewalking." Psi Research 4, no. 5 (June 1985): 62-88; Tolly
Burkan with Mark Bruce Rosin. Dying to
Live. Twain Harte, CA: Reunion Press,
1984; Facts & Fallacies: Stories of the
Strange and Unusual. Pleasantville, NY:
Reader's Digest, 1988; Ruth-lnge Heinze.
"'Walking on Flowers' in Singapore." Psi
Research 4, no. 5 (June 1985): 46-50; Andrew Lang. "The Firewalk." Proceedings of
the Society for Psychical Research 15, part
36 (1900-1901): 2-15; Max Freedom
Long. The Secret Science Behind Miracles.
Los Angeles: Kosmon Press, 1948; Harry
Price. Perspectives in Psychical Research.
New York: Arno Press, 1975; Dennis Stillings. "Observations on Firewalking." Psi
Sources:

207

4, no. 5 (June 1985): 51-61;

Charles T. Tart. "Firewalk." Parapsychology Review 18, no. 3 (May-June 1987):
1-5; Charles T. Tart. Open Mind, Discrim-

Research

inating Mind: Reflections on Human Possibilities. San Francisco: Harper & Row,

1989; Larissa Vilenskaya. "Firewalking

and Beyond." Psi Research 4, no. 5 (June
1985): 89-105; Andrew Weil. Health and
Healing: Understanding Conventional and
Alternative Medicine. Boston: Houghton

Mifflin, 1983; John White. "Firewalking." Venture Inward (July/August 1986):

36-39.

Firth, Violet Mary

See Fortune, Dion.

Flint, Leslie
See Direct-voice mediumship.

Flotation
A means of sensory deprivation by floating in a dark, enclosed bathtub-like tank
containing heavily salted water. Flotation
induces altered and mystical states of
consciousness, and causes profound mental and physical transformations. As a
therapy it is used in relaxation and stress
reduction, and in the treatment of various
behavior disorders and physical ailments.
Flotation tanks contain about ten
inches of water in which eight hundred to
one thousand pounds of Epsom salts have
been dissolved; the entire tank weighs
about two thousand pounds. The water is
heated to between 93 degrees Fahrenheit
and 95 degrees Fahrenheit, slightly less
than body temperature. The effect of lying in such water in the dark is one of
weightlessness; the boundaries of the
physical body dissolve. Flotation apparently depresses left-brain activity (logic,
language, and analytic thought), while
liberating right-brain activity (intuition,
creativity, and holistic thought). It also

208

stimulates the secretion of endorphins,

the brain's own opiates, neurochemicals
that deaden pain and produce euphoria.

John C. Lilly's Experiments

The flotation tank owes its origins to
John C. Lilly, American neurophysiologist renowned for his research on the
brain and on communication between
humans and dolphins. Lilly conceived of
flotation experiments in 1954, while researching the neurophysiology of the human brain at the National Institute of
Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda,
Maryland. At the time it was hypothesized that the brain stayed in a waking
state because of external stimulation acting upon the end organs of the body.
Lilly devised an experiment to remove external stimulation (the term "sensory
deprivation" had yet to be invented) to
see what happened to consciousness.
Initially, Lilly floated in plain water
in a dark tank in a soundproof room, using an underwater head mask in order to
breathe. He found that in water of 93 degrees Fahrenheit, the body feels neither
hot nor cold while resting.
After a good deal of trial and error
to achieve a state of neutral buoyancy,
Lilly discovered that the brain does not
require external stimulation to stay
awake. After tens of hours of experiments, he found he moved through
dreamlike, trancelike, and mystical states,
all the while remaining conscious. He felt
he tuned into networks of communication normally below human levels of
awareness, as well as networks of civilizations that were far superior. He learned
later that these experiences were similar
to those attained through other means to
altered and mystical states.
In 1958 Lilly left the NIMH and
moved to the Virgin Islands. In the early
1960s, he began experimenting with
LSD, using a pure form of the drug, LSD25, that was at that time legally available.

Firewalking

In an incident not related to LSD, Lilly

had a near-death experience (NDE), in
which he met two highly evolved entities
who said they were his guardians. He
perceived them as points of consciousness
that radiated love. The beings could approach only so close without the danger
of Lilly losing himself as a cognitive being
into them. They told him he could perceive them only in a state close to death.
See Near-death experience (NDE); Spirit
guide.
In 1964 Lilly decided to combine
LSD and the flotation tank to see if he
could contact the beings again without
the threat of death. He built his own
tank, eight feet deep by eight feet wide,
and used sea water, which made him
more buoyant and eliminated the need
for a breathing mask. At that time there
was only one case on record of LSD use
by an unattended person, who had become paranoid. Lilly feared psychosis by
using LSD in isolation, but prepared himself with mental programming, which he
called "metaprogramming," of underlying beliefs and expectations concerning
his own safety and what he would encounter, which he then expected to become self-fulfilling during the experiment. From 1964 until 1966, when LSD
was outlawed except under certain conditions, he carried out numerous LSDtank experiments. The sessions lasted
twelve hours or more, during which he
physically left and reentered the tank numerous times.
In the tank Lilly would leave his
body and travel to incredible inner
spaces. He returned to his body whenever
an experience proved to be overwhelming; he found his tolerance increased over
time. Out-of-body he remained centered
as a single point of consciousness in a silent black void, which he termed "the absolute zero point." From this vantage he
took mystical flight, and found that what
he believed to be true did in fact become
true. He expected to encounter alien life

Flotation

forms and did, viewing a wide range of

beings, some composed of liquids or
glowing gases, and some of which resembled Tibetan deities. He entered his own
body and went down to the cellular level
and then the quantum level.
Lilly was unable to contact the
guides until he took three times the normal LSD dosage, three hundred micrograms instead of one hundred. He felt he
became a luminous point of consciousness and then perceived them once again
as points of consciousness moving toward him through the void, stopping at
the threshold of his tolerance to their
level of energy. They told him he had the
option of staying (and thus dying physically) or returning to his body, but advised him to return and carry out more
work. They told him how many more
years he would live. His assignment was
to achieve this state of awareness on his
own, without LSD, and teach others to
do the same. They transferred information to him, which would remain "forgotten" until needed. See Drugs in mystical and psychic experiences.
After LSD was outlawed, Lilly continued tank experiments without drugs
and explored other methods of achieving
altered and mystical states.

Therapeutic Uses
Flotation has been shown to achieve
dramatic results in stress reduction. Studies using an electromyograph (EMG),
which measures muscular tension, show
that floaters become more quickly and
deeply relaxed than those who use other
techniques such as meditation, biofeedback, and progressive relaxation. Flotation also has been shown to increase tolerance for stress by altering the level at
which the body releases fight-or-flight
biochemicals such as adrenaline, cortisol,
and ACTH.
Flotation produces results in creative
visualization. Studies show that images

209

held vividly and strongly in the mind are

perceived by the subconscious as real,
thus making it easier to realize what is
imaged. See Creative visualization. Visualization in a flotation tank seems more
powerful than visualization in altered
states induced by other methods. Athletes
float while visualizing perfect performance in upcoming competition, which
greatly enhances their actual performance. See Sports, mystical and psychic
phenomena in. Athletes also find that flotation speeds postcompetition recovery
and letdown by dilating blood vessels,
and by helping the body clear away lactic
acid (which causes pain and fatigue) and
the fight-or-flight biochemicals (which
cause depression, anxiety, and irritability).
Research shows that flotation is effective in reducing or eliminating smoking, drinking, and drug use, and in counteracting drug withdrawal.
It also
effectively treats high blood pressure,
chronic pain, weight reduction, gastrointestinal and cardiovascular ailments, anxiety, headaches, and recovery from cardiac surgery. Tanks are in use in some
hospitals.
Flotation tanks reached a fitness fad
peak in the early 1980s. See Altered states
of consciousness; Mystical experiences;
Relaxation.
Sources: Michael Hutchison. "One Man,
One Float." Esquire (November 1984):

29-30; Michael Hutchison. "Isolation

Tanks: The State of the Art." Esquire (August 1983): 124; John C. Lilly. The Center
of the Cyclone: An Autobiography of Inner
Space. New York: The Julian Press, 1972;
John C. Lilly. Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer.

1968. New York: Bantam Books, 1974;

Barbara M. Ribakove. "Getting Tanked:
Sixty Minutes in an Altered State." Health
(February 1983): 10-12; John White, ed.
Frontiers of Consciousness.
1974. New
York: Avon, 1975.

210

Ford, Arthur Augustus

(1897-1971)
American medium famous for his splnt
communications and his advancement of
Spiritualism. Ford was engaging and sociable, but his private life was tormented
by a battle with alcoholism. His mediumistic talent appeared to be formidable,
but posthumous evidence indicates he
may have cheated at some seances in his
later career.
Ford was born to a Southern Baptist
family on January 8, 1897, in Titusville,
Florida. He was the second oldest of four
children. He had no unusual psychic experiences during childhood. He was excommunicated at age sixteen because of
his outspoken skepticism of orthodox
church doctrine concerning the nature of
heaven and hell.
Ford intended to become a minister,
but interrupted studies at Transylvania
College in Lexington, Kentucky, to join
the Army in 1918 during World War I.
He never went overseas. Stationed at
Camp Grant in Sheridan, Illinois, he inexplicably began having precognitive
dreams of the next day's death list during
a severe flu epidemic. Shortly thereafter
he began to hear voices whispering the
names of soldiers who were about to be
killed in action overseas.
After the war Ford returned to Transylvania College, questioning his sanity. A psychology professor, Dr. Elmer
Snoddy, convinced him he was merely
psychic.
Following graduation Ford was ordained a minister of the Disciples of
Christ Church in Barbourville, Kentucky,
in 1922. He married Sallie Stewart; the
marriage lasted five years.
Ford proved to be an eloquent and
popular preacher. His psychic experiences, however, led him to leave mainstream Christianity and join Spiritualism.
He moved to New York, where he lec-

Flotation

tured and gave messages from spirits of

the dead, whose voices he could hear by
putting himself in a light trance. He met
Paramahansa Yogananda, who taught
him yoga exercises for controlling his
trance and access to the voices.
In 1924 a spirit named "Fletcher"
announced himself as Ford's control. See
Control. Fletcher was the middle name of
an otherwise anonymous boyhood friend
who was killed in World War 1. Fletcher
enabled Ford to impress the public with
his messages from the dead. Ford traveled
the globe and had entree into high society
and royalty. Spiritualists championed
him, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
who advised him to become a full-time
medium.
One of Ford's most famous sittings
was conducted in 1929 for Harry Houdini's widow, Beatrice. Prior to his death
in 1926, Houdini had agreed to try to
communicate posthumously a coded
phrase, "Rosabelle, believe." Ford produced the secret message, convincing Beatrice she had contacted Houdini.
In 1930 Ford suffered serious injuries in an auto accident that killed his sister and another woman. Ford's doctor
discovered that he apparently went outof-body when given morphine. He continued to give Ford morphine until he
was addicted. Ford freed himself of morphine, but then turned to alcohol to battle insomnia.
Despite these problems Ford enjoyed
the peak of his career during the 1930s.
He married his second wife, Valerie
McKeown, an English widow, in 1938,
and settled in Hollywood, California. But
his developing alcoholism eventually
caused him to miss lectures, suffer blackouts, or appear drunk in public. Fletcher
disappeared and Valerie divorced him.
His health deteriorated. In 1949 Ford suffered a breakdown. He recovered with
the help of Alcoholics Anonymous, but
never completely gave up drinking.

Ford, Arthur Augustus (1897-1971)

Fletcher returned during the 1950s

and Ford resumed mediumship. Mainstream churches invited him to speak, but
Ford's dream of convincing them to incorporate Spiritualism into their doctrines went unfulfilled.
Beginning in 1964 Ford gave several
sittings for the Reverend Sun Myung
Moon, whose followers wished Ford to
declare Moon the reincarnated Christ
and World Savior. Ford refused. See Alternative religious movements.
In 1967 Ford conducted his famous
and controversial television seance for
Bishop James Pike, who sought to communicate with his twenty-year-old son,
who had committed suicide in 1966. Pike
was convinced he had succeeded, though
skeptics denounced the show as a fraud.
Ford spent the last three years of his
life in Miami, Florida. He died of a heart
attack on January 4, 1971. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered over
the Atlantic Ocean. Following his death
numerous mediums claimed to receive
communication from him. Author Ruth
Montgomery, a friend of Ford's, claimed
to speak with him via automatic writing,
and produced the best-selling A World
Beyond in 1971.
Also after his death, friends found
notes and clippings that indicated that
Ford may have cheated in seances with
famous people. He may have researched
some obscure facts about Pike and others,
which were then produced as "evidential" material. Ford, who reportedly had
a photographic memory, kept huge files
that could have provided this material.
The issue has never been proved. Ford
often publicly denounced mediumistic
fraud.
Ford founded and led several organizations during his life. The most notable is the Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship,
formed in 1956, dedicated to exploring spiritual matters. See Mediumship;
Montgomery, Ruth; Spiritualism.

211

Sources: Arthur Ford, as told to Jerome Ellison. The Life Beyond Death. New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1971; Arthur Ford, in
collaboration with Marguerite Harmon
Bro. Nothing So Strange: The Autobiography of Arthur Ford. New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1958; Ruth Montgomery. A
World Beyond. New York: Fawcett Crest,
1971; Allen Spraggett. Arthur Ford: The
Man Who Talked with the Dead. New
York: New American Library, 1973.

Fortean phenomena
(also Forteana)
Any paranormal or anomalous phenomena that defy natural explanation, such as
rains of frogs, fish, stones, dead birds,
flesh, and snakes; mystifying religious experiences, such as stigmata, the sudden
flowing of blood from a person's palms
or legs in the same places where Christ
bled from being nailed to the cross; weeping statues; floating balls of light in the
night sky; spontaneous human combustion; UFOs; ghosts and poltergeists; and
monstrous creatures.
Fortean phenomena are named after
Charles Fort (1874-1932), an American
journalist who is called "the father of
modern phenomenalism." After an inheritance enabled him to quit work as a
journalist at age forty-two, Fort began
collecting and cataloguing thousands of
odd phenomena that had no explanation,
which he found by poring through scientific and popular journals in the British
Museum and New York Public Library.
The collecting proved to be so absorbing
that he dedicated the remaining twentyseven years of his life to it. He never attempted to explain these phenomena, but
used these examples to point out the limitations of scientific knowledge and the
danger of dogmatic acceptance of "natural" laws, which the phenomena seemed
to contravene. Fort compiled his research
into four books: The Book of the

212

Damned (1919); New Lands (1923); La!

(1931); and Wild Talents (1932).
In The Book of the Damned, which
lists over one thousand such incidents,
Fort challenged the scientific method of
accepting a phenomenon as genuine only
if it could be proved. To Fort the fact that
a phenomenon had occurred and been reported was proof enough; the reason why
was less important.
To demonstrate the folly of scientists
who were convinced that there must be
an explanation for every event-for example, black rains falling on Scotland between 1863 and 1866 were said by scientists to be the result of eruptions of Mt.
Vesuvius-Fort advanced his own catchall theory. He invented the SuperSargasso Sea, a place above the Earth that
contained a collection of matter drawn
from the ground below. It was from the
Super-Sargasso Sea that the frogs, cannonballs, stones, and countless other objects simply fall to the earth.
Fort's studies of the inexplicable
have continued since his death. The more
bizarre phenomena continue to be anomalistic rains, including blobs of a jelly-like
substance, blood, mussels, Judas tree
seeds, and water that smells like sandalwood or bay rum; and spontaneous human combustion (SHC), also called autoincineration. In some cases of SHC,
human bodies are burned to ashes by
sudden and intense heat with no apparent
cause. Surrounding objects, such as furniture, sometimes are not even scorched.
Fortean research is pursued on a
scholarly basis by enthusiasts. The International Fortean Organization, founded
in 1965 and based in Arlington, Virginia,
sponsors investigative teams and provides
research and educational programs. Another Fortean organization is the Society
for the Investigation of the Unexplained,
based in Little Silver, New Jersey. Fort's
work has also inspired a science fiction
sub genre of "Fortean themes."

Ford, Arthur Augustus (1897-1971)

Of major interest to modern Forteans are UFOs and related phenomena.

Long before the term "UFO" was conceived, Fort uncovered reports of sky
oddities dating back to 1779. Modern investigations focus on missing time, close
encounters, and a phenomenon known as
the "Men in Black," mysterious people
dressed in dark clothing who sometimes
purport to be government or Air Force
representatives, and intimidate UFO witnesses and confiscate UFO photographs
taken by private citizens. Forteans link
the Men in Black to biblical accounts of
angels and wise men, medieval accounts
of devils, and, more recently, to phantom
photographers and meter readers.
Two other phenomena, possibly related to UFOs, are the "mystery helicopters," black helicopters reported all over
the world since 1938, years before the
helicopter was invented; and "Mothman," a gray man-sized and man-shaped
creature with red eyes, a bill, and wings
ten feet in span. More than one hundred
reports of Mothman were made in 1966
and 1967 in an Ohio River valley area; a
black Mothman-type creature was reported performing aerial stunts over New
York and New Jersey in 1887 and 1880.
Forteans also investigate reported sightings of the sasquatch, or Big Foot, the
Loch Ness Monster, the Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, and other creatures. See
Extraterrestrial
encounters;
Men in
Black.
Sources: Charles Fort. The Complete
Books of Charles Fort. New York: Dover
Publications, 1974. Into the Unknown.

Pleasantville, NY: Reader's Digest, 1981;

John A. Keel. The Mothman Prophecies.
New York: Saturday Review PresslE. P.
Dutton, 1977; Damon Francis Knight.
Charles Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained.

London: Victor Gollancz, 1971; "Third

l\TYFSMeeting Attracts Overflow Crowd."
The New York Fortean Society Newsletter

no. 3 (March 1988): 1.

Fortune,

Dion

(1890-1946)

Fortune, Dion (1890-1946)

Magical name of Violet Mary Firth, considered one of the leading occultists of
her time. An adept in ritual magic, Fortune was perhaps one of the first occult
writers to consider occultism as the key
to understanding psychology, and vice
versa.
Although she called herself a Yorkshirewoman, Fortune was born at Bryny-Bia in Llandudno, Wales, on December
6, 1890. Her mother was a Christian Scientist. Her father, a solicitor, was a member of the Firth steel magnate family of
Yorkshire, which made its fortune manufacturing guns and cannons for the British government. The family's motto was
Deo, non Fortuna,
"By God, not by
chance," which Fortune later used as her
magical motto and from which she took
her magical name.
Little is known about her childhood.
By age four Fortune began having visions
of Atlantis; when she was older, she believed she had lived there in a past life as
a temple priestess. By her teens she displayed mediumistic abilities.
In 1906 the family moved to London, where she became briefly involved in
the Theosophical movement; she left it
because she felt much of it was foolish.
However, she did believe in the existence
of the Masters, not in flesh as Blavatsky
had maintained, but on the inner planes.
When she was twenty, Fortune had
an experience that set her on the path of
magic and occultism. She went to work in
an educational institution and was under
the supervision of a woman who had
studied occultism in India. According to
Fortune the woman, who was abusive
and had a mean temper, used various
combinations of yoga techniques, hypnotism, and projection of negative thoughts
to psychically attack Fortune in attempts
to force her to do things against her will,
or to lower her self-confidence. Fortune

213

managed to rebuff the attacks, but suffered a nervous breakdown.

It took her three years to regain her
health, during which time she began
studying psychology in order to learn
more about mind and will. She preferred
Carl G. Jung to Sigmund Freud, but felt
neither giant of depth psychology adequately addressed the subtlety and complexities of the mind. She became a lay
psychoanalyst at age twenty-three. She
believed many of her patients were victims of psychic attack.
Prior to World War I, she experienced a powerful dream in which she met
two of the Masters, Jesus and the Comte
de St. Germain, and was accepted as a
pupil by Jesus. Knowledge of her past
lives unfolded before her: an almost unbroken line of priestess work from Atlantis to the present. She also claimed to remember everything she had been taught
in those lives.
During the war Fortune served in the
Land Army. At some time after the end of
the war, she met her first physical master,
Theodore Moriarty, an Irishman, Freemason, and occultist of great repute. Moriarty gave Fortune her basic occult training. Her experiences with him are
featured in her magical autobiography,
Psychic Self-Defence (1930), in which he
is identified as "Z.," and in her collection
of fiction stories, The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (1926). He is also described in her
novel The Demon Lover (1927). Moriarty died in 1923.
In 1919 Fortune was initiated into
the London Temple of the Alpha and
Omega Lodge of the Stella Matutina, an
outer order of the Hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn was
the greatest Western magical order of
modern times, although it was in decline
by the time Fortune joined. She displayed
great talent for the magical arts and progressed rapidly. She did not get along
with Moina Mathers, the wife of Samuel
Liddell MacGregor Mathers, one of the

214

founders of the Golden Dawn, and believed Moina sent psychic attacks upon
her. Fortune established her own order,
the Fraternity of the Inner Light, devoted
to esoteric Christianity. Initially, the order was part of the Golden Dawn, but
Moina Mathers expelled Fortune and the
order became independent.
In the winter of 1923 to 1924, Fortune went to Glastonbury, where she contacted three more Masters on the inner
planes: the Greek philosopher Socrates;
Lord Erskine, chancellor of England in
the early nineteenth century, whom she
believed was the reincarnation of Thomas
More; and David Carstairs, who claimed
to be a young British officer killed at
Ypres in World War I. These Masters directed her magical work during her most
productive years. Fortune said Socrates
dictated to her The Cosmic Doctrine, her
essential occult philosophical work. During her life Fortune periodically retreated
to Glastonbury, where she immersed herself in the Celtic Otherworld, which she
believed lay beneath the Tor, and in
Arthurian lore. She also said she came in
contact with another inner Master, Merlin, the great magus of British myth and
legend. Her experiences are recorded in
her book Glastonbury: Avalon of the
Heart. The house she once lived in is reputedly haunted.
In 1927 Fortune married Thomas
Penry Evans, a Welsh physician and occultist. Evans, known as Merlin or
"Merl" to Fortune's followers, became
her priest in her magical work, injecting a
strong pagan element into it. The marriage was stormy and was strained by
Fortune's apparent lack of interest in sex.
They had no children. In 1939 Evans divorced her and married another woman.
Fortune's years with Evans marked
her most fruitful as a magician and
writer, however. In addition to the Fraternity of the Inner Light, she ran the Chalice Orchard Club, a pilgrim's center she
established at Glastonbury, and founded

Fortune, Dion (1890-1946)

the Belfry, a temple in West London

dedicated to the Mysteries of Isis. She
was well known and had a large following. She wrote a number of nonfiction
books on the occult and novels with
occult themes, many of which remain
in print and continue to inspire occultists and neo-Pagans. Of her nonfiction
works, she is best-known for Psychic SelfDefence, considered the definitive work
on psychic attack, and The Mystical Qabalah (1936), in which she discusses the'
Western esoteric tradition and how the
Kabbalah is used by modern students of
the mysteries. See Kabbalah. Her critics
predicted that she would lose her magical
powers for revealing the secrets of initiates in that book.
Her last two novels, The Sea Priestess and Moon Magic, are considered by
many to be the finest novels on magic.
Moon Magic was begun around 1939,
but reportedly was finished posthumously, with Fortune dictating to a medium.
With Evans's deparrure Forrune
went into decline physically, spirirually,
and magically. During World War II, she
organized mass magical rites in which
participants meditated upon certain symbols with the intent of awakening the
mythical King Arthur to come to the
country's aid. Her own powers seemed to
desert her, however.
Shortly after the end of the war, she
was stricken with leukemia, and died on
January 8, 1946, at the age of fifty-four.
For some years after her death, she continued to run the lodge, allegedly,
through mediums. Evenrually her presence was deemed unproductive, and a
magical banishing rirual was performed.
The Society (formerly Fraternity) of
the Inner Light is based in London and
continues to offer teachings in the Western occultism. FortUne's work is popular
among modern Witches, but the Society
stresses that Fortune was not a Witch,
and that the Society is not connected with

Freemasonry

Witchcraft. See Hermetic Order of the

Golden Dawn; Magic.
Dion Fortune. Psychic Self1930. 6th ed. York Beach, ME:
Samuel Weiser, 1957; Rosemary Ellen Gui-

Sources:
Defence.

ley. The Encyclopedia

of Witches and
Witchcraft. New York: Facts On File,
1989; Alan Richardson. Priestess: The Life
and Magic of Dion Fortune. Wellingbor-

ough, England: The Aquarian Press, 1987;

Leslie A. Shepard, ed. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology,
2d ed. Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1984; Colin Wilson. The Occult. New York: Vintage
Books, 1973; Colin Wilson. Mysteries.
New York: Perigee Books/G. P. Putnam's
Sons, 1978.

Fox, George
See Society of Friends (Quakers).

Fox, Matthew
See Creation spiriruality.

Fox sisters
See Mediumship; Spiritualism.

Fraternity of the Inner Light

See Fortune, Dion.

Freemasonry
The secret and fraternal organizations believed descended from the craft guilds of
the stonemasons. These groups, open to
membership by men only, represent no
single religion or ideology but instead try
to foster spirirual development and fraternal charity among all classes and
creeds. Also called the Brotherhood or
the Craft, the orders provide a network
for business, professional, and social suc-

215

cess and advancement. The term "Freemasonry" often is shortened to "Masonry."

History and Legend

Architects and builder-craftsmen
have always occupied a place of honor in
society, dating back to ancient Egypt,
Greece, and Rome. Building symbolizes
creation, the raising of an edifice in which
to glorify and worship gods and humankind, and correlates to the improvement
of the body and mind as a temple for the
soul.
Perhaps no building in all of history
so exemplifies this idea as King Solomon's temple in ancient Israel. The legends of the temple form the cornerstone
of Masonry's founding; but in order to
remove any direct references to Judaism
or Christianity, the story concentrates on
Hiram Abiff, the architect and builder assigned to the construction.
In 1 Kings 7:13-45, the Bible tells
that Hiram, King of Tyre, sent Solomon a
man named Hiram who was highly
skilled in bronze work to make all the
pillars, vessels, and other decorations
necessary for the temple, which he accomplished. The account is repeated in 2
Chronicles 2:13, but Hiram's talents are
here expanded to include work in gold,
silver, iron, wood, engraving, and fabrics.
The biblical references to Hiram end
here, but the Freemasons have Hiram
murdered at the hands of three of his
workmen when he would not reveal the
secret Word of God hidden in the temple
structure. In ritual Masons "die" as
Hiram Abiff died, and are reborn in the
spiritual bonds of Freemasonry.
Philosopher Manly P. Hall compared
the Hiramic legend to the worship of Isis
and Osiris in the ancient Egyptian mystery schools, another reputed source for
Freemasonry. Osiris also fell victim to
ruffians, and the resurrection of his body
minus his phallus-and
Isis's search for

216

it-seems
symbolically similar to the
quest for the Lost Word of God. Followers of the Isis cult were known as "widow's sons," after the murder of her
husband/brother Osiris, and Masons also
are called "sons of the widow."
Followers of Sufic mysticism believe
that the builders of King Solomon's temple were really Sufi architects incorporating the holy words of God in numerical
equivalents expressed in temple measurements, making Freemasonry Arabic in origin. According to this view', the Saxon
King Aethelstan (A.D. 894-939) introduced Masonry to England after learning
of it from the Spanish Moors.
None of these theories or legends can
be proven. Most Masonic scholars trace
the Craft's history to the development of
medieval stonemason craft guilds. The
skilled stonemasons, few in number, traveled from town to town and were commissioned by local ,clergy to build
churches and cathedrals. In order to
guard their knowledge, the masons organized into guilds, complete with passwords, rules of procedure, payment and
advancement, and religious devotion.
How or why the stonemasons' craft
guilds attracted unskilled, or speculative
members remains a mystery. Speculative
members were those men, usually of a
higher class than the craftsmen, who were
interested in the pursuits of spiritual wisdom, philosophy, and often the occult,
with no knowledge of stonemasonry. Perhaps the lodge provided cover for more
esoteric activities, but most likely hid the
members' radical penchant for political
and religious reform.
Most Masonic historians consider
Elias Ashmole (1617-1692), astrologer,
solicitor, officer of the court of Charles II,
and antiquarian, to be the first important
nonoperative Freemason in England. For
years Ashmole had dabbled in alchemy,
Rosicrucian philosophy, and the Kabbalah, and counted as friends Francis Bacon and other founders of what became

Freemasonry

the Royal Society. Ashmole's diary records his initiation into Masonry in October 1646, by which time the English
lodges were so crowded with honorary,
or Accepted Masons that few claimed
even one skilled craftsman as a member.
By the eighteenth century, nearly every pub in England and Scotland hosted a
Masonic lodge. To establish preeminence
for the English lodges and standardize ritual, four London lodges merged in 1717
into the Grand Lodge of England, with
Anthony Sayer as the first Grand Master.
George Payne replaced Sayer the next
year, followed by the Rev. John Theophilus Desaguliers as Grand Master in
1719. Desaguliers, a lawyer, Fellow of
the Royal Society, and chaplain to Frederick, Prince of Wales, helped not only
organize the Grand Lodge but used his
considerable influence to spread the Craft
worldwide, especially to his French
homeland.
Berween 1751 and 1753, Scots and
Irish Freemasons unaffiliated with the
Grand Lodge formed the Antient Grand
Lodge, competing directly with the
Grand Lodge "Moderns" for participating lodges. Both groups became the
United Grand Lodge of England in 1813,
which exists today.

Beliefs and Symbols

Speculative Masonry inherited seven
fundamental principles from the craft
guilds: (1) an organization of three
grades, called Entered Apprentice, Fellow
Craft, and Master Mason; (2) a unit
called a lodge; (3) rules of secrecy; (4)
methods of member recognition; (5) histories of the craft contained in approximately one hundred manuscripts called
the Old Charges, particularly the Regis
Manuscript of 1390; (6) a tradition of
fraternal and benevolent relations among
members; and (7) a thorough Christian
grounding.

Freemasonry

By 1723 all references to Christianity

had been removed with the publication of
the Freemasonic Constitutions, instead
requiring members to believe in God but
allowing personal choice of religion.
God-or
whatever Supreme Beingbecame known as "The Great Architect
of the Universe": T.G.A.O.T.U.
As there are three degrees in Craft
Masonry, also known as the Blue Lodge,
the number three plays a very important
part in all Masonic ritual. Hiram Abiff's
three murderers symbolize thought, desire, and action, which each Masonic candidate strives to transmute into spiritual
thought, constructive emotion, and labor.
Petitioners are called "rough ashlars," or
uncut stones, which become the building
blocks of the temple.
Speculative Masonry borrowed the
tools of the craft as symbols of the order:
the square, compass, plumb line, and
level. Members wear white leather aprons
associated with builders. Ritual colors are
blue and gold. The capital letter G appearing in the Masonic compass most
likely stands for God. Meetings are held
in Lodges or Temples: four-sided rectangular structures decorated with Masonic
symbols and black-and-white checkered
floors, symbolic of humankind's dual nature.
Another Masonic emblem is the
Great Pyramid of Giza, always shown
with seventy-rwo stones representing the
seventy-rwo combinations of the Tetragrammaton, or the four-lettered name of
God (YHVH) in Hebrew. The pyramid is
flat-topped, unfinished, symbolizing humankind's incomplete nature. Floating
above the pyramid is the single All-Seeing
Eye of the Great Architect, also associated with Horus, son of Isis and Osiris.
Both the pyramid and the All-Seeing Eye
appear on the United States dollar bill
and the reverse of the Great Seal of the
United States. See Eye of Horus; Pyramids.
With the formation of the Antient

217

Grand Lodge, a fourth degree called the

Holy Royal Arch was added. After the
merger in 1813, the Holy Royal Arch became an extension to the ~1aster Mason's
degree, a position to which candidates
were "exalted." The Holy Royal Arch
signifies complete regeneration from
death and the high degree of consciousness possible from an intense, spiritual
life and oneness with the Great Architect.
Members with the Holy Royal Arch degree no longer belong to the Lodge but to
a Chapter, overseen by a Grand Chapter.
Only Master Masons may receive this
rank.
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, various Masonic groups
expanded the rituals of Craft Freemasonry into more esoteric channels, adding
degrees and sometimes bizarre ceremonies. The most famous of these were the
ancient rituals introduced by the Comte
de St. Germain in France, the Egyptian Rites of Count Cagliostro, the German Rite of Strict Observance, and various borrowings from Rosicrucian and
Theosophical practices. Universal CoMasonry, founded in France in 1893, accepted both men and women and attracted prominent Theosophists Annie
Besant and Charles Leadbeater.
Many of these rites passed quickly
into oblivion, but not all. Thirty higher
degrees, representing more spiritual and
esoteric understanding, became the Antient and Accepted Rite of the ThirtyThird Degree. Philosopher Manly P. Hall,
who himself achieved the Thirty-Third
Degree, compares the ascension to the
Higher Degrees to "passing beyond the
veil" to true mystic union with God.
Only Master Masons may strive for
these "perfected" states, and not every
Mason even knows of their existence outside the Craft. Higher Degrees are administered by a Supreme Council, made up of
members with the Thirty-Third degree,
denoted 33; the most senior Supreme
Council is located in Charleston, South

218

Carolina. In the United States, candidates

receive each degree individually in an initiation ceremony, whereas in Great Britain 4 through 17 are conferred with
18; 19 through 29 with 30, and 31,
32 and 33 awarded singly.
The Higher Degrees, in order, are:
(4) Secret Master; (5) Perfect Master; (6)
Intimate Secretary; (7) Provost and
Judge; (8) Intendant of the Building; (9)
Elect of Nine; (10) Elect of Fifteen; (11)
Sublime Elect; (12) Grand Master Architect; (13) Royal Arch of Enoch; (14)
Scottish Knight of Perfection; (15) Knight
of the Sword, or of the East; (16) Prince
of Jerusalem; (17) Knight of the East and
West; (18) Knight of the Pelican and Eagle Sovereign Prince Rose Croix of Heredom; (19) Grand Pontiff; (20) Venerable
Grand Master; (21) Patriarch Noachite;
(22) Prince of Libanus; (23) Chief of the
Tabernacle; (24) Prince of the Tabernacle; (25) Knight of the Brazen Serpent;
(26) Prince of Mercy; (27) Commander
of the Temple; (28) Knight of the Sun;
(29) Knight of St. Andrew; (30) Grand
Elected Knight Kadosh Knight of the
Black and White Eagle; (31) Grand Inspector Inquisitor Commander; (32) Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret; and (33)
Grand Inspector General.

Fame and Infamy

Many readers of the above list might
liken the Brotherhood to an elaborate fraternity, blessed with an abundance of
mystical offices. But the Roman Catholic
church and some other Christian faiths
take Freemasonry's hermetic side very seriously and outlaw its practice among
church members.
The Vatican issued its first papal
condemnation of Freemasonry in 1738,
and by 1917 decreed that anyone joining
a Masonic organization was excommunicated. Many Catholics, including Vatican
prelates, had joined Masonic lodges in

Freemasonry

the beginning. Many church officials continue to look the other way, especially in
England, home of most European Masons. The Greek Orthodox church officially condemned Freemasonry in 1933,
calling it a system reminiscent of heathen
mystery religions.
S. R. Parchment, author of Operative Masonry and founder of the Rosicrucian Anthroposophic League, stated in no
uncertain terms that Masons believe in
the potential of Christ in each man, but
not in Jesus as the Son of God. Even the
Anglican vicar and Masonic apologist
Vindex called Freemasonry the embodiment of all religious systems and ancient
mysteries, not the Christian organization
inherited from the guilds. Of course,
many Masons are not Christians.
Stephen Knight, author of The
Brotherhood, claims that during ritual
ceremonies for the Holy Royal Arch exaltation, candidates learn the Lost Name
or Word of God, said to be "Jahbulon."
Knight maintains that most Masons do
not realize the significance of the name,
which he defines as a combination of
three names: Jah, for the Hebrew god
Yahweh; Bul, the ancient Canaanite fertility god Baal and devil; and On, for Osiris, the Egyptian god of the underworld.
It is impossible, however, to besmirch the characters of so many illustrious Freemasons with devil worship.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a Mason, and probably Christopher Wren, architect of St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi
also professed Freemasonry.
Those ,\Tho believe the United States
is a nation destined to rise and prosper
ascribe the country's founding as proof of
spiritual intervention via the Craft, noting that eight signatories of the Declaration of Independence, including Benjamin
Franklin and John Hancock, were Masons. George Washington became a Freemason in 1752, but declined to assume
control of all Masonry in the United

Freemasonry

Leaders of the American Revolution

who also were Masons

States. As a result each state has a Grand

Lodge and Grand Chapter.
The Marquis de Lafayette, who
joined Washington during the revolution
and ardently supported the American
cause, was also a Mason, as were sixteen
other presidents: Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Polk, Buchanan, Andrew Johnson,
Garfield, McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt,
Taft, Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Ford, and Reagan. Vice President Hubert Humphrey
and Democrat Adlai Stevenson were also
"widow's sons."
In England royalty has joined Freemasonry since the beginning, with the
King as Grand Patron, although a woman, Queen Elizabeth II, serves as Grand
Patroness. Winston Churchill was a Freemason. British Masonry functions much
like old school ties, with the Brotherhood
strong in the fields of law, jurisprudence,
police, government, and the armed
forces. See Order of the Knights T emplar;
Rosicrucians; Sufism; Theosophy.

219

Sources: Foster Bailey. The Spirit of Masonry. London: Lucis Press Ltd., 1957;
Keith Crim, general ed. Abingdon Dictionary of Living Religions. Nashville: Abing-

don Press, 1981; R. A. Gilbert. "Freemasonry & The Hermetic Tradition." Gnosis
no. 6 (Winter 1988): 24-27; Manly P.
Hall. Freemasonry of the Ancient Egyptians. 1937. Los Angeles: Philosophical Research Society, 1973; Manly P. Hall. The
Lost Keys of Freemasonry. 1923. Richmond, VA: MaCoy Publishing and Masonic Supply Company, 1976; Manly P.
Hall. Masonic Orders of Fraternity. Los
Angeles: Philosophical Research Society,
1950; Manly P. Hall. The Secret Destiny of
America. Los Angeles: Philosophical Research Society, 1944; Stephen Knight. The
Brotherhood: The Secret World of the Freemasons. New York: Stein & Day, 1984;
S. R. Parchment. Operative Masonry. San

Francisco: Rosicrucian Fellowship, 1930;

Henry Sadler. Masonic Facts and Fictions.
1887. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire,
England: The Aquarian Press, 1985; Idries
Shah. The Sufis. Garden City, NY: Anchor/
Doubleday, 1971; Walter L. Wilmshurst.
The Meaning of Masonry. 1927. 5th ed.
New York: Bell Publishing Co., 1980; Robert Anton Wilson. "The Priory of Sion:
Jesus, Freemasons, Extraterrestrials, the
Gnomes of Zurich, Black Israelites and
Noon Blue Apples." Gnosis no. 6 (Winter
1988): 30-39.

Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939)

Physician, founder of psychoanalysis, and
one of the major shapers of twentiethcentury thought. His psychoanalysis
brought him into frequent contact with
the occult, a subject which he took interest in privately but rejected publicly. His
emphasis on sexual repression and infantile sexual trauma as the roots of all
neuroses cost him the support of key
colleagues. Nonetheless, Freud was a pioneer in scientific exploration of the human unconscious mind, and his work in
the field of psychoanalysis has had a profound influence on modern humankind,

220

science, culture, and art. He is universally

acknowledged to be one of the most influential people of all time.
Freud was born on May 6, 1856, in
Moravia (now part of Czechoslovakia).
He was the oldest son of eight children by
his father's second wife, and was raised in
a Jewish household. At age four he was
taken to Vienna, where he was an extraordinary student of the art of Leonardo da Vinci, and the classic literature in Hebrew, German, Greek, Latin,
French, and English, including the works
of Goethe, Dostoevsky, and Shakespeare
(some of which he was reading by age
eight). At age twenty-five Freud received
his M.D. at the University of Vienna and
went to work as an assistant physician at
Vienna General Hospital and as a demonstrator at a physiological institute. He
married at age thirty.
In 1885 Freud went to Paris to work
under neurologist J. Martin Charcot.
Upon his return to Vienna, he began
treating patients with hypnosis. In 1895
he wrote, with Josef Breuer, a work on
the treatment of hysteria through hypnosis. As did others, Breuer disassociated
himself from Freud when he saw the importance Freud was beginning to give to
sexuality. Freud phased out hypnotism
and its related authoritarian treatment
during the next decade as he made the
important discoveries and developments
of "free association" and psychoanalysis.
The latter now provided methods of
treatment that could be added to the previously known biological basis of psychiatry.
His own self-analysis in 1897 led to
his seminal work, The Interpretation
of
Dreams (1900). Widespread misunderstanding by critics and even by his colleagues followed this and subsequent
works, The Psychopathology
of Everyday
to
Life (1904) and Three Contributions
the Theory of Sex (1905). Freud believed
that psychological problems may be
traced to repressed childhood experi-

Freemasonry

ences, and he developed the theory of the

Oedipus complex. Many psychiatrists
now refute Freud's belief that the Oedipus complex is common to all cultures.
Most notable of his students who
eventually broke with him were Alfred
Adler (1870-1937) and Carl G. Jung
(1875-1961), both of whom founded
their own schools of psychology. While
Freud and Jung carried on a lively correspondence, Freud's written references to
his former student were often brief and
critical.
Freud was a professor at the University of Vienna from 1902 until 1938,
when he fled to London to escape the
Nazi invasion. He died in London on
September 23, 1939. Popular misconceptions about his psychology result partly
from poor translations.

Freud and the Occult

In his casework with clients, Freud
was confronted with such occult phenomena as premonitions, telepathy between therapist and patient, telepathy in
dreams, other occult significances of
dreams, "remarkable coincidences," and
what he termed "uncanny experiences,"
such as seeing a double or coming in contact with the evil eye. He wrote a number
of papers, lectures, and book chapters
on psychoanalysis and the occult, including "A Premonitory Dream Fulfilled"
(1899); "Premonitions and Chance"
(from The Psychopathology
of Everyday
Life, 1904); "The Uncanny" (1919);
"Psychoanalysis and Telepathy" (originally an untitled manuscript dated 1921
and published posthumously); "Dreams
and Telepathy" (1922); "A Neurosis of
Demonical Possession in the Seventeenth
Century" (1923); "The Occult Significance of Dreams" (1925); and "Dreams
and the Occult" (1933). He was a member of both the Society for Psychical Research (London) and the American Society for Psychical Research, but made little

Freud, Sigmund

(1856-1939)

professional use of the data published by

either organization.
Freud was mystified by the occult
and kept records of his own personal experiences, which appear to include clairaudience and premonitory dreams. On at
least one occasion, he visited a psychic
with his associate, Sandor Ferenczi, and
was startled by the personal information
about him the psychic picked up. He attributed it to the psychic's ability to read
Ferenczi's thoughts. He was open to the
idea of telepathy in psychoanalytic situations, yet he was ambivalent toward psychical research. Ernest Jones, psychoanalyst and one of his closest associates,
discouraged an interest in the occult because Jones thought it would have a bad
effect on the emerging psychoanalysis
movement. Throughout most of his career, Freud maintained a mechanistic,
skeptical view toward occult phenomena.
In his writings Freud equated the occult with superstition, the latter of which
he said originates from "repressed hostile
and cruel impulses" such as the castration
complex. In The Psychopathology
of Everyday Life, he dismisses outright the
possibility of "omens, prophetic dreams,
telepathic experiences, manifestations of
supernatural forces and the like," stating
there are many other explanations for
such occurrences. As for himself, he said,
"I am sorry to confess that I belong to
that class of unworthy individuals before
whom the spirits cease their activities and
the supernatural disappears, so that I
have never been in a position to experience anything personally that would
stimulate belief in the miraculous."
Telepathy, however, resisted his attempts at alternate explanations. Although he acknowledged its occurrence,
he believed it was a physiological phenomenon and not a psychic one, and involved the transfer of tangible waves of
thought. He confessed first that he was
mystified by it. Later, by 1921, he said
there might be some psychic validity to

221

telepathy. In a manuscript prepared in

1921 for the Conference of the Central
Committee of the International Psychoanalytic Association, Freud said, "It no
longer seems possible to brush aside the
study of so-called occult facts; of things
which seem to vouchsafe the real existence of psychic forces other than the
known forces of the human and animal
psyche, or which reveal mental faculties
in which, until now, we did not believe."
Despite this admission Freud saw little
possibility for collaboration between analysts and occultists in plumbing the
depths of the human psyche, because analysts would run a subjective risk of becoming absorbed in occult phenomena.
Twelve years later, in "Dreams and the
Occult," he acknowledged that there is a
core of facts to occultism that is surrounded by a veil of fraud and fantasy,
but repudiated any connection between
dreams and telepathy: "Telepathy throws
no new light on the nature of the dream,
nor does the dream bear witness for the
reality of telepathy."
In "A Neurosis of Demonical Possession in the Seventeenth Century," Freud
analyzed the records of the case of Christopher Haizmann, a Bavarian painter
who announced in 1677 that he had
signed a pact with the Devil nine years
earlier. Haizmann sought protection from
the local police, claiming the Devil had
offered to help him for nine years in exchange for his soul. The Devil had appeared to him many times in various grotesque shapes, and had sent him terrifying
visions of hell. With the end of the contract approaching, Haizmann feared for
his soul.
The police sent Haizmann to a holy
shrine in Mariazell, where the painter
prayed and then claimed that the Blessed
Virgin Mary appeared to him and recovered the pact from the Devil. His torments continued, however, and he committed himself to a monastery, where he

222

spent the rest of his life seeing visions of

the Devil and his demons. He portrayed
his torments in his art. Haizmann died in
1700.
Freud said Haizmann's neurosis was
caused by various repressed infantile
complexes and homosexual tendencies.
He concluded that the Devil represented a
father figure to the painter. Haizmann's
homosexual leanings were evidenced in
his feminine self-portraits, Freud said.
Furthermore, he manifested sexual associations with the Devil, as seen in the
multiple breasts in his paintings. The
number nine, the length of human gestation, represented pregnancy fantasies to
Freud; Haizmann, with his nine-year
pact, suffered from these, Freud said.
This was complicated by Haizmann's
painting a penis on every picture of the
Devil, which demonstrated that Haizmann "recoiled from a feminine attitude
toward his father which has its climax in
the fantasy of giving birth to his child.
Mourning for the lost father, heightened
by yearning for him, [Haizmann's] repressed pregnancy fantasy is reactivated,
against which he must defend himself
through neurosis and by degrading his father." Freud also said that Haizmann
sold himself to the Devil in order to secure peace of mind after the death of his
own father.
Jung defended Freud early in Jung's
own career, although he had misgivings
about Freud's sexual theory and his attitude toward the spirit; any expression of
spirituality Freud interpreted as repressed
sexuality. Jung was intrigued by the psychic processes he observed in mental patients, which he felt could not be explained away as pathological.
Freud and Jung met for the first time
in 1907 in Vienna. Jung was impressed
by what Freud had to say about his sexual theory, but retained his reservations
about it. Freud urged Jung to make a
dogma out of it, as an "unshakable bul-

Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939)

wark" against "the black tide of mud of

occultism." By "occultism" Jung took
Freud to mean everything that psychical
research, philosophy, and religion had to
say about the human psyche.
In 1909 the two met again in Vienna, and an apparent psychokinesis (PK)
incident occurred. As they sat in Freud's
study, Jung asked Freud what he thought
of precognition and psychical research in
general. Freud dismissed them as "nonsensical." As he talked, Jung, who was
angered by Freud's attitude, felt a curious
sensation overtake him - he felt as
though his diaphragm was made of iron
and was becoming red-hot, like a glowing
vault. At that instant a loud report
sounded from the adjacent bookcase and
startled them. Jung said, "There, that is
an example of a so-called catalytic exteriorization phenomenon." Freud replied
that it was "sheer bosh." Jung disagreed
and predicted that in a moment another
report would sound in the bookcase. As
soon as the words were out, another detonation sounded. Freud wrote to Jung
that he had been impressed by the incident, until the noises recurred without
Jung's presence.
After his break with Freud, Jung was
ostracized as a "mystic." In a letter to
Jung on May 12, 1911, Freud commented that it was right for Jung to follow his impulses to study the occult, and
that undoubtedly Jung would "return
home with great riches." In another letter
to Jung dated June 15, 1911, Freud said
he had been "humbled" in "matters of
occultism," and promised to believe "everything that can be made to seem the
least bit reasonable," though he would
not do so gladly.
In 1921 Freud declined an invitation
from English psychical researcher Here\vard Carrington to join the Advisory
Council of the American Psychical Institute, of which Carrington was director. In
a letter dated July 24, 1921, Freud asked

Freud, Sigmund

(1856-1939)

Carrington not to use his name in connection with the venture. He said he did
not dismiss a priori the study of "socalled occult phenomena as unscientific,
discreditable, or even as dangerous," and
if he were at the beginning of his career
rather than at the end of it, he "might
possibly choose just this field of research,
in spite of all the difficulties." He went
on to say that psychoanalysis had nothing
to do with the occult and he wanted to
keep it separate from "this as yet unexplored sphere of knowledge"; and that he
had certain skeptical, materialistic prejudices about the occult, and rejected completely the notion of survival of the personality after death.
Freud told his inner circle of associates that they must prepare for an attack
on psychoanalysis by those who believed
psychic forces to be real. These "true believers" would be likely to misuse the results of psychoanalysis and thus make the
movement look ridiculous to the scientific establishment. See Dreams; Jung,
Carl Gustav; Psychology.
Sources: George Devereux, ed. Psychoanalysis and the Occult. New York: Interna-

tional Universities Press, 1953; Nandor

Fodor. Freud, fung and the Occult. Secaucus, NJ: University Books, 1971; Sigmund
Freud. Studies in Parapsychology. New
York: Collier Books, 1963; Stanislav Grof.
Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy. Albany, NY:

State University of New York, Albany,

1985; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft. New
York: Facts On File, 1989; C. G. Jung.
Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Recorded
and edited by Aniela Jaffe. New York:
Random House, 1961; Robert Maynard
Hutchins, ed. Great Books of the Western
World. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica,
1952; Louis Kronenberger, ed. Atlantic
Brief Lives. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971;
Ernest Jones. The Life and Works of Sigmund Freud. Vols. 1,2, and 3. New York:
Basic Books, 1953-1957; Howard A.

223

Michel with Carol Gruenke. "Did Freud

Really Say, 'If I Had My Life to Live Over
Again I Should Devote Myself to Psychical
Research Rather Than Psychoanalysis'?"
The Academy of Religion and Psychical Research 1986 Annual Conference Proceed-

224

ings: The Relevance of Religion and Psychical Research to Planetary Concerns: 5265; Ernest S. Wolf. "Sigmund Freud." The
American Academic Encyclopedia. Princeton: Arete, 1980.

Freud, Sigmund

(1856-1939)

G
Gaia hypothesis
See Planetary consciousness.

Ganzfeld stimulation
In parapsychology an environment of
mild sensory deprivation intended to
stimulate the receptivity of extrasensory
perception. Ganzfeld is German for "homogeneous field" or "entire field," and
refers to the blank field of vision stared at
by a test subject. The ganzfeld originally
was used beginning in the 1930s as a test
of visual processes; it was first applied to
psi testing in 1973.
In a psi ganzfeld test, a receiver attempts to perceive impressions and sensations transmitted by a sender. The perceptions may come through telepathy,
clairvoyance, clairaudience, precognition,
or combinations of those phenomena. Because it is difficult, if not impossible, to
know which form of ESP is involved,
ganzfeld experiments usually test for
"general extrasensory perception," or
GESP.

The Test Procedure

Methodology varies among laboratories, but the following description is a
typical procedure. The receiver is settled
comfortably in a soundproof room. Vis-

Gaia hypothesis

ual distractions are eliminated with eye

cups (usually halved ping-pong balls)
taped over the eyes, which are kept open
throughout the experiment. A low red
light creates a field of pink blankness.
Earphones provide white noise to mask
sound distractions. A microphone is
clipped to the receiver's clothing or
placed nearby. The receiver is relaxed
with a short tape of guided imagery.
In a separate, soundproof room, the
sender sits in front of a television set and
is shown a still picture or a film clip, selected at random by a computer. The
sender tries to transmit images and impressions involving all senses to the receiver. The receiver reports what he or
she experiences, describing whatever
comes to mind, including emotions. This
reporting is called a "mentation." It is recorded and monitored by a third person,
who has no knowledge of the image being sent, and is outside both soundproof
rooms.
The relaxation, white noise, and diffuse light contribute to the receiver's disorientation, with periods of "void" or
"blank out," similar to the hypnagogic
state or in meditation. Alpha activity in
the brain increases. The images that float
into the mind are often dream-like or hallucinatory.
The sender transmits for one minute,
then rests when the screen goes blank for
four minutes. The on-off sequences typically continue for thirty minutes, though

225

the duration seems much shorter to the

receiver, who loses sense of time.
When the transmitting is finished,
the receiver takes off the eye cups but remains in the room. On a television set,
the receiver is shown four possible images
and asked to choose which one was the
target that was transmitted. All four are
ranked from highest to lowest in "hit."
The choice is seldom clear-cut; many receivers pick up fragments of more than
one of the choices, sometimes all four,
even though only one was transmitted. It
is uncertain whether this is due to the
clairvoyant reception of information directly from files, computers, or videotapes, or to the precognitive viewing of
the choices at the last stage of the experiment. Precognition frequently occurs in
the beginning of the test, with receivers
picking up impressions before the senders
know the target. Occasionally, receivers
have precognitive dreams of the target the
night before the test.
The first scientific use of ganzfeld
stimulation in ESP research was done in
1973 by Charles Honorton and S.
Harper, who at that time were researching ESP in dreams at Maimonides Medical Center in New York. Honorton and
Harper sought psi-conducive conditions
common to meditation, hypnosis, and
dreams in order to learn how psi is detected. Of thirty people in the first test,
nearly half experienced ESP.
In 1979 Honorton became director
of the newly established Psychophysical
Research Laboratories (PRL) in Princeton, New Jersey, the world's largest facility to pursue ganzfeld testing. The PRL
operated until March 1988. Other research centers around the world have
studied ganzfeld, using various target materials, such as binary-coded information
or music, and sessions of different
lengths. The overall success rates are
high: 50 percent, compared to an expected chance rate of 5 percent. The
"blank-out" periods, when receptivity

226

appears to be sharpest, usually begin to

occur about twenty minutes into the experiment.
Sources: Charles Honorton; D. Scott Rogo.
Psychic Breakthroughs Today. Wellingbor-

ough, Northamptonshire, England: The

Aquarian Press, 1987; Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook of Parapsychology.
New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977.

Gardner, Gerald B.
See Witchcraft.

Garrett, Eileen J. (1893-1970)

Gifted medium who encouraged the scientific investigation of paranormal phenomena, and who founded the Parapsychology Foundation, based in New York
City. Garrett was born Eileen Jeanette
Vancho Lyttle on March 17, 1893, at
Beau Park, County Meath, Ireland, in a
culture steeped in Celtic beliefs of spirits
and magical powers in mountains and
glen. From an early age, she had psychic
experiences that included visions of the
dead. Because of her clairvoyance, her
relatives called her "unbalanced." Later
in life she said her Celtic heritage helped
prepare her for mediumship.
Garrett never earned an academic
degree. Her first husband was Clive
Barry, an Englishman twelve years older
than she; they lived in London. She bore
three sons, all of whom died young, and
a daughter. That marriage ended in divorce. During World War I, she ran a
hostel for wounded soldiers in need of recuperation before returning to the front.
She clairvoyantly saw the deaths of many
of them. One of her charges, who had a
premonition of his own death, proposed
to her. They were married, and one
month later he was reported missing and
never found. Garrett had a vision of him
and two or three others being blown up.
Three weeks before the end of the war in

Ganzfeld

stimulation

1918, she married another wounded soldier, J. W. Garrett. That marriage also
ended in divorce, and Garrett never remarried.
Garrett's trance mediumship began
during the rise of interest in Spiritualism
following the war. One day she joined a
group of women who wanted to contact
the dead through table tapping. Unexpectedly, she went into a trance and began speaking of seeing the dead gathered
around the table.
The experience was unsettling, and
Garrett was referred to a person who
hypnotized her and communicated with a
so-called control personality, Uvani, who
said Garrett would now be a vehicle for
communication with spirits. This Garrett
resisted, but the door to the other side
remained permanently open. She sought
help at the British College of Psychic Science in London, where she met James
Hewat McKenzie. From 1924 to 1929,
McKenzie worked with her to develop
her mediumistic talents and trained her to
remain aloof from and impartial to the
process. She rapidly developed telepathy,
clairvoyance, and clairaudience skills,
and communicated with poltergeist entities. She worked with leading psychical
researchers, including Sir Oliver Lodge
and Hereward Carrington and Nandor
Fodor. McKenzie died in 1929.
In 1930 the British dirigible R-l0l
crashed in France on its maiden voyage to
India, killing everyone aboard. The incident was among the most famous involving Garrett, for she had experienced premonitions of a disaster involving a
dirigible for several years beforehand. In
1926 she had a vision of a phantom dirigible in the sky over London; it appeared
normal. In 1928 she saw the airship
again, only this time it gave off smoke,
was buffeted about, and disappeared. In
1929 she saw a vision of a dirigible in the
sky in flames. Also in 1928, during a mediumistic sitting, Garrett gave a message
from a deceased Captain Raymond

Garrett, Eileen J. (1893-1970)

Eileen]. Garrett

Hinchcliffe warning his friend, Ernest

Johnston, the navigator of the R-l0l, not
to go on the maiden voyage. Johnston
did, and Garrett's warnings to officials
went unheeded. When the dirigible
crashed, Garrett knew about it before the
news reached the media.
Three days after the crash, the first
of a series of seances were conducted
with Garrett in which Uvani delivered information from the dead crew. It was
claimed that the R-l0l had a gas leak,
which was ignored by officials due to a
desire to launch on time. Furthermore,
the ship had been too heavy for the engines, which backfired and ignited the escaping gas. The information was not considered in the official inquiry to the crash
due to the alleged sources, spirits of the
dead.
In 1931 the American Society for
Psychical Research invited her to the
United States. She made visits to Duke
University, where she worked with researchers J. B. Rhine and William Mc-

227

Dougall, the latter of whom she credited

with influencing her to continue in psychical research. Rhine termed her experiments as "a turning point in parapsychology."
Garrett took up permanent residency
in the United States in 1941, when she
moved from France to New York City.
Her citizenship was granted by 1947. She
launched her own publishing house, Creative Age Press, and Tomorrow magazine, a journal on the paranormal. Both
are now defunct.
In 1951, at a time when few universities were willing to view parapsychology as a science, Garrett established the
Parapsychology Foundation to encourage
organized scientific research through
grants and international conferences. The
foundation sponsors university research
around the world. In 1953 Garrett organized the first International Congress of
Parapsychology, held at the University of
Utrecht, the Netherlands. The PF has
continued these annual, thematic conferences, one of its most important functions. A journal, Parapsychology Review,
has ceased publication.
In the 1960s Garrett worked with
American psychologist Lawrence LeShan
in his studies of what he termed the
"clairvoyant reality": a state of consciousness to which a psychic or medium
shifts in order for paranormal abilities to
function. The clairvoyant reality is a shift
in awareness, and is comparable to mystical states and to the unified whole of
quantum physics. LeShan identified four
central aspects: (1) There is a central
unity to all things, which are part of a
larger pattern; (2) time exists in an eternal now; (3) good and evil are illusions,
for the harmonious whole of the cosmos
is above good and evil; and (4) there is a
better way of getting information than
through the senses. LeShan's work with
Garrett also involved insights into psychic healing. For any kind of psychic
healing to be effective, the healer must

228

shift consciousness into the clairvoyant

reality. See Healing, faith and psychic.
During her career Garrett wrote
seven nonfiction books on the paranormal, plus novels under the pseudonym
Jean Lyttle. She died on September 15,
1970, in Nice, France, following years of
declining health. Her daughter, Eileen
Coly, is president of the Parapsychology
Foundation.

Views
After World War I, Garrett met Edward Carpenter, whose social and political writings interested her. Carpenter
told her she had been born to a state of
cosmic consciousness others spent their
entire lives searching for in vain. She began to see her perceptions not as hallucinations, but as capacities for inner comprehension, or what Carpenter called
cosmic consciousness. She had a profound spiritual experience in which she
saw that her need to live in two selves
was the result of "positive powers beyond
the range of contemporary understanding." Garrett said that the experiences of
telepathy, clairvoyance, and trance depended upon a fundamental shift of
awareness into a different reality, which
she could do by choice by changing her
breathing. She learned to control her
powers so as not to be exhausted by what
she called the "climax of clairvoyance," a
state of inspiration in which past, present,
and future are perceived simultaneously
and one is identified with the unity of the
VISIOn.

Garrett remained uncertain of the reality of her controls. Uvani was the dominant one, joined by Abdul Latif, who
claimed to be a seventeenth-century Persian physician. Garrett stayed detached
from them, viewing them with respect but
not being able to explain. Her mediumship encouraged her to study her own
deep unconscious. By 1938 she felt her
powers were not supernormal in origin,

Garrett, Eileen J. (1893-1970)

but sprang from her own inner nature.

She preferred to think of her controls as
"principles of the subconscious" formed
by her own spiritual and emotional
needs.
Garrett defined psychical research as
"the scientific study of the human personality beyond the threshold of what
man calls his conscious mind." She championed psychical research because she believed that it held promise for reconciling religion and science, thus restoring
spiritual potency to religion. See Control; Mediumship; Mysticism; Parapsychology.
Sources: Allan Angoff. Eileen Garrett and
the World Beyond the Senses. New York:

William Morrow, 1974; Eileen Garrett.

Adventures in the Supernormal: A Personal
Memoir. New York: Garrett Publications,
1949; Eileen J. Garrett. Many Voices: The
Autobiography
of a Medium. New York:

G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1968; Eileen Garrett.

My Life as a Search for the Meaning of Mediumship. London: Rider & Co., 1949;
"Eileen Garrett Ten Years Later." Parapsychology Review 11, no. 5 (September/

October 1980): 1-2; Lawrence LeShan.

The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist:
Toward a General Theory of the Paranormal. New York: Viking Press, 1974.

Gautama, Siddhartha
See Buddhism.

Geller, Uri (b. 1946)

Israeli psychic renowned for his abilities
to bend metal objects by stroking or
looking at them, and to stop watches or
make them run faster. Such psychokinetic
(PK) phenomena are called by some the
"Geller effect."
During the peak of his public career
in the 1970s, Geller worked full time as a
professional performer who demonstrated his metal-bending and mind-

Geller, Uri (b. 1946)

reading abilities for audiences. By the end

of the decade, he was devoting most of
his time to private consulting with occasional public appearances. Despite his
successful feats, most parapsychologists
have not taken him seriously, perhaps
because of his entertainment career.
Geller was born on December 20,
1946, in Tel Aviv. He claims he discovered his psychic powers when he was five
years old, following an incident involving
his mother's sewing machine. He saw a
tiny blue spark coming from the machine,
and when he tried to touch it, he received
a violent shock and was knocked off his
feet. He says that his new powers manifested immediately, including an ability
to read his mother's mind. A year later he
found he could make the hands speed up
on a watch his father had given to him.
Shortly afterward the spoon bending began. He became a full-time performer in
1969.
In 1971 Andrija Puharich, neurologist and medical electronics expert,
brought him to the United States. Geller
was tested in 1972 at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in California, under
the supervision of Edgar D. Mitchell,
Russell Targ, Harold Puthoff, and Wilbur
Franklin. Geller gave impressive demonstrations of ESP: He correctly identified
the numbers on dice eight out of eight
times; on twelve out of fourteen occasions, he correctly distinguished empty
metal containers from those which contained objects. Tests to prove his metalbending abilities, however, were inconclusive.
Puharich, who conducted his own
study, said that while under hypnosis
Geller related a story about a visit from
extraterrestrials when he was three years
old. A being told Geller it represented
"The Nine," aliens who had been watching the world and were afraid of its imminent destruction. Geller was selected as
their messenger here on Earth. Puharich
published the story in his book Uri

229

(1974), which was widely criticized.

Geller later disavowed the story.
In 1974 British mathematician John
Taylor conducted another series of experiments that seemed to validate Geller's
psychokinetic
metal-bending
powers.
Geller held plastic tubes containing metal
rods, which he caused to bend.
As a professional performer, Geller
was in constant demand throughout the
1970s. He traveled the world, making
frequent television and radio appearances. Following most of these stops,
broadcasters were flooded by calls from
viewers and listeners who reported their
silverware had been bent or watches and
clocks began working improperly. His
first autobiography, My Story, was published in 1975.
Geller's high profile made him an enticing target for debunkers, who attempted to demonstrate how they could
perform the same metal-bending feats using stage magic. In the late 1970s, Geller
retired from the public limelight, save for
occasional appearances, and began private consulting work, including dowsing
for minerals and oil. In his second autobiography, The Geller Effect (1986),
Geller related how he learned to dowse
land and maps with his hands. See Dowsing. He said others could learn similar
abilities through belief, will, and concentration.
Geller lives in Sonning, England,
about thirty miles from London. See Applied psi; Psychokinesis (PK).
Sources: James Cook. "Closing the Psychic
Gap." Forbes 133, no. 12 (May 21,1984):
90-95; Uri Geller. My Story. New York:

Praeger, 1975; Uri Geller and Guy Lyon

Playfair. The Geller Effect. New York:
Henry Holt & Co., 1986; Jeffrey Mishlove.
"Psionics: The Practical Application of
Psi." Applied Psi (Fall 1984): 10-16;
Charles Panati, ed. The Geller Papers: Scientific Observations
on the Paranormal
Powers of Uri Geller. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1976; Andrija Puharich. Uri: A

230

Journal of the Mystery of Uri Geller. New

York: Bantam Books, 1975; Colin Wilson.

The Geller Phenomenon. London: Aldus
Books, 1976.

Gematria
One of three Kabbalistic systems for discovering the true and hidden meanings of
words, using numbers and letters of the
alphabet. The numerical values of the letters of words are added together, and
then interpreted according to other words
with the same numerical values.
Although gematria was developed
into a sophisticated system by Kabbalists-predominantly
German Kabbalists of the thirteenth century-it
was
known and used much earlier by other
cultures. King Sargon II, who ruled Babylonia in the eighth century B.C., used the
numerical value of his name to determine
that the wall of Khorsabad should be
built to the same equivalent, or 16,283
cubits. The ancient Greeks, Persians,
Gnostics, and early Christians used gematria for a variety of purposes. The Greeks
applied it to dream interpretation, and
the Gnostics to the names of deities. Early
Christians arrived at the dove for the
symbol of Christ, because the Greek letters of alpha and omega (the Beginning
and the End) and the Greek term for
dove, peristera, add up to the same number, 80l.
The Kabbalistic system of gematria
is far more complex than merely tallying
up numerical values of letters; it involves
various methods of analysis by which the
mystical purposes of the Scriptures,
buildings, and objects may be determined. Not only are the numerical values
considered, but also the size and strokes
of the letters. The early Kabbalists of the
thirteenth century, most notably Eleazar
of Worms, applied gematria to the Scriptures, which were believed to have been
inspired by God and written in code.
Thus, "And 10, three men" from Genesis

Geller, Uri (b. 1946)

18:2, is interpreted as referring to the

archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael; for "And 10, three men" and "Elo
Michael Gabriel Ve-Raphael" each have
the same numerical value of 70l.
The early Kabbalists also employed
gematria to ascertain the secret, ineffable,
and indescribably powerful names of
God. These names were incorporated
into the incantations of ceremonial
magic, used for conjuring and controlling
demons.
Not all Kabbalists endorsed the use
of gematria. Some believed that it could
be manipulated into providing false proof
for theories and conclusions.
Lesser known than gematria are notarikon and temurah, two other systems
of decoding and analyzing mystical
truths. Various methods exist in both systems. In notarikon the first letters of
words may be extracted and combined to
form new words; or the first, last, and
sometimes middle letters of words are
combined to create new words or
phrases. In temurah letters are organized
in tables or mathematical arrangements,
which are then substituted for the letters
in words; or, letters are rearranged into
anagrams. See Numerology.
Sources: Richard Cavendish. The Black
Arts. New York: Perigee Books, 1967;
Manly P. Hall. The Secret Teachings of All
Ages. 1928. Reprint. Los Angeles: The
Philosophic Research Society, 1977; Gershorn Scholem. Kabbalah. New York: New
American Library, 1974.

Gem elixirs
See Crystals.

General extrasensory
perception (GESP)
See ESP (extrasensory perception).

Genius
See Inspiration.

Ghost Dance religion

Geobiology
See Feng shui.

Geomancy
See Feng shui.

Ghost
See Apparition; Haunting.

Ghost Dance religion

Short-lived religious movement among
Native American tribes of the Plains and
West, which preached the end of white
civilization, the creation of a new world
inherited by Native Americans, and the
return of their dead. The movement
ended in 1890 in the tragic massacre at
Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
The Ghost Dance religion was
named after its hallmark, the Ghost
Dance, a shuffling circle dance accompanied by slow chanting, during which
dancers experienced mystical visions of
the dead and the paradise to come. The
movement's roots were in a tradition that
existed in Native American culture prior
to the arrival of the Europeans. According to that tradition, the Earth would
come to an end, be renewed, and the Native American dead would return to coexist in a new world with those living. A
dance arose to help the returning dead
enter the new world.
As white oppression mounted, however, various Native American prophets
emerged in the latter part of the nineteenth century, preaching specifically that
the white culture would end in the end of
the Earth, and they and their dead ancestors would enjoy a return of the old ways
in the new world.
As early as 1850, such prophets at
the Columbia River plateau advocated
the performance of the traditional dance

231

Sioux Ghost Dance

that honored the dead, in preparation for

the coming new world and the end forever of the whites. The prophecies were a
major factor in the Nez Perce war of
1877, which the Native Americans lost.
In 1869 a Paiute mystic named Wodzuwob (also Tavibo), of Nevada, also
prophesied the doom of whites and return of their dead ancestors as a result of
the traditional dance ceremony. Wodzuwob's son, Wowoka (also Wovoka), expanded his father's teachings. Wowoka,
whose anglicized name was Jack Wilson,
was thoroughly discouraged about the future of his people. During an eclipse of
the sun, he had a vision in which he died
twice, was resurrected, and saw God. In
the vision Wowoka was told that a flood
of water and mud would soon cover the
Earth and destroy the white civilization.
If they danced the round dance, however,
the flood would roll under them. When it
receded the Earth would be in an aboriginal state, green and populated with animals and plants. The dead would return,
and all Native Americans, living and

232

dead, would enjoy an eternal existence

free from suffering.
Wowoka composed songs for the
dance, which became known as the Ghost
Dance, and began preaching his vision in
1886. He said Native Americans had to
earn the right to the new world by living
honestly and in harmony, by purifying
themselves often, and by avoiding white
ways, in particular alcohol. Wowoka also
said the dead should no longer be
mourned, since they would soon return.
He opposed violence against the whites.
The Ghost Dance religion spread
quickly through the Western, Southwestern, and Plains tribes, giving hope to
shattered and demoralized people. The
dance would go on for four or five days.
Dancers would become entranced and
fall unconscious; they saw visions of their
dead ancestors, rolling fields of prairie
grass, and huge herds of buffalo.
The movement had the greatest effect among the Sioux, a proud and fierce
people who had vigorously resisted the
whites, most notably in the spectacular

Ghost Dance religion

defeat of General Custer at Little Big

Horn. After agreeing to live on a reservation, however, they began to suffer
hardships. Sioux mystics, Kicking Bear
and Short Bull, rejected Wowoka's stance
on nonviolence and spoke of eliminating
whites.
The Sioux began dancing in the summer of 1890. They performed the dance
around a dead cottonwood tree, a Plains
symbol of life, hung with ornaments.
Dancers wore magical Ghost Dance shirts
that supposedly would stop bullets from
the white man's guns. The shirts, modeled after one worn by Wowoka, were
decorated with eagle feathers at the elbows and red symbols.
Whites perceived the Sioux Ghost
Dance as openly hostile, and in November 1890 it was banned on all Sioux reservations. Tensions were exacerbated by
splits among Native Americans themselves. Some advocated peaceful coexistence with whites, not resistance.
Despite the ban the Ghost Dance
continued. White officials responded by
calling in military troops, under the leadership of General Nelson Miles, to the
Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations in
South Dakota. Chief Sitting Bull of the
Hunkpapas was arrested and, in an ensuing scuffle, was killed along with several of his men.
Miles also arrested Big Foot, leader
of the Miniconjou and a Ghost Dance advocate. Big Foot and his followers surrendered without resistance and were ordered to camp at Wounded Knee Creek.
On December 29, 1890, cavalry soldiers
attempted to gather what few weapons
Big Foot's followers had. A gun went
off-reports
vary as to who fired the
shot-and a skirmish broke out. As everyone ran for cover, the cavalry opened
fire, as did cannons surrounding the
camp, cutting down men, women, and
children. Big Foot and approximately
three hundred others died; the whites lost
almost thirty men, mostly in their own

Glastonbury

crossfire. The next day, after more fighting between other Sioux and whites, the
Sioux surrendered to Miles.
The massacre ended the Ghost
Dance religion and brought to an end the
Native American wars of the Western
frontier.
Sources: Ake Hultkrantz. Native Religions
of North America. San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1987; Ruth M. Underhill. Red
Man's Religion. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1965; Carl Waldman. Atlas
of the North American Indian. New York:
Facts On File, 1985.

Glastonbury
One of the oldest sacred sites in England,
whose history is intertwined with the
Holy Grail and Arthurian legends. Glastonbury is believed to rest at the intersection of powerful leys, lines of earth energy. Its mystical lore draws numerous
pilgrims and visitors from around the
world.
Glastonbury is located in the West
Country, on the plains of Somerset Levels, not far from the Bristol Channel. The
site includes an abbey, town, and Glastonbury Tor, a terraced volcanic rock
522 feet high and topped with the remains of an old church tower.
Archaeological evidence indicates the
area was inhabited from the third or
fourth century B.C.; the site may have
been sacred to the Druids. The town was
nearly on an island, surrounded by
marshlands, until the sixteenth century,
suggesting it may have been associated
with the mysterious island of Avalon in
Arthurian lore.
Various legends are associated with
the Tor. One holds that King Arthur once
had a stronghold atop the Tor, which
provided entrance to Annwn, the underworld. Monks built a church there during
the Middle Ages; it was destroyed in an
earthquake. The present remains are of a
later church. Another legend says that the

233

Abbey ruins, Glastonbury

Tor was the home of Gwynn ap Nudd,
the lord of Annwn and in later folktales
the Fairy King. According to another legend, Chalice Well, located at the base of
the Tor, is said to have been built by the
Druids. Its reddish, mineral-laden waters
are reputed to have magical powers. In
recent times the well water was found to
be naturally radioactive. Visitors still
drink the water for its reputed healing
properties, which were known as early as
the sixteenth century. The well's flow is
25,000 gallons per day and never fails,
even in severe drought. Another legend
has it that Joseph of Arimathea, the
great-uncle of Jesus, brought the boy Jesus on a trip to Glastonbury, and later
built Britain's first above-ground Christian church below the Tor. He threw the
chalice used by Jesus at the Last Supper
into the Chalice Well. See Grail, the.
The abbey was founded in the fifth
century. Sr. Patrick, the legendary
founder, is said to have lived and died
there and ,vas buried there. Various
churches were built at the site over the
centuries. The last, dating from the thirteenth or fourteenth century, was de-

234

stroyed under Henry VIII, who closed

down all the abbeys and monasteries in
1539 after his split with the Catholic
church. In the ruins the famous Glastonbury Thorn blooms every year, said to be
the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, which
took root when he leaned upon it.
Arthur and Guinevere are buried in
secret graves on the abbey grounds, according to legend. In 1190 monks found
remains of a man and the inscription,
"Here lies the renowned Arthur in the
Isle of Avalon." The bones were reburied
in a black marble tomb in 1278, which
was destroyed in the dissolution of the
abbey in 1539.
The ruins of Glastonbury were purchased by the Church of England in 1907
for excavation under the direction of Frederick Bligh Bond. Bond was extraordinarily successful in locating unknown chapels and parts of the abbey, and concluded
that the abbey's construction had involved sacred geometry known by the
builders of the Egyptian pyramids and
passed down through the stonemasons.
Bond's method of excavation was quite
unorthodox: He claimed to receive help-

Glastonbury

ful information from the spirits of monks

who had lived there and who communicated to him through automatic writing.
Bond kept the spirits secret until he revealed them in 1921 in his book, The
Gate of Remembrance,
upon which he
was dismissed in scandal by the church.
See Psychic archaeology.
Bond's belief that Glastonbury is
connected to Stonehenge and Avebury by
leys has been upheld by modern ley investigators; the entire theory of leys,
however, remains controversial. See Leys.
In 1929 Katherine Maltwood, a
sculptor and illustrator, discovered that
natural formations in the Glastonbury
area recreate the twelve signs of the zodiac, laid out over a ten-mile-wide circle.
John Dee, the royal astrologer to Queen
Elizabeth I, is said to have been the first
to discover the zodiac in the sixteenth
century. The origins of the patterns are
unknown.
The occultist Dion Fortune spent the
second part of her life living in a house at
the foot of the Tor, where she practiced
her magical rituals in an adjacent chalet.
Later, the house and chalet were acquired
by Geoffrey Ashe. The chalet was said to
be haunted by a ghost that opened and
closed doors and was sometimes visible
as a shape in the darkness.
Glastonbury is the site of Christian
pilgrimages and seasonal rituals practiced
by ritual magicians, Witches, and Pagans,
and of various occult and spiritual festivals. Bright and fiery lights have been
seen hovering over the Tor. They may be
some form of unexplained natural energy. UFO watchers believe that they are
connected with extraterrestrial spacecraft. See Earth lights. Compare with
Avebury; Stonehenge.
Sources: Geoffrey Ashe, ed. The Quest for
Arthur's Britain. New York: Frederick A.

Praeger, 1969; Frederick Bligh Bond. The

Gate of Remembrance.
Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1921; Janet and Colin Bord.
Mysterious Britain. Garden City, NY: Dou-

Glossolalia

bleday, 1978; Paul Devereux. Places of

London: Blandford, 1990; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The Encyclopedia of
Witches and Witchcraft. New York: Facts
On File, 1989; Francis Hitching. Earth
Magic. New York: William Morrow, 1977;
Jennifer Westwood, ed. The Atlas of Mysterious Places. New York: Weidenfeld &
Nicholson, 1987; Colin Wilson. PolterPower.

geist!: A Study

in Destructive

Haunting.

London: New English Library, 1981.

Glossolalia
The act of speaking or writing in another,
unknown tongue. Although the practice
of ecstatic speech has been part of religion for centuries, glossolalia usually denotes the baptism of the Holy Spirit in
Pentecostal or charismatic Christian worship.
Originating from the Greek glossa,
"tongue," and lalia, "a talk," glossolalia
signifies a recurring phenomenon and not
just one outburst. The ability to speak in
unknown tongues first came to the apostles at Pentecost, or the celebration seven
weeks after Passover. Acts 2:4 in the New
Testament tells that "they were all filled
with the Holy Spirit and began to speak
in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them
utterance. "
Perhaps as remarkable as the speech
itself was that the apostles' listeners recognized their own languages and realized
that the apostles should not have been
able to speak them. Whatever the apostles said was heard in each one's native
tongue.
Not every tongue is intelligible, however; some sound more like gibberish.
The early Christians at Corinth used
tongues extensively in their worship services, although few could tell what they
were saying or what the tongues meant.
St. Paul cautioned the Corinthians about
tongues, saying that unless they could be
interpreted, they were useless. Paul outlined the uses of tongues thus: as an aid

235

to the worshiper in his private prayer and

praise; as a means to prayer when the
supplicant is unsure what to ask for; and
as a direct communication between God
and his followers in public worship - but
only when accompanied by interpretation. Such interpretation gives the contents of the tongue as a divine message
and not a direct translation. The gift of
interpretation ranks on a par with the
ability to speak in tongues.
The gift of tongues has been divided
into three categories: pure glossolalia, or
speaking in a language unknown to the
speaker or the hearer; xenoglossolalia or
xenoglossy, speaking in a language unknown to the speaker but recognized by
the hearer; and heteroglossolalia, speaking in a language known by the speaker
but received by the hearer in his native
tongue.
By the medieval period, however,
church authorities deemed speaking in
tongues a miracle associated witl{ the
days of the apostles and no longer p~ssible. Various groups-such
as French
Camisards, Montanists, Jansenists, and
Waldensians-tried
to revive interest in
the practice and found themselves
branded as heretics for their beliefs.
Later, speaking in a tongue unknown to
the speaker became a sure sign of demonic possession. The modern Catholic
church considers the ability to speak a
recognizable language of which the
speaker should have no knowledge as an
indicator of diabolic intervention.
Classic Pentecostal Christians see
speaking in tongues as a definite sign of
baptism by the Holy Spirit. Other groups
that advocate glossolalia are the Shakers,
Quakers, and Latter-day Saints, or Mormons. Early Methodists spoke in tongues,
as did some Presbyterians during the
1830s. During the Shakers's wave of spiritual manifestations (1837-1847), worshipers composed hymns and prayers in
tongues delivered by the spirits. Since
these languages were unintelligible to

236

mortals, the songs were learned phonetically.

Modern charismatics maintain that
the worshiper mayor may not speak in
tongues following the conversion experience. Like the gifts of healing, wisdom,
prophecy, miracles, and spirit divination,
the ability to speak in tongues is not
given to everyone. See Charismatic renewal; Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, the (Mormonism); Pentecostals; Shakers; Society of Friends
(Quakers); Xenoglossy.
Sources: Keith Crim, general ed. Abingdon
Dictionary of Living Religions. Nashville:

Abingdon Press, 1981; Felicitas D. Goodman. Speaking in Tongues: A CrossCultural Study of Glossolalia. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1972; James
H. Hyslop. "Psychic Phenomena and Christianity." The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 16, no. 1 (January 1922): 59-71; Richard Quebedeaux.
The New Charismatics II. San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1983; John Sherrill. They
Speak with Other Tongues. New York:
McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1964; Lewis
Spence. The Encyclopedia of the Occult.
Reprint. London: Bracken Books, 1988.

Gnosticism
Dualistic, mystical Christian religion,
which flourished in the Mediterranean region during the second century A.D.
"Gnostic" comes from the Greek gnosis,
meaning "knowledge." Gnostics believed
that redemption, or liberation of the soul,
was possible only through knowledge,
gnosis, not faith, pistis.
At its origin Gnosticism-the
"religion of knowledge" or "the religion of
insight" -was a philosophically dualistic
religion consisting of at least sixty sects.
In orthodox Christian circles, Gnosticism has been dismissed as heretical
and pseudo-religious. However, modern
scholarship has questioned this view and
has considered that the Gnostics may

Glossolalia

have been the descendants of the original

Christians who inherited Christ's esoteric
teachings.
Gnostic elements can be found in all
religions; in a broad sense, Gnosticism is
the creative element in any religion.
Gnostic ideas were widespread before the
time of Christ, in the Egyptian and Greek
mystery cults, Zoroastrianism, Judaism,
Buddhism, and Taoism.
The Gnostic terms gnosis and sophia, wisdom, appear in the Old Testament. In Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, he uses gnosis to refer to practical
knowledge and sophia to refer to speculative questions. As Gnostic sects developed, sophia came to be associated with
the highest wisdom attainable, which
gives insights into the secrets of God.
The founding of Gnosticism often is
credited to Simon Magus, a reputed
miracle-worker who was thrown out of
the church and whose rise and fall are
recorded in Acts. It is more likely that
Gnosticism simply arose under various
leaders in the ferment of early Christianity and coexisted for a time with the orthodox church. Most Gnostics, in fact,
probably would have called themselves
Christians, not Gnostics.
Gnosticism was taught in certain Roman and Alexandrian schools, which
reached a developmental peak in the second century. The great sect leaders, including Basilides, Valentine, and Marcion, were mystics who saw that the
truths of the universe are found in its
spiritual or psychic dimensions. At the
heart of Gnosticism is the belief that
agape, mystical love, is the way to knowledge of God; agape can be attained only
after a long and arduous process.
Gnosticism developed a dualism of
good (the spiritual) and evil (physical
matter). In every person the divine seedthe soul (spirit-good)-was imprisoned in
the body (matter-evil), as a result of a
cosmic fall. Furthermore, they taught that
spiritual salvation is achieved only by

Gnosticism

Gnostic talisman

freeing the intrinsically good soul from

the intrinsically evil body. Carrying out
this dualism to its extreme, radical Gnostics practiced excessive asceticism in their
effort to purge themselves of evil.
While Gnostics believed every person
possessed the divine seed, they categorized people primarily as either Gnostics-those who were motivated by the
spirit and therefore will be saved-or as
those who are motivated by matter and
therefore will not to be saved. However,
they also allowed a third category-those
who have the potential to be Gnostics
through knowledge, but who are not fully
Gnostics. (The word "agnostic," from the
Greek agnost for "not known" or "not
knowable," relates to Gnosticism in that
it refers to a person who holds that the
uncaused cause [God] and the essential
nature of reality are not only unknown,
but also unknowable.)
Some Gnostics questioned the suffering and crucifixion of Christ, asking how
God could contaminate himself with matter. It was postulated by some that Jesus

237

had escaped physical death by trading

places with a surrogate prior to crucifixion. Some Gnostic sects made liberal interpretations of the scriptures and others
injected magical formulae into their
teachings.
The spread of Gnostic ideas was perceived as threatening by early church officials, who hardened against it. Early
Christian scholars who wrote against
Gnosticism included Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Tertullian (c. 160-230). However, Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215)
tried to justify a Gnosticism that would
be acceptable to orthodox Christianity.
The resulting formulation, along with
aspects of Buddhism, Zoroastrianism,
and other religious elements, gradually
merged with Manichaeism, which adhered to a simplistic and dualistic religious system in which matter is regarded
as evil and spirit is good.
Gnostics were persecuted and executed as heretics. By the late Middle
Ages, the sects were all but wiped out;
the last great persecution occurred in
1244 in France. Gnostic ideas were kept
alive, however, by the Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Kabbalists, and various other
esoteric orders. A remnant of a Gnostic
sect exists today as the Mandeans in Iraq
and Iran.
Despite the persecutions Gnosticism
had a great influence on Christian liturgy,
most notably the sacraments of the Catholic church. Early Christian liturgies, in
turn, had an influence on the development of synagogue services.
Interest in the Gnostics was revived
in the twentieth century with the discovery of Gnostic manuscripts, previously
thought to be lost, in Turkestan between
1902 and 1914 and near Nag Hammadi
in upper Egypt in 1945 and 1946 and in
1948. The latter are usually called the
Dead Sea Scrolls and have provided the
basis for new interpretations of Gnostic
beliefs and influence. See Dead Sea
Scrolls.

238

Another major factor in the reexamination of Gnosticism is the work of psychiatrist Carl G. Jung, who may be described as a "neo-Gnostic." Between
1912 and 1926, Jung delved into a study
of Gnosticism and early Christianity. He
found in Gnosticism an early, prototypical depth psychology. He believed that
Christianity, and as a result Western culture, had suffered because of the repression of Gnostic concepts. In looking for
ways to reintroduce Gnostic ideas to
modern culture, Jung found them in alchemy. See Alchemy.
The first codex of the Nag Hammadi
library found in 1945 was purchased and
given to Jung on his eightieth birthday. It
is called the Codex Jung.
Others influential in the Gnostic revival are Hans Jonas, a student of the existentialist Martin Heidegger, and religion historian Kurt Rudolph. Jonas, who
was influenced greatly by the New Testament scholar Rudolph Bultmann, published his pioneering work, Gnostic Religion, in 1934. It introduced many readers
to a historical perspective that leads to a
better understanding of the early church
in general, and the Dead Sea Scrolls in
particular.
In 1977 Kurt Rudolph published
Gnosis: The Nature and History of
Gnosticism, a chronological history of
many elements leading to ancient Gnosticism, from the beginning of Alexander
the Great's campaigns in Asia (334 B.C.)
to the most significant elements that led
to the Catholicizing of the last Paulicians
in Bulgaria in the seventh century. The
Paulicians, founded c. 657, followed the
teachings of the apostle Paul as interpreted by Marcion, and represented
Gnosticism in the extreme, in that they
believed in two supreme gods, one of
good and one of evil. Rudolph's historical
survey of the consequences of Gnosticism, while expertly documented, considers only the European Christian side. He
observes that a similar investigation de-

Gnosticism

serves to be made of the effects of Gnosticism in Eastern thought.

Gustav; Mysteries.

See Jung, Carl

Sources: Joseph Campbell, ed. The Mystic

Vision: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1968; John Dart. The Jesus of Heresy and
History: The Discovery and Meaning of the
Nag Hammadi Gnostic Library. Rev. and
expanded edition of The Laughing Savior:
The Discovery and Meaning of the Nag
Hammadi Gnostic Library. San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1988; John Ferguson. An
Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mysticism and
the Mystery Religions. New York: Seabury
Press, 1976; Robert Mcqueen
Grant.
Gnosticism and Early Christianity. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1966;
Stephan A. Hoeller. The Gnostic Jung and
the Seven Sermons to the Dead. Wheaton,
IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1982;
Hans Jonas. Gnostic Religion. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958; Geddes MacGregor. Gnosis: A Renaissance in Christian Thought.
Wheaton,
IL: Theosophical
Publishing
House, 1979; Kurt Rudolph. Gnosis: The
Nature and History of Gnosticism. San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987; "The
Gnostic Jung: An Interview With Stephan
Hoeller." The Quest 2, no. 2 (Summer
1989): 82-86.

Goddess
The feminine
Force. Widely
Goddess is no
the mainstream
three millennia

principle
of the Divine
venerated in earlier times,
longer a primary power in
religions: For the past
she has been subordinated

or ignored in favor of the masculine principle. The Supreme Being of Judaism,

Christianity, and Islam is male; the Holy
Trinity of Christianity,
the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost, is an all-male
triumvirate.
Hinduism, though it recognizes female deities, gives priority to the
masculine element. Buddhism, which recognizes no Supreme Being, nonetheless
holds the male Buddha as the highest and
most sacred figure. Since the 1960s, how-

Goddess

Goddess symbol jewelry in silver. Left:

crescent moon sits atop double-headed
ax of wisdom. Right: Diana dances on
crescent moon.
ever, Goddess has reawakened
ern consCIousness.

in West-

Goddess worship extends at least

back to the Neolithic era of approximately 10,000 years ago, and may even
be as old as the Stone Age of 25,000 to
30,000 years ago. Goddess may have preceded God, creating the universe by fertilizing herself.
The earliest known cult works and
works of art are Stone
female figures, some
sexual characteristics,
sent Goddess as Great

Age sculptures of
with exaggerated
believed to repreMother. The so-

called "Venus figures" date to the time of

the Cro-Magnons,
between 35,000 B.C.
and 10,000 B.C.
Goddess appears universally, primarily as a symbol of fertility, but in multiple
facets as the ruler of wisdom, truth, magical powers, nature, fate, the home, healing, justice, love, birth, death, time, and
eternity. She is the guardian of the human
interior, of emotion, intuition,
psychic
forces, and mysteries. She is Creator,
Nurturer, and Destroyer, and almost always is more powerful than gods. From
her all else springs, and without her bless-

239

ings and good will none may prosper either in heaven or on earth. In various cosmologies she is most often represented as
Goddess of the Earth, whose masculine
divine counterpart is God of the Sky. In
her celestial aspects, she is often Goddess
of the Moon, whose rays have been associated with fertilizing power since ancient times. In ancient Chinese myth,
there was once a time when Goddess
reigned supreme: the Tao Teh Ching tells
of a time when yin, the female principle,
was not ruled by yang, the male principle.
The wisdom of Taoism is based on traits
that are labeled feminine: intuition, the
flow of the forces of nature and harmony
with nature. See Taoism.
The facets of Goddess are represented by her many aspects, goddesses of
various names and attributes; Goddess is
said to be She of a Thousand Names. Her
multiplicity indicates that multiplicity is
natural to woman in her many roles in
life.
The beginning of the end of the
Golden Age of Goddess commenced circa
1800 B.C. to 1500 B.C., during the time of
Abraham, the first prophet of the Hebrew
God, Yahweh, who proclaimed that humankind would have no other gods before Yahweh. During the spread of Christianity, worship of Goddess, along with
all pagan deities, was routed or suppressed, and the deities were demonized.
But the need for veneration of a female
figure persisted, and in Christianity that
need was transferred to the muchdisputed adoration of the Blessed Virgin
Mary. At times the cult of Mary has approached that of Goddess worship, but
any similarities drawn between Mary and
Goddess are discouraged by the Catholic
church. The proper place of Mary in
Christianity was one of the major disputes in the Protestant Reformation-the
Protestants felt she had been given too
much emphasis. Mary, as Queen of
Heaven, officially occupies a status below
that of deity yet more exalted than the

240

saints; through her one may reach Christ

and God. Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung said
Mary was not quite the fourth Trinity,
but was necessary to the understanding of
the Trinity, for she represented the anima, the female attributes that reside in
all human beings. See Mary.
Goddess has existed as a powerful
archetype since the Stone Age. Her symbol is the vessel, the inexhaustible container of all wisdom and life forces, and
appears in different forms in mythologies-the cauldron, the cup, the bowland in the Christian mysteries as the
Grail. Christ himself evinced Goddess
traits in his ministry of love, peace, and
healing, and in his death and resurrection.
Analytical psychologist Erich Neumann observed that the revitalization of
the Feminine archetype was essential to
correct the "one-sided patriarchal development of the male intellectual consciousness," largely responsible for the
"peril of the present-day." Neumann said
that "Western mankind must arrive at a
synthesis that includes the feminine
world-which is also one-sided in its isolation. Only then will the individual human being be able to develop the psychic
wholeness that is urgently needed if Western man is to face the dangers that
threaten his existences from within and
without" (The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955; 1963).
The rediscovery of Goddess in the
West in the late 1960s coincided with the
women's movement, the ecology movement, and the beginnings of the so-called
New Age movement. It was influenced
by archaeological discoveries, especially
those at Catal Huyuk in Anatolia, the
largest Neolithic site (c. 7000 B.C.10,000 B.C.), and other Neolithic Anatolian sites of Mersin and Hacilar. The dig
at Catal Huyuk commenced in 1961, and
detailed reports on all three sites were
published in 1966. They indicated a predominant cult of Goddess that extended

Goddess

into the Bronze Age. Archaeologist James

Mellaart, who directed the early digs at
Catal Huyuk, said the civilization there
was "woman dominated." The society
appeared to have been peaceful, ordered,
and vegetarian. There was no evidence of
animal sacrifice, violent death, or of war
for a thousand years. The remains of
women had been buried with reverence,
while the remains of men had been
thrown in a charnel house.
The rising consciousness of Goddess
led modern women to challenge the subordinate role dealt them by mainstream
religions, and the contentions that male
superiority is both divinely ordained because of the Fall and naturally ordained
because of genes. The Fall has been recast
by some women as a scapegoat for men
to shove the burden of the question of
evil onto women, which has had profound and damaging effects on the perceptions of the "nature" of women, now
deeply embedded in the Western psyche,
and on the balance of male-female relationships.
Attempts have been made to find a
new term for the Supreme Being to incorporate the aspects of Goddess, but without success. Most, such as "Godless,"
are awkward. Mary Daly, feminist philosopher and theologian, has suggested
changing the conception/perception of
god (sic) from "supreme being" to Be-ing,
as verb.
Nonetheless, the reawakening of
Goddess, like the many facets she has
herself, has taken numerous forms: in the
celebration of female strength, power,
and dynamism; in the continuing rediscovery of female divinity; in the recognition that the Earth is sacred and must be
cared for; and in the renewed acceptance
and cultivation of "female" traits such as
nurturing, peacefulness, intuition, and
emotion. Goddess is not surrounded by a
hierarchy-every
woman, every person,
has direct access to her.
New interpretations have been of-

Goddess

fered of Jung's concepts of anima and animus. Jung ascribed feminine characteristics to the anima and male characteristics
to the animus; men and women have
both within them. The animus plays a
central role in Jung's writings on the psychology of women. Some feminists deplore the anima/animus concept because
it pigeonholes characteristics according to
sex. Jung's views, of course, reflect the
different attitudes toward women of his
time. Alternatives have been proposed,
such as the psychology of Jean Shinoda
Bolen, which is based on female Goddess
representations of archetypes: "masculine" traits are associated with the goddesses who evince them, such as Artemis
and Atalanta.
Perhaps one of the most visible arenas for the revival of Goddess is in the
neo-Paganism and neo-Pagan Witchcraft
nature religions. These are largely reconstructions of earlier pagan religions. Most
sects recognize both female and male aspects of the Divine Force-Goddess and
Horned God respectively-but
Goddess
is given primacy (some feminist covens
worship Goddess exclusively). Goddess
embodies the very essence of modern
Witchcraft: she is the Great Mother,
Mother Nature, Creator, Destroyer, the
Queen of Heaven, the Moon (the source
of magical power), and the innermost
self. Goddess frequently is recognized in a
trinity, the Triple Goddess, a personification of her three faces as Virgin, Mother,
and Crone, respectively called Diana, Selene, and Hecate. See Archetypes; Creation spirituality; Moon; Neo-Paganism;
Psychology; Witchcraft.
Sources: Mary Daly. Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's
Liberation. Rev. ed. Boston: Beacon Press,
1985; Elizabeth Gould Davis. The First
Sex. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons,
1971; Riane Eisler. The Chalice and the
Blade: Our History, Our Future. San Fran-

cisco: Harper & Row, 1987; Rosemary

Ellen Guiley. The Encyclopedia of Witches

241

and Witchcraft. New York: Facts On File,

1989; Erich Neumann. The Great Mother:
2d ed.
An Analysis of the Archetype.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1963; Shirley Nicholson, ed. The Goddess
Reawakening: The Feminine Principle Today. Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Pub-

lishing House, 1989; Carl Olson, ed. The

Book

of the Goddess

Past and Present.

New York: Crossroad, 1989; Starhawk.

The Spiral Dance. San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1979; Merlin Stone. When God Was
a Woman. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976; Edward C. Whitmont. Return of the Goddess. New York: Crossroad, 1988.

Grail, the
Spiritual mystery in the Western, and especially British, esoteric tradition. It is a
pagan story that became Christianized
and merged with Arthurian legend, but
retained much of its pagan imagery and
symbolism. The Grail is a gateway to Paradise, a point of contact with a supernatural and spiritual realm. It possesses unlimited healing power and makes possible
a direct apprehension of the Divine.
As a pagan image, the Grail is the
Graal, a cup of plenty and regeneration,
the vessel in which the life of the world is
preserved, and which symbolizes the
body of Goddess or the Great Mother. In
its Christianized form, the Grail is the
chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper,
and which held his blood following the
crucifixion. It is not known whether such
an object truly existed or exists, and there
is no definitive image of it. As a spiritual
mystery, the Grail represents regeneration
through Christ's teachings; in medieval
belief blood embodied the soul, and in
Christ's case even his divinity.
Various versions of the Grail legend
exist. The first written texts appeared toward the end of the twelfth century and
flowered through the fourteenth century,
though it is likely that the story existed
earlier in oral tradition. Originally, the

242

story was pagan. An account attributed

to the sixth-century bard Taliesin, but appearing four hundred years later, tells of
a magic cauldron in Annwn, the otherworld, in the keeping of nine maidens,
which is sought by King Arthur's men. As
versions proliferated the story incorporated elements of classical and Celtic mythology, Christian iconography, Arabic
poetry, and Sufi teachings. It was first
identified with the Last Supper in about
1190.
The Grail was never fully accepted in
Catholic apocrypha, but neither was it
denied nor labeled as heretical. It was
perhaps never fully accepted because it
could not be identified with a relic. It was
perhaps never suppressed because of its
tremendous popularity. Grail symbolisms
were absorbed into Rosicrucianism.
A Christian version of the story of
the Grail is this: Joseph of Arimathea is
charged with preparing Christ's body for
the tomb. He has obtained the cup used
by Christ at the Last Supper; and while
he washes the body, he uses the cup to
catch blood that flows from the wounds.
When the body of Christ disappears from
the tomb, Joseph is accused of stealing it
and is jailed without food. Christ appears
to him, puts the cup in his care, and
teaches him various mysteries, including
the Mass. Joseph remains alive in prison
by the acts of a mysterious dove, which
appears every day and leaves a wafer in
the cup. After his release in A,D. 70, according to one version, Joseph traveled to
Britain, where he founded the first Christian church at Glastonbury, dedicated to
Mary, mother of Christ, and enshrined in
it the Grail.
In another version Joseph passes the
Grail to Bron, his sister's husband, who
becomes the Rich Fisher when he feeds
many from the cup with a single fish. The
company goes to Avaron (perhaps
Avalon, the otherworld of Arthurian
lore) and waits for a new Grail keeper.
The Grail is housed in a temple on

Goddess

Muntsalvach, the Mountain of Salvation.

It is guarded by an Order of Grail
Knights. The Grail keeper, who is king, is
wounded in the thighs or genitals by a
spear (associated with the spear wounds
of Christ). The causes of the wound are
varied, but the result is that the kingdom
withers and becomes the Waste Land; it
can only be restored when the king is restored to health (a motif common in folktales and fairy tales).
Thus begin the Arthurian quests for
the Grail. At Pentecost the Grail appears
floating in a sunbeam to the Knights of
the Round Table, who pledge to find it.
The quests essentially are initiations.
Galahad the pure, Perceval the fool, and
Bors the humble are the only knights
to find the Grail. Perceval finds the
wounded king and is asked the ritual
question that can heal him: "Whom does
the Grail serve?" The answer is not given,
but it is the king. Perceval answers correctly, the king heals and is permitted to
die, and the Waste Land is restored.
The three knights then travel east to
Sarras, the Heavenly City, where they celebrate the mysteries of the Grail, and a
mass is said using the Grail. Galahad dies
in sanctity and the Grail ascends to
heaven. Perceval takes the king's place
and Bors returns to Camelot.
Early origins of the Grail legend may
be found in the ancient and universal motif of sacred vessel as symbol of power
and the source of miracles. Such vessels,
feminine symbols, are in Vedic, Egyptian,
classical, and Celtic mythology and in
various mystery traditions as cups or
cauldrons of inspiration, rebirth, and regeneration. The Grail is paralleled in alchemy as the philosopher's stone, which
represents the unification with God. In
Tibetan Buddhism a corollary is found in
the human skulls that represent vessels of
transformation.
The Grail also is represented by
other feminine symbols, as a dish, womb,
or other stone. One version of the legend,

Grant, Joan (b. 1907)

Parzival, finished in 1207 by Wolfram

von Eschenbach, said the Grail was an
emerald that fell from Lucifer's crown
during his battle with God, and was
brought to earth by angels.
Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung said the
story of the Grail is very much psychically alive in modern times. The Grail
quest is a search for truth and the real
Self, and may be seen as a paradigm of
the modern spiritual journey to restore
the Waste Land and become whole again.
There are many paths to the Grail. According to lore the Grail may be seen
only by those who have attained a certain
spiritual consciousness, who have raised
themselves above the limitations of the
senses. See Alchemy; Glastonbury; Goddess; Merlin; Mysteries; Planetary consciousness; Symbol.
Sources: Manly P. Hall. The Secret Teachings of All Ages. 1928. Los Angeles: The

Philosophic Research Society, 1977; Emma

Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz. The
Grail Legend. 1960. Boston: Sigo Press,
1986; Caitlin and John Matthews. "The
Grailless Lands." Gnosis no. 9 (Fall 1988):
8-13; John Matthews. The Grail: Quest
for the Eternal. New York: Crossroad,
1981; John Matthews, ed. At the Table of
the Grail: Magic and the Use of Imagination. 1984. London: Arkana, 1987; Lewis
Spence. The Encyclopedia of the Occult.

Reprint. London: Bracken Books, 1988.

Grant, Joan (b. 1907)

Psychically gifted British writer whose
technique of past-life recall, "far memory," enabled her to tap into apparent
past lives, the biographies of which were
published as best-selling novels. In later
years she turned her far memory skill to
psychotherapy.
She was born Joan Marshall on
April 12, 1907, in London, and enjoyed a
comfortable upbringing with nannies and
governesses, one of whom professed to be

243

a Welsh witch. She said that even as a

toddler, she experienced bits and pieces
of past lives. Seven previous lives, four as
a male and three as a female, emerged
during childhood, and Grant assumed
that all people had such memories.
She also possessed unusual psychic
gifts, which manifested in premonitions
of death, precognitive dreams, and a
strange type of dream that seemed to involve out-of-body travel to another reality. In these latter dreams, she was older,
and was in situations in which she assisted the newly dead to cross over. During World War I, she dreamed of being a
nurse on a battlefield, telling soldiers they
were dead, and helping them meet loved
ones who also were dead. She also helped
accident victims who did not realize they
had died. These dreams invariably preceded news stories that verified the details
of her dreams. Grant was uneasy about
her dreams, but could do nothing to prevent them from occurring.
Grant was sensitive to the presence
of ghosts. As a child she matter-of-factly
accepted piano lessons from the spirit of
a dead pianist. As she gtew older, she increased her contact with the spirit realm
through automatic wtiting and the planchette.
On November 30, 1927, she married
Leslie Grant, a barrister, who was mindful of social appearances and the opinions
of his peers and fellow club members. A
daughter, Gillian, was born on April 2,
1930.
Once, after a stay in haunted Cluny
Castle, Grant vowed that she would understand her unusual abilities, and started
a dream journal. She learned that her
"true dreams," as she called them, fell
into two categories: one in which time
proceeded in a linear fashion; and one
that transcended time and space so that
the "I" that was herself alternated with
another personality, such as a newly dead
soul.
Grant learned to psychometrize ob-

244

jects. See Psychometry. By pressing them

to her forehead, she would see moving
visual images as though she were seeing
them through her third eye. She would
pour our incredible details related to the
owner of the object, and events that had
occurred in his or her life.
The psychometry proved to be the
key to unlocking her past lives. Leslie decided to pursue archaeology, and in 1935
the Grants went to Iran to a Sumerian
dig. Grant psychometrized the artifacts.
In 1936 a longtime friend, Daisy Sartorius, asked Grant to psychometrize five
Egyptian scatabs. One of them revealed a
young Egyptian girl named Sekeeta.
Grant's identification with Sekeeta was
so strong that she felt compelled to explore her in more depth. Rubbing the
scarab on her forehead, she viewed more
episodes from the girl's life. Sekeeta had
been the daughter of a pharaoh, and had
spent ten years undergoing a rigorous
temple training to become a Winged
Pharaoh, a ruler and healer. Part of that
training involved learning far memory,
and viewing at least ten of her previous
deaths, so that she would be able to comfort the dying.
Grant believed that she had been Sekeeta, and Sartorius had been Sekeeta's
mother. Over the ensuing months, she devoted about two hundred recall sessions
to that life, unearthing two or three episodes, not in chronological order, in each
session. She learned how to employ far
memory herself, an altered state of consciousness in which she shifted the major portion of her consciousness to the
past personality, while remaining aware
enough to dictate what she saw and felt.
She was able to describe daily life in great
detail. She discovered that past-life memories were distinguished from imagination because they were active and moving, while fantasies remained passive.
Past-life details could not be changed,
while fantasies could. The sessions were
often physically draining, especially if

Grant, Joan (h. 1907)

they concerned traumatic events in the

past life.
Grant wrote her biography of Sekeeta, never intending to publish it. She
gave it to an acquaintance who in turn
gave it to a publisher. The book was published as Winged Pharaoh in 1937. The
public exposure of her unorthodox experiences contributed to the eventual disintegration of her marriage.
Using far memory Grant tuned in to
many past lives, including numerous ones
in ancient Egypt. Six more lives were
published as biography-novels: Life as
Carola, about Carol a di Ludovici, a
sixteenth-century Italian lute player; Eyes
of Horus and Lord of the Horizon, about
Ra-ab Hotep, the Nomarch (similar to a
lord lieutenant) of the Oryx, who lived
one thousand years after Sekeeta in the
last reign of the Eleventh Dynasty; Scarlet
Feather, about a North American female
Indian warrior of the second millennium
B.C.; Return to Elysium, about Lucina, a
Greek girl of the second century B.C. who
was the ward of a philosopher and a
priestess of a mystery cult; and So Moses
Was Born, about a male contemporary of
Ramses II.
In 1958 Grant met Denys Kelsey, a
psychiatrist and hypnotherapist who became her second husband. In London
they established a practice together.
Kelsey recognized potential benefits of
past-life recall in treating many neuroses,
guilt, and phobias. Grant attended hypnosis sessions, tuning into the past lives
seen by the patients, validating their experiences as real or discerning them as
fantasies.
Grant believes that human beings go
through four phases of evolution: molecules of energy, the mineral kingdom, the
plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, and
the human realm. Many lifetimes are
spent in each phase until consciousness
has expanded enough to "graduate" to
the next level. During human lives the
consciousness eventually becomes too

Guardian

spirit

large for a single personality. An incarnation includes both a soul, or personality, and a component of his total self. The
sum total of all the souls is the spirit. After death the soul joins the spirit. In far
memory Grant said she was accessing a
particular component of her spirit.
According to the Kelsey-Grant practice, if a soul fails to integrate itself into
the spirit, fragments split off and form a
"ghost," which traps energy. The ghost
lingers through subsequent incarnations,
until its energy is released, such as in psychotherapy. See Past-life recall; Past-life
therapy (PLT); Reincarnation.
Sources: Joan Grant. Far Memory. New
York: Harper & Row, 1956; Denys Kelsey,
MB, MRCP and Joan Grant. Many Lifetimes. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co.,
1967.

Guadelupe
See Marian apparitions.

Guardian spirit
In tribal cultures a spirit, usually in animal form, that protects individuals,
tribes, and clans, or provides magical shamanic power. The animal represents the
collective power of an entire species or
genus, and customarily has magical powers that enable it to perform extraordinary feats, such as a wolf with the power
of flight. Guardian spirits almost always
appear in animal form, but may in some
cases take on human shape on various occasions. In animal form they can converse
with humans. The animal form is rooted
in the deep belief that humans and animals are related to one another.
Beliefs about guardian spirits vary.
In many tribes it is assumed that males
have guardian spirits from birth, otherwise they would not live to adulthood.
Some tribes believe that not all males suc-

245

cessfully acquire guardian spmts; those

who do not suffer weakness and failure in
their lives. It is less important, or not important at all, for women to have guardian spirits because women do not become
hunters and warriors. Some tribes, however, have minor rites for women to connect with their guardian spirits.
Some tribal societies, such as among
Native North Americans, especially those
of the Northwest Coast, have totem
guardian spirits, which protect entire
tribes or clans on both a collective and
individual basis. The totem animal is sacred. For example, a clan protected by
Bear cannot hunt bear, but is permitted
to consume the flesh of a bear killed by
another clan.
In shamanic cultures shamans acquire guardian spirits who empower
them with their magical powers; one cannot be a shaman without one. The guardian spirit also serves as the shaman's
"power animal," or his alter ego. When
the shaman enters the altered state of
consciousness in which he works, he assumes the form and power of his guardian spirit, seeing it, conversing with it,
and using it to help him. It accompanies
him on his shamanic journey to the underworld, or on his mystical ascents to
the sky. The guardian spirit never is
threatening or dangerous to the shaman
himself.
The shaman maintains contact with
his guardian spirit by regularly "dancing
the animal." Guardian spirits do not remain with a shaman throughout life, but
have temporary stays and are replaced by
new spirits.
The shamanic guardian spirit is not
to be confused with "spirit helpers," who
are minor powers with specialized functions, such as in healing specific illnesses
or diseases. The spirit helpers are used
collectively by a shaman. Nor is the
guardian spirit the same as the tonal
(from the Nahuatl or Aztec term tonalli),
which is one's vital soul and the sign of

246

one's birth date, as represented in spirit

animal form. Likewise, guardian spirits
are not the equivalent of a "familiar," a
spirit in animal form that is dispatched
on errands by a magician, sorcerer, or
witch.
The most customary means of acquiring a guardian spirit is to undertake a
solitary spirit quest or vision quest in the
wilderness. For some people guardian
spirits first come in dreams. Others acquire them by taking hallucinogenic
drugs, which may be part of a vision
quest. Contact with one's guardian spirit
is part of many initiatory rites into manhood. See Drugs in mystical and psychic
experiences.
Communication with the guardian
spirit most frequently is made through ecstatic dancing, in which the dancer enters
a trance state and assumes the form of
the animal. The Zuiii, for example, call
their dance "Calling the Beasts."
Numerous other names are applied
to guardian spirits, among them "tutelary
spirit" in Siberian shamanism; "assistant
totem" among Australian Aborigines;
"spirit of the head," used by the Vasyugan of Siberia; and nagual, used among
Mexican and Guatemalan shamans (from
the Aztec term nahualli).
From a tribal perspective, modern
Westerners also have guardian spirits, but
generally remain unaware of them
throughout their lives, thus robbing
themselves of an enriching source of
greater power. See Shamanism; compare
to Spirit guide.
Sources: Mircea Eliade. Shamanism. 1951.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1964; Michael Harner. The Way of the
Shaman. New York: Bantam, 1986; Ake
Hultkrantz. The Religions of the American
Indians. 1967. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.

Guided imagery
See Creative visualization.

Guardian spirit

Gurdjieff, Georgei Ivanovitch

(1866?-1949)
As much an enigma as his homeland of
Russia, G. 1. Gurdjieff was considered by
some to be the greatest mystical teacher
of all time, and by others to be a fraud.
His liberation philosophy, commonly
called "the Work," set occultism on its
ear in the 1920s and paved the way for
now-conventional techniques of group
and encounter therapy.
His birth date is unknown. Gurdjieff
gave it as 1866, but it has been variously
given as 1877 by his sister and 1872 by
his biographer, J. G. Bennett. All agree,
however, that Gurdjieff was born in Alexandropol, in the Russo-Turkish frontier, to Greek and Armenian parents. He
spent his early years in the village of
Kars. Gurdjieff absorbed the varied cultural influences of the area, which later
surfaced in his teachings.
After several, mostly undocumented,
years of travel, some of which may have
been devoted to spying against England
on behalf of Russia, Gurdjieff turned his
attention to finding out the "whys" of
life. He was familiar with Madame H. P.
Blavatsky's Theosophical Society and the
occult-Orthodox philosophies of priest
Pavel Alexandrovitch Florensky. But instead of embracing any organized occult
teaching, Gurdjieff devised his own. He
postulated that people are no more than
machines run by forces outside their control. Human beings in such a state are
essentially asleep. In order to wake up,
they must work hard to penetrate their
normal state of unconsciousness to reach
the true consciousness inside.
Gurdjieff turned increasingly to hypnotism to accomplish this goal. He
had acquired extensive, albeit unorthodox medical knowledge on his travels,
and believed that the tempo of the blood
altered at adolescence to accommodate
humankind's normal "asleep" state. He
claimed that he possessed new hyp-

Gurdjieff, Georgei Ivanovitch (1866?-1949)

notic techniques that would alter the

blood's tempo to break through these
so-called "buffers" and evoke the subconSCIOUS.
Gurdjieff also held that people must
study under those who have escaped their
own robotic existences: a teacher, a Man
Who Knows. They must form groups or
schools; and they must obey all the rules,
including the obligation to tell the teacher
everything, to keep silent in front of others, and to be prepared for the teacher
to lie for the "good" of the students.
Students must achieve self-realization
through work on themselves, selfobservation, and "self-remembering"conscious awareness of surroundings and
the self in the situation.
The first Gurdjieffian school opened
in Moscow at about the start of World
War 1. His reputation spread to St. Petersburg, where he attracted Pyotr Demianovitch Ouspensky, who believed in
eternal recurrence (endless repetition, not
improvement, through reincarnation) and
Nietzsche's idea of Superman. He saw
Gurdjieff's way as the means of breaking
the cycle and eventually attaining perfection.
Ouspensky began teaching the Gurdjieffian "system" to students in St. Petersburg in 1915. In 1917 Gurdjieff moved
both groups to Essentuki in the Caucasus
to escape the Russian Revolution. There
he established the formal procedures,
drawn in part from his previous studies
with Sufi dervishes of Central Asia, that
characterized his later work: hard, physical labor; tasks beneath one's social or
cultural station; intense emotionalism;
exercise; and complicated dance movements. Gurdjieff called such methods
"shocks," designed to change one's preconceived notions of self and further the
process of self-awareness. The student begins to lose all preconceived notions and
to unify his or her various selves-the
"I"s-in harmony. By working on oneself, one can rise above one's mechanical

247

existence, make a soul, and attain immortality.

,
The intellectual and upper-class students participated in strenuous manual
labor and complicated dance exercises.
They attended lectures on science, languages, hypnotism, and music. They
learned Sufi breathing and dance techniques. They were awakened at all hours
to work or just to "be alert." They might
be asked to stop whatever they were doing and remain like statues for minutes at
a time. They lived frugally and communally, yet were forced to join Gurdjieff in
his Rabelaisian feasts and drinking parties.
Gurdjieff's knowledge of occult literature and tradition gave rise to a detailed cosmology. He stated that the universe is governed by two cosmic laws: the
Law of Three and the Law of Seven or
the Octave. The Law of Three controls
the workings of the universe, based on
three forces: active, passive, and neutral.
Human beings have three bodies: carnal,
emotional, and spiritual; and feed on
three sorts of food: edible, air, and impressions. By working on themselves,
people can rise from the carnal to the
spiritual, and manufacture higher substances from the foods they consume: the
alchemist's process of transmutation.
The Law of Seven corresponds to Pythagorean theories of harmonics. Gurdjieff saw life's processes as governed by the
repetition of seven stages of development,
which only proceed if given a boost, or
shock, much as music continues along the
octave over slower and faster intervals.
Gurdjieff's ultimate symbol for his
worldview was the enneagram: a circle
whose circumference is divided by nine
points, yielding an uneven six-sided figure and a triangle. The enneagram shows
the whole universe, the laws of three and
seven, and how people cross the intervals
of development via shocks administered
by a Man Who Knows. Gurdjieff claimed
the enneagram was his alone, but it prob-

248

ably dates to a very similar figure drawn

by Jesuit arithmologist Athanasius Kircher in 1665. The enneagram also resembles the Kabbalah's Tree of Life and the
medieval symbolic art of Ramon Lull.
Gurdjieff called his system the
Fourth Way, or the Way of the Sly or
Cunning Man. He explained that traditionally, there were three paths to immortality: those of the fakir, the monk, and
the yogi. The fakir undergoes tremendous
physical torture and reconditioning to
suppress his body to his will, but has no
outlet for the emotional or intellectual.
The monk possesses great faith and gives
himself to his emotional commitment to
God, but suffers pains of the body and
intellectual starvation. The yogi studies
and ponders the mysteries of life, but has
no emotional or physical expression. But
in the Fourth Way, people do not need to
suffer physical, emotional, or intellectual
tortures, but merely start from their own
life experiences. They work on themselves as they are, trying to harmonize all
paths and using every cunning trick they
know to keep themselves "awake."
This was not an immutable system,
however. Gurdjieff's ideas changed as
circumstances warranted, so he forbade
his students to write them down and disseminate them.
Gurdjieff left Russia in 1922 and attempted to emigrate to England via Berlin, but was rebuffed over his spy past.
Instead he settled with his students in
France, buying a large chateau forty miles
outside Paris in the Forest of Fontainebleau near Avon. The Prieure des Basses
Loges, shortened to the Prieure, became
the home of The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, which operated as a communal school and philosophy center from 1922 to 1924, and was
eventually sold in 1933.
Most of his closest students eventually rejected Gurdjieff the man for Gurdjieffian teachings. Ouspensky formally
separated from Gurdjieff in 1923 and re-

Gurdjieff, Georgei Ivanovitch (1866?-1949)

jeered his theories outright in 1931. Another famous student, A. R. Orage, editor
of the British journal The New Age, took
Gurdjieff's ideas to New York and developed what was called "the Oragean version." He also formally rejected Gurdjieff
in 1931.
After 1924 Gurdjieff no longer
taught but began writing down his theo"
ries and worldview; his style was strange
language and tiresome anecdotal detail.
He practiced some hypnotic healing, relied on the largesse of rich widows, and
otherwise lived on the fringes through
World War II until his death in October
1949.
His students then broke silence and
began publishing his life and works. The
first was Ouspensky's In Search of the
the best explanation of
Miraculous,
Gurdjieff's theories. This was followed
by Gurdjieff's masterwork, All and Everything: First Series, better known as
Beelzebub's

Tales

to

His

Grandson

(1950). The book had circulated among

his pupils for years, known as THE
BOOK. The only one of his books published in his lifetime, The Herald of Coming Good (1934), was removed from
circulation in 1935. Meetings with Remarkable Men, designed to be the second
in the series, came out in 1960. The third
volume, Life Is Real Only Then, When "I
Am, " which appeared in the early 1970s,
consisted of fragments of writings and diary entries.
Sources: J. G. Bennett. Gurdjieff: A Very
Great Enigma. New York: Samuel Weiser,
1973; J. G. Bennett. Gurdjieff: Making a
New World. New York: Harper & Row,

1973; O. M. Burke. "Notes on the Dervishes." Critique: A J oumal of Conspiracies & Metaphysics no. 25: 37-42; P. D.
Ouspensky. In Search of the Miraculous.
New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1949;
James Webb. The Harmonious Circle: The
Lives and Work of G. 1. Gurdjieff, P. D.
Ouspensky,
and Their Followers. New

York: G. P. Pumam's Sons, 1980; Colin

Guru

Wilson, ed. Dark Dimensions: A Celebration of the Occult. New York: Everest
House, 1977.

Gurney, Edmund
See Society for Psychical Research (SPR).

Guru
A spiritual master, religious teacher, divine preceptor, or learned Brahmin. Guru
is a Sanskrit term meaning "teacher." In
ancient India the Vedas, Vedanta, and
other sacred lore were handed down
orally through generations from gurus to
disciples.
Traditionally, a Hindu male is initiated into the religion at age twelve, at
which time he becomes a student, or
chela, of a guru to learn the Vedas and
other teachings. The student must show
great deference to his guru, who confers
immortality through his wisdom. The
guru holds a more exalted status than the
student's family, including his parents. In
some Hindu sects, the guru instructs the
initiate in a secret mantra, prayers, rituals, and meditations, a practice also followed in Transcendental Meditation.
In some sects of Sikhism, the guru is
not a person, but the Word of God, obtained directly from scripture. In other
Sikh sects, the human guru is responsible
for helping people recognize the way to
divine salvation. The Bauls of Bengal
sometimes use the term "guru" as a metaphor for whatever makes them understand or think of God.
Yoga systems have been handed
down and taught through the ages by gurus. Finding a guru is of paramount importance to yoga disciples.
In Tibetan Buddhism Padma Sambhava, "The Lotus Born" (755-97), was
the Great Human Guru of the Bardo
Thodal, the Book of the Dead. He was an
incarnation of the essence of the Buddha

249

Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha, and

was the first teacher in Tibet to expound
the Bardo Thoda!. According to the
Bardo Thodal, the greatest guru known
to humankind in the present cycle of time
is the historical Buddha. A rinpoche, or
"precious guru," is one born under pure,
holy conditions.
Tibetan yogis and followers of Tantria define three lines of gurus: superhuman or divine, over which the Supreme
Guru sits on the Thousand-petaled Lotus;
highly developed humans who possess
siddhis, or psychic powers; and ordinary
religious teachers. Women as well as men
may become gurus. The chela studies
with a guru for a year, and is then evaluated. Upon passing the chela receives
psychical training. The guru must always
be obeyed; it is not possible to change

250

gurus unless the student can demonstrate

he or she has advanced beyond the capability of the teacher. For initiation of a
student, the guru prepares with ritual exercises for several days, then invokes the
divine gurus by communicating with
them on the spiritual plane.
In the West the term "guru" is used
to describe many types of spiritual teachers. See Yoga.
Sources: W. Y. Evans-Wentz, ed. 3rd ed.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead. London:
Oxford University Press, 1960; Geoffrey
Parrinder, ed. World Religions from Ancient History to Present. New York: Facts
On File, 1971; K. M. Sen. Hinduism. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin
Books, 1961; Vivian Worthington. A History of Yoga. London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1982.

Guru

H
Hag syndrome
See Psychic attack.

Hallucinogens
See Drugs in mystical
nences.

and psychic expe-

eds. The Kirlian Aura: Photographing the

Galaxies of Life. Garden City, NY: Anchor
Books, 1974; C. W. Leadbeater.
The
Chakras. 1927. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical
Publishing House, 1980; Sheila Ostrander
and Lynn Schroeder. Psychic Discoveries
Behind the Iron Curtain. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970; Barbara Walker.
The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and
Secrets. San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1983.

Halo
A circle of radiant light, which in art
crowns the head of deities, holy beings,
and saints. It represents the aura or a
crown chakra, which is prominent in a
person of high spiritual development. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Indians, and Romans used the halo in art to depict supernatural
force, mystical
states, and
superior intellect. In ancient Egypt and
Greece, the halo was associated with the
sun and resurrection.
In the Eleusinian
Mysteries, it was bestowed upon the sacrificed and reborn god, usually Dionysus.
In Christian art the halo graces saints, angels, Christ, Mary, and other holy persons. Eastern deities usually are depicted
with crowns or headdresses rather than

Hare Krishnas
See Alternative

religious

movements.

Harmonic Convergence
The supposed end of the materialistic
world, which occurred on August 16 and
17, 1987, according to interpretations
9f
astrological configurations,
Native American myth, and Mesoamerican
calendars
and prophecies.
The event, called the
Harmonic
Convergence,
was observed
around the world in celebrations of dancing, chanting, meditation,
and yoga intended to foster peace and help usher in
the next phase in humankind's
spiritual
evolution.

halos. In clairvoyance the aura appears as

a halo or nimbus around the body, and is
most easily visible around the head. See
Aura; Chakras.

The Harmonic
Convergence
was
largely the idea of Jose Arguelles, an
American art historian who in 1983 con-

Sources: J. E. Cirlot. A Dictionary of Symbols. New York: Philosophical

Library,
1971; Stanley Krippner and Daniel Rubin,

nected
astrological
configurations
to
chronological
forecasts and to his research of Mayan cosmology and calen-

Hag syndrome

251

dar. According to Arguelles the Maya,

whose classic period peaked between A.D.
435 and A.D. 800, were "galactically informed" beings whose civilization was
founded on the principle of harmonic resonance. The Maya were connected to the
collective planetary mind and the Hunab
Ku, the galactic core, which broadcasts
beams of energy. The connection was
made via the Kuxan Suum, a vibratory
pathway of etheric fibers that extends
from the solar plexus to other levels of
the universe and to other dimensions.
Arguelles, who published his conclusions in The Mayan Factor in 1987, observed that August 16 and 17, 1987,
marked a turning point in the Mayan calendar's great cycle, which lasts from
3113 B.C. to A.D. 2012, the year when the
Earth will enter a "galactic synchronization phase" and a new era of evolution.
At the turning point, if the Earth's spiritual energy did not make a positive shift,
a twenty-five-year period of disasters and
catastrophes would ensue, and the Earth
instead would come to an end in 2012.
Arguelles said the Maya left clues as to
how the Earth could synchronize with the
galaxy, and that these clues would manifest during the Harmonic Convergence
in UFO sightings and channeling.
In apparent corroboration of the
Maya timetable, the astrological configuration, the Grand Trine, an alignment of
nine planets in the solar system, occurred
August 16 and 17, 1987, for the first time
in 23,412 years. At the same time, the
Aztec calendar of thirteen cycles of
Heaven and nine cycles of Hell came to
an end August 16. According to Aztec
prophecies, the end of the ninth cycle of
Hell would be followed by the second
coming of Quetzalcoatl. The Hopi prophesied that on August 16, 1987, 144,000
Sun Dance mystical teachers would help
awaken the rest of humankind to a spiritual awareness. The same date marked
the end of a 28,600-year cycle in the
Cherokee calendar; the age that follows is

252

called the Age of Flowers, a time when

essence of flowers will be recognized and
used more as healing and spiritual agents.
To achieve the turning point, a minimum of 144,000 people had to convene
August 16 and 17 to foster positive, harmonic energy, Arguelles said. Events were
loosely organized at major power points,
such as Mt. Shasta, California, where one
of the largest gatherings took place; the
Black Hills in South Dakota; Machu Picchu, Peru; Sedona, Arizona; the Great
Pyramids in Egypt; Mt. Fuji, Japan, and
other sacred sites. Those who could not
go to a power point headed for the nearest mountain, shore or park. Many took
crystals to expose to the sunrise for a recharging of energy.
No exact numbers were recorded of
participants at major events, but Harmonic Convergence coordinators estimated they easily surpassed the 144,000
required for success. Arguelles estimated
that between 100 million and 200 million
people worldwide were made aware of
the event through the media. The postconference slogan, "When the Light hits,
the Dark gets tough," referred to a fiveyear period that was to follow the Harmonic Convergence, during which were
predicted major Earth changes and social,
economic, and political upheaval as industrial civilization collapsed. According
to Arguelles the plunge of the US stock
market on October 19, 1987, was a fulfillment of that prophecy. Also during the
five years, visits from extraterrestrials, socalled "galactic ambassadors," were to
Increase.
The message of the Harmonic Convergence was the need to "return to the
Earth," and to recognize that the Earth is
a sentient, planetary entity. The Convergence was to release positive energy to
facilitate the creation of a human power
grid, which Arguelles termed the "Earthlight network."
A smaller event, World Cooperation
Day, took place on December 31, 1987.

Harmonic Convergence

Arguelles recommended that people continue to raise collective energy by gathering in groups of thirteen at the solstices
and equinoxes and conducting rituals to
tune into the Earth. Thirteen is a significant number in Maya cosmology; Arguelles states that the entire Mayan story
of science, myth, galactic measure, and
divine strategy can be told in a matrix of
thirteen numbers and twenty symbols.
The solstices and equinoxes are ancient
pagan holidays tied to agrarian cycles.
See New Age; Planetary consciousness.
Sources: Jose Arguelles. The Mayan Factor.

Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Co., 1987; Steven S.

H. McFadden. "The Great Harmonic Convergence of 1987: Blossoms Unfold in an
Age of Flowers." Earth Star Whole Life
New England 8, no. 58 (OctoberlNovember 1987): 12-15; Jim Young. "The
Stock Market: After the Fall." Body, Mind
& Spirit (MarchfApriI1988); "A New Age
Dawning." Time (August 31, 1987): 63;
"The End of the World (Again)." Newsweek (August 17, 1987): 70-71.

Haunting
The manifestation of inexplicable phenomena attributed to the presence of
ghosts or spirits. Phenomena include apparitions, noises, smells, tactile sensations, extremes in temperature, movement of objects, and the like. Despite
much scientific inquiry over the last one
hundred years or so, very little is known
about the nature of hauntings and why
they happen.
The term "haunt" comes from the
same root as "home," and refers to the
occupation of homes by the spirits of deceased people and animals who lived
there. Other haunted sites seem to be
places merely frequented or liked by the
deceased, or places where violent death
has occurred. Most hauntings have no
apparent reason or purpose. Some are
continual and others are active only on
certain dates that correspond to the

Haunting

deaths or major events in the lives of the

deceased. For example, at Hampton
Court in England, the ghost of Sir Christopher Wren is said to be heard walking
hurriedly up and down the stairs every
February 26, the date of his death in
1723. Some hauntings are brief, lasting
only a few weeks, months, or years, while
others continue for centuries. Haunted
places often are pervaded by an oppressive atmosphere.
Not everyone who goes to a haunted
place experiences paranormal phenomena. It is theorized that only individuals
with certain psychic attunements or emotional states are receptive.
Few hauntings involve seeing apparitions. In those that do, a ghost may be
seen by a single individual or collectively
by several people present at the same
time. Ghosts vary in appearance-some
seem to be real people (or animals), while
others appear filmy, fuzzy, nearly transparent, or mostly white. Typically, they
are dressed in period costume popular
when the person was alive. Most ghosts
seen over a period of time by many usually wear the same outfit. Some change
their appearances and even their ages.
Some are horrific, missing their heads or
other body parts.
The most dramatic ghosts are those
which reenact dramas, such as a murder
or a battle. See Retrocognition.

Theories
Thousands of hauntings have been
investigated by psychical researchers and
parapsychologists since the late nineteenth century. Numerous theories have
been advanced, all inconclusive.
Frederic W. H. Myers, one of the
founders of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), defined a ghost as "a manifestation

of persistent

personal

energy,

or as an indication that some kind of

force is being exercised after death which
is in some way connected with a person

253

previously known

on earth" (Human
Personality
and Its Survival of Bodily
Death, 1903). Myers believed that ghosts

have no intrinsic intelligence or consciousness, and are meaningless fragments of energy left behind in death.
Eleanor Sidgwick, former secretary
of the SPR, theorized that hauntings are a
form of psychometry, vibrations of events
and emotions imbued into a house, site,
or object. Variations of Sidgwick's theory
propose that hauntings are impressed
upon a "psychic ether" or upon a psi
force field, which certain people access
under the right conditions. See Psychometry.
One popular Spiritualist theory
holds that hauntings occur when the
spirit of the dead person or animal is
trapped on the earth plane for various
reasons, doesn't know it is dead, or is reluctant to leave. Gentle exorcisms will
send the spirit on to the afterworld.

Ghost Investigations
Researchers employ three basic techniques to investigate a haunting: description, experimentation,
and detection.
Description involves taking eyewitness
accounts.
Experimentation
involves
bringing a psychic to the site to corroborate the eyewitness accounts or provide
new information. Psychic readings are
unreliable, as telepathy and ESP cannot
be ruled out, and often information is
given which cannot be historically verified. Detection involves the observation
or recording of phenomena. English psychical researcher Harry Price was among
the first to use modern technology in his
ghost investigations. His most celebrated
case was Borley Rectory, which he investigated between 1929 and 1938. Price put
together a ghost-hunter's kit that included felt overshoes, steel tape measures,
a thermometer, a still camera, a remotecontrol movie camera, fingerprinting
equipment, a telescope, and a portable

254

telephone. Price believed a poltergeist

was present, but his findings were controversial and allegations of fraud were
made after his death in 1948. The case
remains unsolved.
More recent investigators have witnesses and psychics mark a floor plan of
the house or building to show spots
where they believe hauntings have occurred. They shoot photographs with regular and infrared film to try to capture
ghostly images, and use recorders to try
to capture noises and whispers. Various
electronic devices, such as heat sensors
and Geiger counters, may be used to measure changes in the atmosphere. Such
methods are at best imprecise and interpretation of results is often subjective.
Critics say ghost investigation is imprecise and not a true science because it is
heavily reliant upon eyewitness testimony. See Apparition; Poltergeist.
Sources: Loyd Auerbach. ESP, Hauntings
and Poltergeists:
A Parapsychologist's
New York: Warner Books,
Handbook.
1986; Richard Cavendish. The Encyclopedia of the Unexplained.
New York:

McGraw-Hill, 1967; Tracy Cochran. "The

Real Ghost Busters." Omni 10, no. 11 (August 1988): 35-36+; Alan Gauld and A. D.
Cornell. Poltergeists. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1979; Andrew Greeley. "Mysticism Goes Mainstream."
American
Health (January/February 1987): 47-55;
Into the Unknown.
Pleasantville, NY:
Reader's Digest, 1981; J. G. Lockhart.
Curses, Lucks and Talismans. Detroit:
Singing Tree Press, 1971; Andrew MacKenzie. Hauntings and Apparitions. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1982; Elizabeth E. McAdams and Raymond Bayless.
The Case for Life after Death. Chicago:
Nelson-Hall, 1981; Edgar D. Mitchell. Psychic Exploration:

A Challenge for Science.

Edited by John White. New York: G. P.

Putnam's Sons, 1974; Frederic W. H. Myers. Human Personality and Its Survival of
Bodily Death. Vols. 1 and 2. 1903. New
ed. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.,
1954; George Owen and Victor Sims. Sci-

Haunting

ence and the Spook: Eight Strange Cases of

Haunting. New York: Garrett Publications,
1971; Peter Underwood. The Ghost Hunter's Guide. Poole, Dorset, England: Bland-

ford Press, 1986.

Healing, faith and psychic

The treatment of illness without a known
physical curative agent, usually done by
an individual who acts as a conduit for
healing energy from a higher source of
power. Healings of this sort are called by
various other names, such as absent healing, paranormal healing, spiritual healing, magnetic healing, New Thought
healing, mental healing, and so on, terms
which are not necessarily interchangeable.
A wide range of techniques is used,
including prayer; invoking the help of
God, deities, spirits, or deceased ancestors; the administration of magical or
blessed medicines; the projection of will
(even long distance); and the laying on of
hands. These methods have been used
nearly universally at various times since
the earliest recorded human history, and
continue to coexist with the allopathic
(science-based) medicine of industrialized
countries. In recent years so-called alternative healing therapies have become
more popular, but have become accepted
only to a limited extent by the medical
establishment.
Religious faith is not a primary characteristic in psychic healing. All living
things are held to be permeated and sustained by the universal life force. A depletion in this energy, or an imbalance in
it, causes illness and disease. The depletion can be caused by poor diet or lifestyle habits and even "negative thinking."
True healers of all types know that they
themselves do not heal, but merely are
transformers, restoring or rebalancing the
life-giving vital force. The absence of required religious faith does not mean psy-

Healing,

faith and psychic

chic healers are nonreligious or atheistic.

Most have strong personal religious or
spiritual convictions, but do not require
religious beliefs on the part of the patient
to effect the healing process. See Universallife force.
In faith or spiritual healing, the healing is believed to come from God. Renowned healers Ambrose and Olga Worrall believed they were conduits for
powers usually attributed to the Supreme
Being and various saints. Ambrose Worrail said spiritual healing is a natural phenomenon that works in accordance with
natural laws, and can be accomplished
long -distance.
There are various forms of psychic
and spiritual healing. One is the transfer
of the universal life force through touch
or passes of the hand. The energy transfer
often is accompanied by such sensations
as heat, tingling, electrical shock, or impressions of colors. The healer, who becomes a passive conduit for the healing
energies, may feel something of the consistency of heavy air leaving him or her,
usually through the hands. Worrall felt
energy leave him through the solar plexus
in long-distance healings. See Mesmer,
Franz Anton. The patient often feels an
infusion of energy. In faith healing the
healer usually lays hands on the patient
while praying to God for healing. Again,
energy exchanges may be felt by both
participants.
Another form, characteristic of shamanic healing, is to suck the disease out
of the patient. The shaman produces, by
sleight of hand, an object purported to be
sucked from the patient's body and responsible for the illness. The tangible evidence seems to be mostly for the benefit
of the patient and onlooker. Shamans say
they can heal without such stage effects,
and it is likely that hand passes and the
sucking transmit healing forces. See
Shamanism. Similarly, psychic surgery,
which is highly controversial, involves the
apparent extraction of objects and tissue

255

alleged to be the cause of illness. See Psychic surgery.

Exorcism is also used in healing. The
illness is blamed on a possessing spirit,
which is ritually driven from the body of
the patient. See Depossession; Exorcism;
Macumba; Spiritism.
Special diets, intended to act holistically on the body, spirit, and mind, are
sometimes prescribed as part of a healing.
Gifted healers characteristically are
born with their ability, though it has been
demonstrated that virtually anyone can
learn to tap into healing energies to some
extent. Gifted healing ability manifests
early in life along with psychic abilities.
Typically, they see spirits of the dead and
experience clairvoyance, clairaudience,
precognition, and perhaps also out-ofbody travel. Their clairvoyance may enable them to see the body's energy field
and detect disturbances in the field that
are related to the disease or illness. See
Aura. They learn their touch brings relief
and healing. They are irrevocably drawn
into healing. They refine their techniques
through practice and, in many cases, tutelage by another healer. Many of them
feel assisted by various spirit beings. Shamanic healers usually are called to healing through visionary experiences or severe illnesses from which they heal
themselves. They apprentice themselves
to shamans to learn the art.
Healing powers also come with high
spiritual attainment, as found among the
saints, yogis, and adepts of religions
around the world.
Some healings are instantaneous,
even the disappearance of tumors and
swellings. Many more, however, require
numerous treatments, some over a period
of years.

How Does Psychic or Spiritual

Healing Work?
The mechanisms by which psychic or
spiritual healing takes place are unknown. Certainly the consciousness plays

256

a key role, which means that theories explaining psychic healing must be multidimensional, and not limited to the causeand-effect theory of Newtonian science.
Quantum physics has demonstrated that
matter is energy and is not static but exists in a dynamic field; it cannot be separated from its activity. The indivisibility
of matter and energy forms the basis of
the ancient healing practices based on
Taoist, Buddhist, and Hindu philosophies.
The will also is a likely factor, as evidenced by laboratory experiments in
psychokinesis (PK), in which healers,
through prayer or mental projection,
have altered the properties of water,
caused seeds to germinate and plants to
grow more quickly than control groups,
and have slowed cancerous tumor growth
or speeded wound healing in mice. See
Prayer; Psychokinesis (PK); Worrall,
Olga. It has been suggested that the process of healing may not be a matter of
"how" but of "why": the need for a healing exists, and the consciousness selects a
path to effect it.
The traditional Western scientific
view holds that the universe is dead, and
that life is but an infinitesimal and insignificant part of it. Healers reflect the nonWestern philosophic view that the universe is a living entity created by a higher
consciousness or deity, and that all things
within the universe are interconnected.
Dora van Gelder Kunz, one of the creators of Therapeutic Touch, a modern
version of laying on of hands, states that
both healer and healee are "expressions
of a unified therapeutic interaction" in
which both are healed and made whole.
At least five factors are said to influence the effectiveness of a healing. Their
presence, however, does not guarantee
that a healing will take place. The factors
are:
1. The presence of high levels of the
universal life force: Geographic locations, such as certain mountains, sea

Healing, faith and psychic

locations, wells, or springs are believed to have high amounts of the

life force. The springs at Lourdes in
France, where apparitions of the Virgin Mary were seen, draw millions of
pilgrims every year who hope to be
healed by the waters. See Marian apparitions. Even certain rooms in a
house, or spots in a room, are perceived to have healing energies (compare the presence of ch'i in Feng
shui).
2. The attitude of the patient: Skeptics
can be spiritually healed, but fear
and distrust can form insurmountable barriers. Likewise, guilt due to
feelings that the illness is punishment
for a sin inhibits the process. A positive attitude on the part of the patient is believed to facilitate the process and makes it easier for the
healer to "tune in" and transmit the
energy. A healing demonstration
done in the presence of a group of
highly skeptical or critical people is
likely to fail. Some healers say children are the easiest to treat because
they are open and trusting. See Behavioral medicine.
3. Relaxation: Both patient and healer
must be able to relax. The healing
occurs when they tune in to each
other, becoming one in a transference of energy. A healer who tries
too hard may not be successful.
Healing undertaken in the hysterical
pitch of evangelism does not always
last, even if the patient expects to be
cured. The "instant" results in an
emotionally
charged atmosphere
may be psychological and disappear
after a time. It must be noted that
many evangelistic healings are successful. See Relaxation.
4. Love and compassion: The healer
must be filled with love and compassion for the patient, and a desire to
see the patient returned to wholeness
and health. The healer remains de-

Healing, faith and psychic

tached, however, and does not let the

feelings become personal.
5. Petition to higher powers: Healers
ask for the help of a deity or spirit,
and give recognition to and thanks
for it.
Many healers work in an altered
state of consciousness. In the 1960s psychologist Lawrence LeShan, in research
with psychic healers, found that they
could not adequately describe the process
of healing, but did describe shifting into a
different reality, a state of consciousness
he termed the "clairvoyant reality," a
shift in one's metaphysical understanding
of the world. It is similar but not identical
to mystical states, which occur in all cultures around the world, and to the shamanic state of consciousness;
For about eighteen months, LeShan
experimented with various meditation
techniques until he began to experience
this shift of consciousness. He discovered
that attaining the clairvoyant reality improves with practice and can be controlled to some extent, but remains
largely unpredictable and unreliable. He
also discovered that while in this state
himself, others with whom he worked reported physical or psychological changes
that seemed to benefit them. Furthermore, he could teach others how to reach
the clairvoyant reality and awaken their
healing powers. See Garrett, Eileen J.
Most orthodox medical authorities
are skeptical of psychic healing and ascribe its benefits to short-term psychological effects. In the United Kingdom, the
General Medical Council allows a physician to prescribe this sort of healing, provided the doctor remains in charge of the
case. Healers follow a code of conduct
drawn up between the General Medical
Council, the Royal Colleges of Medicine,
and the Confederation of Healing Organisations. The code prohibits healers from
promising results or claiming cures.
Many healers belong to the National Federation of Spiritual Healers, which is,

257

along with fifteen other associations, affiliated with the Confederation of Healing Organisations.

Faith Healing
Belief in faith healing has existed in
all types of societies throughout history.
It is fundamental to Christianity, although it is not universally emphasized in
all denominations. Healing was central to
the ministry of Jesus, and the New Testament stresses that healing is natural and
is the work of God's grace, not human
skill. Early Christians considered sickness
as caused by Satan; and, like sin, it would
yield to prayers of faith. By the end of the
fourth century, St. Augustine rejected the
validity of the healing gift, but by 424 he
had changed his mind. As Christianity developed healing increasingly became a
specialized function of the priesthood,
and was associated with sacraments, holy
shrines, and the relics of saints. The scientific revolution of the seventeenth century negated miraculous healings, and the
cures of Jesus came to be regarded as a
phenomenon that could no longer happen.
Interest in faith healing began to revive in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with such movements as
Christian Science and Pentecostalism.
The greatest boost in interest came following World War II, with the rise of
evangelistic healers such as Oral Roberts,
Jack Coe, and Kathryn Kuhlman.
Faith healings typically take place in
a revivalist atmosphere and involve fervent prayer and a laying on of hands.
Some recipients say they can feel a transfer of energy. There are numerous cases
of cures that cannot be explained medically, but the high degree of expectation
and the desperation of many of the sick
have been known to effect false and temporary cures, with devastating emotional
and physical aftereffects. Some evangelists say they do not know how or why

258

some people are cured and others are not,

while others say that failures are due to
the patient's inability to understand or receive healing from God.
Some faith healers insist on working
in collaboration with doctors, while others who are extremists consider doctors
the enemy. Christian Science strikes a different approach, emphasizing nonreliance
on traditional medicine. See Church of
Christ, Scientist.
Faith healing, like psychic healing,
has had much opposition from the medical establishment. It predominates in the
Pentecostal and charismatic groups, and
to some extent in the Methodist denomination. Prayer groups and circles for
healing, however, are universal throughout Christianity. See Cayce, Edgar;
Chantways; Worrall, Ambrose.
Sources: Richard Grossman. The Other
Medicines. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1985; Hans Holzer. Beyond Medicine: The
Facts About Unorthodox Treatments and
Psychic Healing. Rev. ed. New York: Bal-

lantine Books, 1987; Stanley Krippner, ed.

in Parapsychology 4. Jefferson,
NC: McFarland & Co., 1984; Stanley
Krippner and Alberto Villoldo. The Realms
of Healing. 3d ed. Berkeley: Celestial Arts,
1986; Dora Kunz, compo Spiritual Aspects
of the Healing Arts. Wheaton, IL: The
Theosophical Publishing House, 1985;
Lawrence LeShan. The Medium, the MysAdvances

tic, and the Physicist: Toward a General

Theory of the Paranormal. New York: Vi-

king Press, 1974; George W. Meek, ed.

Healers and the Healing Process. Wheaton,

IL: The Theosophical Publishing House,

1977; William A. Nolen. Healing: A Doctor in Search of a Miracle. New York:
Fawcett Crest, 1974; Robert Peel. Spiritual Healing in a Scientific Age. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987; Reader's
Digest Family Guide to Alternative Medicine. London: Reader's Digest Assn. Ltd.,
1991; Eve Simson. The Faith Healer. St.

Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1977;

Charles T. Tart, ed. Transpersonal Psychologies. New York: Harper & Row, 1975;
Andrew Weil. Health and Healing: Under-

Healing,

faith and psychic

standing
Medicine.

Conventional

and

Alternative

Boston: Houghton Mifflin,

1983; Ambrose Alexander Worrall. "The
Philosophy and Methodology of Spiritual
Healing." Booklet. Self-published, 1961;
Ambrose A. Worrall with Olga N. Worrall.

The Gift of Healing: A Personal Story of

Spiritual Therapy. New York: Harper &

Row, 1965.

Hermetica
Mystical wisdom that, along with the
Kabbalah, formed the foundation of the
Western occult tradition. According to
legend, the wisdom is contained in fortytwo books allegedly written by Hermes
Trismegistus, or "thrice-greatest Hermes," a mythical composite of the Egyptian and Greek gods Thoth and Hermes,
respectively. The alleged surviving fragments of these books are known collectively as the Hermetica. The writings
probably are of anonymous Christian authorship, a synthesis of Neo-Platonic,
Kabbalistic, and Christian elements
passed off as ancient Egyptian wisdom.
The composite of Hermes Trismegistus was created by the Greeks who settled in Egypt, and who identified Thoth
and Hermes with one another. Thoth
ruled mystical wisdom, magic, writing,
and other disciplines, and was associated
with healing. Hermes was the personification of universal wisdom and patron of
magic; a swift, wing-footed messenger, he
carried a magic wand, the caduceus. See
Caduceus. Both were associated with the
spirits of the dead: Thoth weighed their
souls in the Judgment Hall of Osiris; Hermes escorted shades to Hades. Both were
credited with writing the sacred books of
science, healing, philosophy, magic, and
law, and revealing the wisdom to humankind.
"Thrice-greatest" refers to Hermes
Trismegistus as the greatest of all philosophers, the greatest of all kings, and the

Hermetica

greatest of all priests. The story that developed around him held him to be a
mythical king who reigned for 3,226
years. He carried an emerald, upon which
was recorded all of philosophy, and the
caduceus, the symbol of mystical illumination. He vanquished Typhon, the
dragon of ignorance and mental, moral,
and physical perversion. He is credited
with writing 36,525 books on the Principles of Nature. lamblichus reported the
number at 20,000, and Clement of Alexandria at forty-two books.
According to legend, the Hermetic
books were written on papyrus and
stored in one of the great libraries in Alexandria. Most were lost when the library burned. Surviving fragments supposedly were buried in a secret desert
location known only to select initiates.
Extant works, which have been
translated into many languages, include
The Divine Pymander and The Vision.
The Divine Pymander sets forth how divine wisdom was revealed to Hermes,
and how he established his ministry to
spread the wisdom throughout the world.
The Vision tells of Hermes' mystical vision and cosmogony, the Egyptians' esoteric wisdom, and the spiritual development of the soul. Passages bear
resemblance to the writings of Plato and
Philo and to the Gospel of St. John.
The legendary Emerald Tablet (or
Emerald Table), which Hermes Trismegistus holds in art, is said to be inscribed
with the whole of the Egyptians' philosophy, including the magical secrets of the
universe. According to legend it was
found clutched in the hand of the body of
Hermes Trismegistus in his cave tomb
(another version has it that Hermes Trismegistus's mummy was interred in the
Great Pyramid of Gizeh). No two translations of the Tablet are the same (a Latin
translation dates to c. 1200).
The Emerald Tablet is cited as the
credo of adepts, particularly the alchemists, who believed that mystical secrets

259

were hidden in Hermetic allegories. The

inscription reads:

cherny; Hermetic Order of the Golden

Dawn; Kabbalah.

'Tis true, without falsehood, and

most real: that which is above is like that
which is below, to perpetrate the miracles
of One thing. And as all things have been
derived from one, by the thought of one,
so all things are born from this thing, by
adoption. The Sun is its Father, the Moon
is its Mother. Wind has carried it in its
belly, the Earth is its Nurse. Here is the
father of every perfection in the world.
His strength and power are absolute
when changed into earth; thou wilt separate the earth from fire, the subtle from
the gross, gently and with care. It ascends
from earth to heaven, and descends again
to receive the power of the superior and
the inferior things. By this means, thou
wilt have the glory of the world. And because of this, all obscurity will flee from
thee. Within this power, most powerful
of all powers. For it will overcome all
subtle things, and penetrate every solid
thing. Thus the world was created. From
this will be, and will emerge, admirable
adaptations of which the means are here.
And for this reason, I am called Hermes
Trismegistus, having the three parts of
the philosophy of the world. What I have
said of the Sun's operations is accomplished.

Sources: Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft. New
York: Facts On File, 1989; Manly P. Hall.
The Secret Teachings of All Ages. 1928.
Los Angeles: The Philosophic Research Society, 1977; Kurt Seligmann. The Mirror of
Magic. New York: Pantheon Books, 1948.

In this the alchemists interpreted the

transmutation process.
Controversy over the age and authorship of the Hermetica has existed
since at least the Renaissance. Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614), French classical
scholar and theologian, claimed that the
works were not of Egyptian origin but
were written by early Christians or semiChristians. Casaubon's claim helped to
bring about a decline in the Renaissance
interest in magic. In all likelihood, the
Hermetic works were written even later
than Casaubon believed, by multiple
anonymous authors who used the pseudonym "Hermes Trismegisrus." See AI-

260

Hermetic Order of the

Golden Dawn
Short-lived but influential Western occult
order. The Hermetic Order of the Golden
Dawn arose in England out of Rosicrucianism and attracted such luminaries as
Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, one
of the founders, occultist Arthur Edward
Waite, poet William Butler Yeats, and
magician Aleister Crowley. During its
height the order possessed perhaps the
greatest repository of Western magical
and occult knowledge. Rituals developed
by the Golden Dawn continue in use by
some practitioners of high magic, though
others consider them outdated.
The founding of the Golden Dawn is
based on a manuscript of alleged antiquity, but which may have been a forgery.
In 1884 Rev. A. F. A. Woodford, a Mason and member of an occult srudy group
called the Hermetic Society, claimed to
find an old manuscript in a London
bookstall. It was handwritten in cipher in
brown ink. In 1887 he sent parts of the
manuscript to Dr. William Wynn Westcott and Dr. William Robert Woodman,
officers in the Rosicrucian Society of England. Wescott in turn consulted Mathers, an occultist, who, with the help of
his clairvoyant wife, said the manuscript dealt with the Kabbalah and the
Tarot.
A letter attached to the manuscript
instructed that anyone deciphering it
should contact "Sapiens Dominabitur As-

Hermetica

tris," in care of a Fraulein Ann Sprengel

in Hanover, Germany. Westcott did so,
and was advised that he and his associates could establish "an elementary
Branch of the Rosicrucian Order in England."
The Isis-Urania Temple of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was established on March 1, 1888, with Westcott, Mathers, and Woodman,
the
Supreme Magus of the Rosicrucian Society of Anglia, as the three Chiefs. The secret society quickly attracted a following,
initiating 315 people between its peak
years of 1888 and 1896.
Its central purpose was "to prosecute
the Great Work: which is to obtain control of the nature and power of my own
being." To that end it offered teachings
on ritual magic, the Kabbalah, the Tarot,
astral travel, scrying, alchemy, geomancy,
and astrology.
The Golden Dawn offered a hierarchy of eleven degrees-ten corresponding
to the sephirot of the Kabbalistic Tree of
Life plus one degree for neophyteswhich were divided into three orders.
Almost from its inception, the
Golden Dawn was plagued by internal
dissension. Mathers, an eccentric man,
sought to have sole control of the organization; he claimed to be in contact with
three Secret Chiefs in Paris who had designated him as "Visible Head of the Order." His supporters believed him to be a
reincarnation of Michael Scot, a medieval
Scottish wizard of great powers, according to legend. By 1891 Mathers and his
wife were financially destitute and were
supported by a \vealthy member, Annie
Horniman. They moved to Paris, where
Mathers set up his own lodge and
bombarded London members with his
written materials. Woodman died the
same year and was not replaced in the
orgamzanon.
Westcott resigned in 1897, in the
wake of member inquiries into the veracity of Woodford's manuscript. He was

Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

succeeded by Florence Farr, who could

not hold the order together.
Aleister Crowley was initiated in
1898, and quickly clashed with Mathers.
When Crowley was expelled from the
Golden Dawn, he retaliated by publishing
some of the secret rituals in his magazine,
The Equinox.
The Golden Dawn began to splinter.
Followers of Mathers left to form the Alpha et Omega Temple, followed in 1903
by Waite and others, who formed a
group named Golden Dawn that gave
greater emphasis to mysticism than
magic. Waite departed in 1915, and the
group declined.
In 1905 another group was formed,
the Stella Matutina, or "Order of the
Companions of the Rising Light in the
Morning," thus dealing the death-blow
to the Isis-Urania Temple. The Stella
Matutina attracted occultists Dion Fortune in 1919 and Israel Regardie, Crowley's secretary for a time, in 1934. The
Isis-Urania Temple was resurrected as the
Merlin Temple of the Stella Matutina in
1917. The Stella Matutina declined in the
1940s after Regardie resigned and published its secret rituals. Some offshoots of
the Golden Dawn continue in existence.
The Golden Dawn exerted a powerful influence upon Yeats, its greatest artist member, who was initiated into the
Isis-Urania Temple on March 7, 1890,
and took the magical name Daemon est
Deus Inversus (The Devil Is God Reversed). "The mystical life is the centre of
all that I do and all that I think and all
that I write," Yeats stated in 1892
(Yeats's Golden Dawn, 1974). Yeats said
that were it not for his study of magic, he
would not have been able to produce The
Countess Kathleen or his book on William Blake. See Blake, William; Crowley,
Aleister; Hermetica; Magic.
Sources: Richard Cavendish. The Black
Arts. New York: Perigee Books, 1967;
Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The Encyclopedia
of Witches and Witchcraft. New York:

261

Facts On File, 1989; George Mills Harper.

Yeats's Golden Dawn. 1974. Wellingborough, England: The Aquarian Press, 1987;
Francis King. Ritual Magic in England
1887 to the Present Day. London: Neville
Spearman, 1970; Alan Richardson. Priestess: The Life and Magic of Dion Fortune.

Wellingborough, England: The Aquarian

Press, 1987; Colin Wilson. Mysteries. New
York: Perigee Books/G. P. Putnam's Sons,
1978.

Hildegard of Bingen, St.

(1098-1179)
Benedictine
abbess
and
acclaimed
prophet, mystic, theologian, writer, poet,
composer, and early feminist. The first
major German mystic, she is best known
for a series of mystical illuminations, or
VIsions, which she experienced and
chronicled in mid-life, and which were far
advanced of the religious outlooks of her
day. Her power and influence made her
one of the most important women of her
time. Her work has enjoyed renewed, serious interest in modern times.
Hildegard was born to parents of
high nobility in the summer of 1098 in
the German village of Bickelheim (also
given as Bockelheim), located on the
Nahe River, a tributary of the Rhine. The
village was near Bingen, an important
river town about fifty miles southwest of
Frankfurt. Hildegard's father was a
knight of the Castle Bickelheim. The area
was heavily settled by Celts, and Celtic
mystical beliefs strongly influenced her
religious development.
The youngest of ten children, Hildegard had religious visions from the earliest she could remember. Because of this
she was drawn to the church, and began
her education in a Benedictine cloister in
Disibodenberg at the age of eight. She became a nun at eighteen, and advanced to
prioress at age thirty-eight.
In modern times Hildegard would
have been called a feminist. She believed

262

in the equality of men and women, but

sometimes doubted herself because of
criticism from men and their oppression
of women. She was often ill, and she
blamed it on her frustrated passivity.
Though she had had visions since
childhood, Hildegard's great spiritual
awakening came in her early forties,
when she began to experience particularly intense illuminations and clairaudient messages about the nature of God,
the human soul, and all being, and the
interconnectedness among all things in
the universe. She also experienced visions
on sin, redemption, and the nature of the
cosmos.
In her second vision, a voice instructed her to write and speak of her supernormal insights. The experience galvanized her to shake off her doubts about
her "proper place" as a woman. Still, she
had to work within the system. She consulted her confessor, who in turn consulted the archbishop of Mainz. A committee of theologians validated her
visions. In collaboration with a monk,
Hildegard began writing her first book,
Scivias ("Know the Ways of the Lord"), a
record of twenty-six illuminations. Scivias, written in Latin, is highly intellectual and symbolic. Some of the visions
deal with prophecy, denunciation of vice,
and the universe as egg or sphere. Central
to the work is the idea of God as the Living Light: "All living creatures are, so to
speak, sparks from the radiance of God's
brilliance, and these sparks emerge from
God like rays of the sun." Scivias was finished in about 1152, and Pope Eugenius
III approved of it.
With the publication of Scivias
Hildegard's fame spread, and she became
known as "the Sybil of the Rhine." Eugenius encouraged her to keep writing.
She appreciated his approval, but that
didn't stop her from scolding the pope to
work harder for reform in the church.
Around 1147 Hildegard and her sister nuns left Disibodenberg for another

Hermetic

Order of the Golden

Dawn

monastery in Rupertsberg, Germany,

where they could have more room to live
and work. She was consecrated an abbess. In 1165 she founded another monastery in Eibingen, across the river from
Bingen, and commuted between there
and Rupertsberg every week.
Hildegard kept up an active, workfilled life right up to her death in her early
eighties on September 17, 1179. She traveled widely throughout Europe, preaching to clergy, nobility, scholars, and the
lay public. Her views influenced many of
her powerful contemporaries, such as St.
Bernard of Clairvaux and Frederick I Barbarossa.
She denounced corruption in the
church, and criticized the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faiths for being "dried
up" and lacking care and compassion.
Hildegard challenged the church
time and time again. She downplayed the
role of Eve in the fall of Adam, saying
Eve was not at fault. Instead, she said, the
Devil had used Eve as an instrument to
influence Adam. She celebrated human
sexuality as the beautiful, spiritual union
of two human beings, not just the means
for procreation.
Hildegard had a tremendous interest
in science and medicine, and between
1150 and 1157 wrote two medical books
far advanced for her time. Her approach
to medicine was holistic: she integrated
the four-element, four-humor natural
healing system (which dates back at least
to the ancient Greeks) with spiritual wisdom. She prescribed numerous herbal
and dietary remedies, all inspired by her
spiritual visions.
Hildegard considered music to be the
ultimate celebration of God. She composed seventy-seven songs, perhaps divinely inspired, that were more complex
than most twelfth-century songs. She
considered music to be a better medium
than words for the expression of wisdom;
wisdom, she said, dwells in the heart of
God, is part of all creative effort, and is

Hinduism

the "elusive treasure" sought by the

strong and virtuous soul.
She also was a prolific poet and
writer, composing a morality play set to
music, more than seventy poems, three
hundred letters, and nine books. Besides
Scivias, two other books are major works
on theology: De Operatione Dei and
Liber Vitae Meritorium.
Hildegard also
wrote two biographies of saints and a
commentary on the Gospels. She even invented her own language, which she used
to describe scientific terms. She said all of
her writings were dictated by the Holy
Ghost.
Hildegard is included in Roman
Catholic martyrology, though she never
was formally canonized as a saint. Three
attempts were made to canonize her, under Pope Gregory IX, Pope Innocent IV,
and Pope John XXII. After 1317 she
gradually slipped into obscurity, though
Benedictine sisters carefully preserved
and copied her texts. Since World War II,
her works have been rediscovered, published, and analyzed. In 1979, on the
eight hundredth anniversary of her death,
Pope John Paul II called her an "outstanding saint." Her feast day is September 17. See Mysticism.
Sources:

Hildegard

of Bingen's

Scivias.

Translated by Bruce Hozeski. Santa Fe,

NM: Bear & Co., 1986; Illuminations of
Hildegard of Bingen. Commentary by Matthew Fox. Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Co.,
1985; Dr. Wighard Strehlow and Gottfried
Hertzka, M.D. Hildegard of Bingen's Medicine. Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Co., 1988.

Hinduism
Religion indigenous to India, practiced by
those who are not Muslim, Buddhist,
Jain, or Sikh. Hinduism has no founder,
no defining creed, and no centralized hierarchy. It is vast, complex, and subtle,
and is both world-affirming and worlddenying. The major concepts of the mys-

263

tical philosophy of Hinduism will be

given here.
The oldest documents of Hinduism
are the Vedas ("sacred teaching"), which
are still held by many to contain the essential truths of Hinduism. Orthodox
Hindus ascribe them to divine origin.
They are the literature of the Aryans who
invaded India in the second millennium
before Christ and settled in Punjab. The
Aryans compiled the Vedas between
about 1000 B.C. and 500 B.C., making
them the oldest extant religious literature
in the world and the oldest work of literature in an Indo-European language.
The Vedas are divided into four books,
the oldest of which is the Rig Veda. The
books essentially served as manuals for
the priests in the use of hymns, prayers,
magical rites and spells, and meditational
practices in the Aryan sacrificial cult. The
Vedas recognized gods who were the
great supernatural forces of nature and
the phenomena in which the powers manifested. These gods did not have the
power to aid humankind in its spiritual
striving.
The Upanishads, composed beginning c. 900 B.C., comprise the last part of
the Vedas, called the Vedanta, or "end of
the Vedas." They are the earliest systematic Hindu works of mystical and essentially monistic (only one truly existent
being) content. By the time of their appearance, there were numerous ascetics who sought spiritual ecstasy and enlightenment by withdrawing from the
world. Many practiced forms of selfmortification, such as gazing at the sun,
holding their arms out until they withered, lying on beds of spikes, and hanging
upside down from trees. Others were less
extreme, retiring from time to time to isolated areas and traveling about the villages spreading their teachings. All these
practices continue in modern times, and
from a popular perspective, the only
true mystic is one who practices selfmortification.

264

The Upanishads put forth the concept of the One, Brahman, successor to
the thousands of Vedic gods, the ineffable
cosmic All that holds all things together
and unifies all life. Brahman is the one
reality and the eternal absolute. Brahman
brings all things into existence, supports
them, and reabsorbs them in the endless
cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, called
samsara. Brahman also is identified with
the Atman, the immortal part of the self
that is the soul in Western thought, and
which is eternal, absolute being, absolute
bliss, and absolute consciousness. This
absolute is within all things, not as an
emanation, but as a whole principle. The
mystical unity of Brahman with Atman is
expressed in the "great word," tat tvam
asi, or "that thou art" or in "I am Brahman."

The Upanishads also explain the unifying principles in the universe in elemental terms, such as power, breath, and
food, thus uniting matter and spirit.
The concept of maya ("deception"
or "illusion") forms the foundation of
mind and matter and is inseparable from
Brahman. Maya has two aspects, one of
which is ignorance that prevents one
from realizing Brahman, and one of
which is knowledge that leads one to
Brahman.
Because Brahman is beyond comprehension, in worship the transcendent divine principle is manifest as Ishvara
("lord of the universe"). Ishvara has three
aspects: Brahma (not to be confused with
Brahman), creator of the universe and belonging to the realm of maya; Shiva, the
sustainer and guardian of dharma (the
lawful order of the universe, especially
pertaining to morality and ethics); and
Vishnu, destroyer. Originally, all three
were equal in stature, but Brahmanism
has declined in favor of the Shaivism and
Vaishnavism, as well as the Shaktism of
Tantra.
The Hindu mystic strives to escape
from selfhood. All individuals are bound

Hinduism

to samsara, a bondage which is viewed as

characterized by misery and suffering.
Samsara is determined by karma, the
cause and effect of desire. As long as one
remains in bondage to samsara, one cannot know Brahman. The only way to obtain liberation from this cycle is to attain
union with Brahman and be emptied of
all sense of realization.
To attain this the mystic pursues a
spiritual path of world-denying asceticism. In Tantra one follows the worship
centered on the Great Mother, especially
as personified by Shakti, wife of Shiva,
the feminine divine creative power. Tantric rites involving meditation, yoga,
and sexual intercourse are intended to
awaken the kundalini force (the "serpent
power" of illumination), attain the siddhis ("miraculous powers"), and attain
union with the Absolute. There are two
forms of Tantra: a left-hand path devoted
to debauched rites, and a right-hand path
devoted to strict spiritual discipline.
Other ascetic paths lie in yoga, which is
divided into various schools, each of
which has a different emphasis, such as
devotion or control of the mind. See
Yoga.
Other important sacred texts in Hinduism are the Puranas and the BhagavadGita. The Puranas ("ancient narratives")
concern the legends of the gods and are
the primary scriptures for the worshipers
of Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu. The
Bhagavad-Gita ("song of the exalted
one") is the sixth book of the Mahabharata, the Indian national epic poem.
The Bhagavad-Gita is a dialogue between
Krishna, the eighth avatar (incarnation)
of Vishnu, and Prince Arjuna on the eve
of the battle of Kurukshetra. Arjuna is
dismayed to see friends and kinsmen in
the opposing army and knows many will
be killed. Krishna expounds the doctrine
of karma and the way to attain union
with the Absolute through devotion,
knowledge, and selfless action. The Gita
is related to the Upanishads in content,

Hinduism

but has more emphasis on monotheism

(only one God) and theism (the existence
of a god or gods, especially a personal
creator god and ruler of the world).
The earliest great Hindu figure to espouse monism was the eighth-century
mystic Sankara, called the "mystic of the
soul" because of his emphasis on right
knowledge of the soul. Sankara considered the individual and universal souls as
fundamentally identical. His teaching influenced many subsequent teachers for
centuries, including nineteenth-century
mystic Sri Ramakrishna, who also was a
devotee of Kali, the Divine Mother and
destructive consort of Shiva.
Ramakrishna (1836-1886) grew up
worshiping Kali but later formally taught
the Vedanta. He experienced ecstatic visions and trances and the highest states of
samadhi, and allegedly performed miracles. When he died of cancer on August
16, 1886, he was said to have passed into
mahasamadhi, the "great sleep." Ramakrishna's teachings were exported to
the West by his disciple, Swami Vivekananda, beginning in 1893. Vivekananda believed that in order for religion and philosophy to be effective, they
must become socialized. He founded the
Ramakrishna Movement, which includes
the Ramakrishna Mission, devoted to
philanthropic, educational, medical, and
social activities; and the Math of Belur,
the sanctuary of the Ramakrishna Order,
the largest monastic order in India, which
oversees the Mission. See Dharma;
Karma; Kundalini; Meditation; Mysticism; Reincarnation; Siddhis; Universal
life force.
Sources: The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion. Boston: Shambhala,
1989; Solange Lemaitre. Ramakrishna and
the Vitality of Hinduism. 1959. Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1984;
Jacques de Marquette. Introduction to
Comparative Mysticism. New York: Philosophical Library, 1949; Geoffrey Parrinder,
ed. World Religions from Ancient History

265

to Present. New York: Facts On File, 1971;

Geoffrey Parrinder. Mysticism in the
World's Religions. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976; Samuel Umen. The
World of the Mystic. New York: Philosophical Library, 1988.

Holistic healing
See Behavioral medicine.

Holy Grail
See Grail, the.

Home, Daniel Dunglas

(1833-1886)
Scottish physical medium credited with
numerous remarkable feats and phenomena, and who was never shown to be a
fraud. Daniel Dunglas Home was said to
move objects, levitate, change the dimensions of his body, materialize ghostly
forms, and be impervious to fire and intense heat. His feats enabled him to travel
among the royal and wealthy, who provided him his financial support. He was
sickly from childhood.
Home was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 20, 1833. His father was
a carpenter. His mother was clairvoyant
and claimed descent from a seventeenthcentury clairvoyant, Kenneth MacKenzie,
known as the "Brahan Seer." Home's
own psychic gifts manifested early-at
age four he accurately predicted the death
of a cousin.
When he was nine, his family moved
to Connecticut, where his visions continued. In 1850 his mother predicted her
own imminent death. Home saw her in a
vision at the time she died; she continued
to appear to him through his life to exhort him to use his paranormal powers
for good.
At age nineteen Home experienced
his first spontaneous levitation in the
home of a Connecticut silk manufacturer.

266

He eventually learned to control his levitation, and witnesses said that on occasion he seemed to fly. In 1853, after entering the Theological Institute in Newburgh, New York, to study religion, he
experienced an eleven-hour out-of-body
trip during which a spirit guide showed
him the afterworld.
For most of his life, Home lived as a
guest in various households. He attended
seances, but felt most mediums were
frauds and avoided contact with them.
When he began to conduct his own seances, he did so with the lights on, producing spectral lights, rappings, ghostly
hands that shook hands with the sitters,
and ghostly guitars that played music. He
moved tables, chairs, and objects and
tipped tables. He spelled out messages
from the dead by pointing at letters of the
alphabet written on cards. On occasion
he acted possessed, playing the piano or
accordion in great frenzy. He also was
seen to stretch or shrink his body, once
increasing his height by eleven inches to
six feet, six inches, and once shrinking to
five feet. To prove that he was not secretly manipulating hidden devices, he often asked his guests to hold his hands and
feet.
Home credited the phenomena to
spirits over whom he had no control. The
most reliable was named "Bryan." When
in trance Home referred to himself in the
third person as "Dan."
In 1855 he traveled to England and
Europe, where he was controversial but
welcomed in elite circles. His supporters
included author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
and poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Foes included David Brewster, a noted
scientist, and poet Robert Browning, who
so disliked Home that he wrote a twothousand-line poem called Mr. Sludge the
Medium.
In February 1856 Home announced
his spirits required him to withdraw from
public life for a year. After giving an audience to Pope Pius IX, he converted to

Hinduism

Catholicism and said he would enter a

monastery. He resumed public appearances in exactly a year, giving a convincing audience to Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie.
On August 1, 1858, Home married
Alexandrina, the wealthy sister-in-law of
Count Gregoire de Koucheleff of Russia.
Their son, Gregoire, was born in 1859.
Alexandrina died of illness in 1862, and
her estate remained tied up in Russia for
years, forcing Home to depend once
again on patrons.
In 1868 Home produced his most famous levitation, in the London home of
Lord Adare. He went into a trance and
reportedly floated out a window on the
third floor, then floated back in another
window. The same year he handled redhot coals and stuck his head into a fire
without being burned.
Home toured England and Scotland,
reading poetry for money. He worked
briefly as a war correspondent in the
Franco-Prussian war of 1870. Returning
to Russia he met Julie de Gloumeline, a
wealthy woman, and married her in
1871.
From 1871 to 1873, Home allowed
himself to be tested by Sir William
Crookes in England. The scientist found
no evidence of fraud, and his conclusions
that Home possessed an independent psychic force earned him severe criticism
from fellow scientists. See Cook, Florence.
Following the tests Home retired
from mediumship and traveled about
with his wife and son from his first marriage. Julie bore a baby girl, who died in
infancy. Home died of tuberculosis on
June 21, 1886, in Auteuil, France, and
was buried at St. Germain-en-Laye.
Julie returned to Russia with Home's
son. She wrote two books about her husband, D. D. Home: His Life and Mission
(1888) and The Gift of D. D. Home
(1890). Home's published \'lorks include
two autobiographies, Incidents in My

Horse

Life (1862) and Incidents in My Life, 2d

Series (1872), and an expose of fraudulent mediumistic techniques, Light and
Shadows of Spiritualism (1877).

Prominent stage magicians such as

Harry Houdini, John Nevil Mackelyne,
and John Mulholland claimed they could
duplicate Home's feats but never did.
Houdini announced he would duplicate
Home's levitation at Lord Adare's home,
but canceled the event, ostensibly due to
illness, and never rescheduled it. See Mediumship; Spiritualism.
Sources: Slater Brown. The Heyday of Spiritualism. New York: Hawthorn Books,
1970; Earl of Dunraven. Experiences in
Spiritualism with D. D. Home. Glasgow:

University Press, 1924; 1. G. Edmonds. D.

D. Home: The Man Who Talked with
Ghosts. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1978;
Trevor H. Hall. The Enigma of Daniel
Home. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books,
1984.

Homeopathy
See Behavioral medicine.

Honorton,

Charles

See Ganzfeld stimulation.

Horse
The horse has had mystical, spiritual, and
paranormal associations throught history. The horse, said psychiatrist Carl G.
Jung, represents "the mother within us,"
the intuitive understanding and magic
side of humankind. Sacred and revered
around the world since ancient times, the
horse has been associated with fertility,
the forces of nature, and clairvoyance. In
India the royal Vedic "Horse Sacrifice" of
a consecrated stallion ensured fecundity
to the queen and health and prosperity of
the kingdom and royal family. The Greek
fertility goddess, Demeter, was associated

267

with the horse, as were Aphrodite, goddess of love, and Artemis, goddess of the
hunt. In the Hindu Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, the horse is a symbol of the cosmos. The ancient Greeks and Romans related the hotse to thunder, water, wind,
and war. The Celts believed horses carried souls to the land of the dead. Epona,
a Celtic mother goddess, was patroness of
horses, and also was associated with
death and graves, healing spirits, the dog,
and birds.
In dreams the hotse is often an archetypal symbol of the human body in
terms of its animal instincts and drives.
In various shamanic cultures, the
horse is an important mystical symbol. It
is both a funerary animal, the mythical
image of death and the carrier of the
souls of the dead, and the means by
which the shaman takes magical flights of
ecstasy to fotbidden realms. In some ecstatic dances, the shaman mounts Ot carries on his shoulders a symbolic horse
made of sticks, leaves, or bamboo. The
funerary and ecstatic horse may be eightlegged, headless, or phantom. Among the
Yakut and Buryat of Siberia, the drum is
called the "shaman's horse." Some shamanic rituals involve horse sacrifice,
which enables the shaman to make a
mystical ascent to the sky. See Shamarnsm.
In witchcraft lore horses are said to
be vulnerable to bewitchment and the evil
eye. Witches supposedly borrowed horses
at night to ride to sabbats, returning them
exhausted in the morning. Brass bells on
harnesses and iron horseshoes hung in
stables are amulets against witches and
the evil eye.
Of all animals the horse is believed
to be one of the most psychic. Stories of
horses precognitive of unseen danger and
thus saving their riders from disaster are
legion throughout history.
In the 1920s an American filly
named Lady typed out precognitive messages by tapping typewriter keys with her

268

muzzle. Parapsychologists]. B. and Louisa Rhine investigated Lady in 1927, suspecting that she was not clairvoyant, but
was picking up telepathic instructions
from her owner. The Rhines could not
prove their theory. Lady was again investigated in 1946 by Dr. Thomas Garrett, a
skeptical N ew York psychologist, who
became convinced of the veracity of her
skill. Lady predicted the outcome of
horse races, the entry of the Unites States
and the Soviet Union into World War II,
and the victory of Harry Truman. In
1951 she directed police to the location
of a missing boy in Quincy, Massachusetts.
Clever Hans was a Russian stallion
who achieved fame in Berlin around 1904
for similar feats. He spelled out answers
to questions by shaking his head and nuzzling alphabet blocks, and stomped answers to mathematical questions. An investigator was able to demonstrate that
Hans was reading the body language of
his owners, which cued him in his responses. In Elberfeld, Germany, a stable
of "wizard horses" performed mathematical feats such as extracting cube roots by
tapping out answers with right and left
front hooves. To demonstrate that no
physical signals were given to the horses,
Karl Krall, the trainer, had them perform
with sacks tied over their heads. See Animal psi.
Sources: J. E. Cirlot. A Dictionary of Symbols. New York: Philosophical Library,
1971; Mircea Eliade. Shamanism. 1951.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1964; Miranda Green. The Gods of the
Celts. Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble
Books, 1986; Into the Unknown. Pleasantville, NY: Reader's Digest, 1981; Geoffrey Parrinder, ed. World Religions from
Ancient History to the Present. New York:
Facts On File, 1971; Doreen Valiente. An
ABC

of

Witchcraft

Past

and

Present.

Amended ed. Custer, WA: Phoenix Publishing, 1986; Joseph Wydler. Psychic Pets:
The Secret World of Animals. New York:
Stonehill Publishing, 1978.

Horse

Hubbard, L. Ron
See Church of Scientology.

Humanistic psychology
See Psychology.

Huna
Ancient esoteric tradition of the Hawaiian Islands. Huna nearly died out as a
result of Christianization following the
arrival of Westerners in the eighteenth
century, but has been revived in the twentieth century, especially following the
modification of laws that outlawed its
practice.
Huna is not a religion but rather a
philosophy. Its present-day emphasis is
on healing and psychic arts; traditionally,
it also addressed science, the arts, professions, and magic. Huna means "that
which is hidden, or not obvious." It is
sometimes called Hidden Knowledge.
Huna has no hierarchy, but is comparable to a guild. Its initiated practitioners,
kahunas, meaning "priests, ministers,
sorcerers, experts in a profession," function in various specializations.
The origins of Huna are found in
mythology and concern the mythical civilizations of Mu (Lemuria) and Atlantis.
Long before those places existed, a race
of small-statured star people from the
Pleiades came to Earth and a sister planet
that no longer exists. The Earth visitors
settled on the continent of Mu, and became known as the People of Mu, or the
Manahuna or Menehune, "the people of
the secret power." Their philosophy was
Huna, which became divided into three
orders: the Intuitionists, who included
mystics, philosophers, psychologists, and
so on; the Intellectuals, the scientists and
engineers; and the Emotionals, the politicians, economists, and athletes. All had
psychic powers and practiced forms of

Huna

psychic healing. The sister planet selfdestructed in much the same fashion as
Atlantis did later, which caused cataclysms on Earth, and Mu sank. The
Menehune dispersed throughout the Pacific Ocean. In the Hawaiian Islands they
intermarried with the natives, and then
decided to leave so as not to lose their
racial identity. Their legacy was Huna,
which was passed on through families,
who initiated and trained the kahunas.
At some point the three orders became associated with Hawaiian deities.
The Intuitionists became the Order of
Kane, the highest and most spiritual god;
the Intellectuals became the Order of
Lono, god of medicine, meteorology, and
agriculture; and the Emotionals became
the Order of Ku, the god of the unconscious, sorcery, war, fertility, and rain.
By the time Captain Cook arrived in
1779, Huna had degenerated into little
more than a ceremonial priesthood. With
the arrival of Europeans in the eighteenth
century, conversion to Christianity was
rapid. Huna was outlawed by the misSlOnanes.
In the early twentieth century, Max
Freedom Long, a schoolteacher and businessman, spent fourteen years in the Hawaiian Islands, during which he recovered much Huna knowledge. He devoted
about thirty-six years to decoding the language and further research, and published six books on Huna, which continue to be the major sources. By the
latter twentieth century, it was estimated
that true kahunas numbered only about
2,500. The Order of Huna International
was formed in 1973 by Serge King, a
non-Polynesian kahuna.
A true kahuna is one who has been
initiated into the tradition by a natural or
adoptive parent and trained from childhood. The term is often misused by others who have kahuna abilities but technically are not one, such as psychics,
psychic healers, magicians, and so on.
Kahunas have counterparts elsewhere in

269

the Pacific. For example, in Tahiti the

term is tahuna and among the Maori of
New Zealand it is tohunga.

Firewalking; Psi. The manipulation of

mana is integral to the psychic arts.
Kahunas also make extensive use of metaphorical symbols and tools from the natural world.

Healing
Huna takes a holistic approach to
healing that takes into consideration attitudes, thoughts, and emotions as well as
physical causative factors. The body is
held to be an energized thought-form and
has an aka, an etheric body, which is the
pattern on which the physical body is organized. Illness results when the conscious mind conflicts with the patterns of
the aka. Healing involves working with
the ku, the subconscious, or "bodymind."
Like other psychic and spiritual healers, kahuna healers are conduits for the
healing properties of mana, the effective
energy or power that is the Huna concept
of the Universal Life Force. See Universal
life force. Healing comes from the Godhead, Kumulipo. A healing always begins
with prayer and attunement of mind,
body, and spirit to the All, followed by
spiritual
counseling,
Ho'oponopono,
which means "to make right." Traditional treatments include massage and energy field manipulation (see Bodywork),
blood cleansing, colon cleansing, herbal
remedies, special diets, rituals, and amulets, such as charged natural objects
(stones, for example) which are determined to be good sources of mana-or
which the kahuna charges himself or herself. See Healing, faith and psychic; Shamanism.

Psychic Powers
Kahunas consider psychic abilities
natural to all people. They cultivate all
psi abilities, including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis,
the latter of which includes such feats as
weather control and firewalking. See

270

Magic
Magical skills are gained from mental disciplines and use of mana. Evil sorcery is not part of the Huna tradition,
though kahunas are sometimes confused
with ano-anos, evil sorcerers. Traditionally, the sorcerer is feared for his ability
to cast a "death prayer" spell in which he
kills at a distance. Kahunas possess
counter-sorcery magical skills of protection, sending-back, and a sort of exorcism that is not expulsion of an entity,
but a ridding of negative influences. See
Magic.
Sources: Steve Bogardus. "Kahuna: Ancient
Hawaiian Healers." Venture Inward 4, no.
2 (March/April 1988): 16-19; Enid Hoffman. Huna: A Beginner's Guide. Gloucester, MA: Para Research, 1976; Serge King.
Kahuna Healing. Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1983; Max
Freedom Long. The Secret Science Behind
Miracles. Los Angeles: Kosman Press,
1948; Shirley Nicholson, compo Shamanism. Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing Co., 1987.

Hurkos, Peter (1911-1988)

Professional psychic who gained fame for
his work with police in crime cases and
for his alleged feats of ESP. Hurkos is
best known for his involvement in the celebrated Boston Strangler case in 1964
and the Charles Manson murders in
1969, though he was not successful in the
first case and did not complete work in
the second.
Hurkos was born Peter Van Der
Hurk in Dordrecht, the Netherlands, on

Huna

May 21, 1911, to a poor family. He exhibited no psychic talent as a child. At

age fourteen he ran away from home to
become a merchant seaman. He said he
adopted the pseudonym "Hurkos" during the Nazi occupation of Holland in
World War II when he worked in the underground resistance. However, this
claim later proved to be false.
He worked as a house painter. On
July 10, 1941, he and his father were ordered to paint Nazi barracks at the
Hague. Hurkos fell off a ladder, broke his
shoulder, and suffered a severe concussion. He lapsed into a coma for four
days, and his life was saved by a brain
operation. When Hurkos regained consciousness, he was psychic. He shocked
others by telling them personal information and by predicting deaths. His fingertips were sensitive; through them he
could psychometrize objects.
He later said that he had had a neardeath experience while comatose. He experienced a life review and was sucked up
by a pyramid of light. He found himself
facing a celestial jury of nine bearded
men dressed in long, filmy robes, surrounded by celestial music. The jury told
him he was there by mistake and had to
return to earth to finish work. They shot
energy into his hands and a "Voice" said
he now had great power in them and
must use it only for good. The Voice told
him said he would hear music from the
otherworld in his head, and be able to sit
down and play it on the piano. See Neardeath experience (NDE).
After his recovery Hurkos was troubled by his psychic gifts. He heard noises
in his head and was unable to concentrate. He became extremely sensitive to
noise around him and lost his ability to
paint. However, he discovered a new gift
for music and the ability to heal himself.
One day in 1946 he went to a psychic demonstration and upstaged the psychic with his own ability. The theater offered him his own engagement. In 1947

Hurkos, Peter (1911-1988)

he took on his first detective case. His

fame spread and he began traveling
around Europe.
Hurkos's
primary
crime-solving
method was psychometry. He said he got
the strongest vibrations from underclothing, but he also worked with locks of hair
and fingernails taken from the victims'
bodies, and from photographs. As he
touched the items, he would see mental
pictures and hear the "Voice," either a
single voice or the collective voice of the
celestial jury. The Voice sometimes gave
him actual names of the perpetrators.
Touch was not always necessary to get
images and the Voice, but whenever possible he touched and slept with objects,
awakening with information. Sometimes
he received information through automatic writing.
In 1956 Dr. Andrija Puharich, a neurologist and parapsychologist, brought
him to the United States and spent two
years testing his telepathic ability. Afterward, Hurkos remained in the United
States and gained celebrity fame. His career, however, was plagued with failures.
In the Boston Strangler case, in which
thirteen women in Boston were raped and
strangled between 1962 and 1964, he
failed to identify Albert DeSalvo, who
confessed to the killings. In the Charles
Manson case, Hurkos saw an image of
Manson and got the name "Charlie." He
also said the murders were a ritualistic
killing by a gang preoccupied with sex
and drugs. But two weeks after beginning
work on the case, he was dismissed by
police for undisclosed reasons.
William Belk, who
financially
backed Puharich's experiments, did not
fare well with Hurkos. Belk lost money in
uranium searches based on Hurkos's advice. Hurkos also told him that his department stores would be profitable, but
instead they suffered losses.
Charles T. Tart and Jeffrey Smith,
parapsychology researchers, tested Hurkos and found no evidence of ESP in his

271

readings of hair samples in sealed envelopes.

Hurkos predicted he would die on
November 17, 1961. He suffered a heart
attack and died on May 25, 1988, at the
age of seventy-seven in Los Angeles. See
Psychic criminology; Psychometry.
Sources: Norma Lee Browning. The Psychic World of Peter Hurkos. Garden City,

NY: Doubleday & Co., 1970; Norma Lee

Browning. Peter Hurkos: I Have Many
Lives. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co.,
1976; Milbourne Christopher. Mediums,
Mystics & the Occult. New York: Thomas
Y. Crowell, 1975; Arthur Lyons and Marcello Truzzi, Ph.D. The Blue Sense. New
York: Mysterious Press/Warner Books,
1991; Andrija Puharich. Beyond Telepathy.
New York: Bantam Books, 1975; Charles
T. Tart and Jeffrey Smith. "Two Token
Object Studies with Peter Hurkos." The
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 62, no. 2 (April 1968): 14357; Colin Wilson. The Psychic Detectives.

1984. San Francisco: Mercury House,

1985.

Huxley, Aldous (Leonard)

(1894-1963)
Author of intellectual and utopian novels
and of nonfiction works concerning mysticism, transcendental philosophy, futurism, and the evolution of intelligence.
Huxley's experimentation with mescaline
and LSD had an impact on the psychedelic drug movement of the 1960s.
Aldous Huxley was born on July 26,
1894, in Godalming, England. He was
the third son of Leonard Huxley, a biographer and man of letters, and the grandson of biologist Thomas Henry Huxley.
His older brother, Julian, was famous as
a biologist and humanist.
Huxley attended Eton, intending to
become a biologist, but was forced to
drop out when keratitis rendered him
blind. After three years he regained
enough vision in one eye to read with a

272

magnifying glass. He graduated from Balliol College in 1915. His first book was a
volume of poetry, The Burning Wheel,
published in 1916. He rose to literary
prominence during the 1920s and 1930s
with novels satirizing the European intellectual "lost generation."
He married Maria Nys in 1919, with
whom he had one child, Matthew. They
emigrated to the United States in 1937,
and settled in California in 1940. There
Huxley received treatments that improved his vision.
In the 1940s he became increasingly
interested in mysticism, and in the use of
drugs to experience non ordinary reality.
His views on mysticism, especially Eastern mysticism, as a route to personal psychological freedom are expressed in The
Perennial

Philosophy

(1945).

In 1953 he had his first psychedelic

experience when he volunteered to take
mescaline, the active agent in peyote, in
an experiment for a psychologist. In
many ways the trip was a disappointment, for Huxley was a poor visualizer
and was not treated to grand dramas and
visions. See Imagery. He saw only colored
shapes and the ordinary world around
him, though slightly askew and infused
with new meaning. He was impressed,
however, with his awareness of the wonderful, awesome "is-ness" of all things,
and his complete indifference to space
and time.
As a result of the experience, Huxley
wrote The Doors of Perception (1954),
after the William Blake quote, "When the
doors of perception are cleansed, every
thing would appear to man as it is, infinite." In it he described his experience
and its philosophical, religious, and aesthetic implications. He lamented the absence of sacramental drugs in Christianity. He said the mescaline experience "is
what Catholic theologians call 'a gratuitous grace,' not necessary to salvation but
potentially helpful and to be accepted
thankfully, if made available." The essay

Hurkos,

Peter (1911-1988)

had a profound impact on the emerging

psychedelic drug culture, and served as
inspiration for the rock group, the Doors,
which took its name from the title.
Maria was diagnosed with cancer in
1952 and died on February 12, 1955. In
her last days, she was not conscious, but
Huxley talked to her constantly about going into the light. He believed in the Eastern tradition, as espoused in the Bardo
Thodal, the Tibetan Book of the Dead,
that dying is a ritual that should be done
with as much consciousness as possible,
and that the final thoughts in life greatly
determine the circumstances of the next
incarnation.
Two months after her death, Huxley
was a speaker at the Wainwright House
in Rye, New York, where he met the renowned healer~ Olga and Ambrose Worrall. Olga Worrall, a clairvoyant, told
Huxley she perceived a spirit standing by
his side who identified herself as his wife.
The spirit wished to give Huxley the message that she had heard every word he
had spoken to her during her unconsciousness, and that she was grateful for
all he had done for her. Huxley wept.
In 1956 he married Laura Archera,
an Italian violinist. The same year he
took his first dose of LSD. For the remaining years of his life, he took mescaline or LSD but a few more times. He also
published Heaven and Hell, also the
product of mescaline, which concerned
visionary experience and its relation to
art and the traditional concepts of the
otherworld.
In 1960, while lecturing as a visiting
professor at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, Huxley was invited by
Timothy Leary to participate in the psilocybin research being conducted at Harvard University by Leary and Richard
Alpert (later Ram Dass). Huxley enthusiastically agreed. Leary described him as
"a serene Buddha with an encyclopedic
mind." Huxley's elitist approach to
psychedelics-that they should be filtered

Huxley, Aldous (Leonard) (1894-1963)

down to the masses through the artists,

the intelligentsia, and the rich-did not
sit well with Leary, who felt the masses
should be initiated directly. According to
Leary, in his autobiography, Flashbacks
(1983), during one psilocybin trip, Huxley told him that psychedelics promised
to bring about vast changes in society;
that the only opposition to them was the
Bible; and that Leary's role was to be a
"cheerleader for evolution." Huxley professed a great fondness for Leary, but deplored his antics and said on occasion
that he "talked such nonsense" about
LSD.
Huxley suffered numerous health
problems throughout his life. In 1960 he
was diagnosed with a malignant tumor at
the back of his tongue. Radical surgery
was recommended, which would have
left him without speech, but Huxley rejected it in favor of radiation. While he
remained outwardly optimistic about his
prognosis, privately he realized that he
was going to die while he was working
on his final novel, Island (1962), about a
society that, unlike the dark utopian one
he portrayed in Brave New World
(1932), does not sacrifice its freedom for
perfection. Island concerns the society on
a fictitious island between Ceylon and
Sumatra, where East meets West, and is
laced with much Eastern mystical
thought. Huxley borrowed from The
Doors of Perception and his experience
with the dying Maria. The islanders have
a "moksha-medicine," a drug from mushrooms that prepares one for the gratuitous graces of pre-mystical and full mystical experiences. At one point a dying
woman is guided through the Bardo
Thodal. The death ritual apparently was
Huxley's realization of his own impending death.
During his final two months in the
fall of 1963, Laura read with Huxley
Timothy Leary's psychedelic version of
the Tibetan Book of the Dead and offered
to give him LSD, which he refused; his

273

last trip with acid had been in 1961. On

November 22, 1963, in his last hours,
Huxley requested LSD when he realized
he might not be conscious at the end.
Laura administered two doses. She read
from the psychedelic Book of the Dead
and urged him toward the light. He
seemed to be in a state of bliss and peace
when he quit breathing. His death was
overshadowed by the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy the same day.
Controversy remains over Huxley's
role in the psychedelic drug movement, as
to whether he was an advocate or a bystander. He did write favorably of psychedelics, and his writings were influential. He did not say that drugs led to
mystical experiences, however, only that
they opened a person to a nonordinary
reality. He said that drugs had helped
him to understand the writings of mystics; had given him a sense of solidarity
with the world and its spiritual principle;
and had given him an understanding, not
intellectual, of the affirmation that God is
Love.
In hindsight Huxley's enthusiasm for
psychedelic drugs seems naive. He believed that mescaline was harmless to
most people. He said that temporary escape from selfhood is inevitable, so it is
better to escape through something that is
harmless, morally desirable, and socially
non disruptive, rather than through something detrimental like alcohol or tobacco.
He did not anticipate, and perhaps could
not have anticipated, the problems psychedelics would cause, or the backlash reaction to them. See Drugs in mystical and
psychic experiences; Leary, Timothy.
Sources: SybilleBedford. Aldous Huxley: A
Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf!
Harper & Row, 1973; Aldous Huxley. The
Doors of Perception. New York: Harper &
Row, 1954; Laura Archera Huxley. This
Timeless Moment: A Personal View of Aldous Huxley. New York: Farrar, Straus,
Giroux, 1968; Timothy Leary. Flashbacks:
An Autobiography. Los Angeles: Jeremy P.

274

Tarcher, 1983; Guinevera A. Nance. Aldous Huxley.

New York: Continuum,
1988; Ambrose Worrall with Olga N. Worrall. The Gift of Healing: A Personal Story
of Spiritual Therapy. New York: Harper &
Row, 1965.

Hypnagogic/hypnapompic states
(also hypnogogic/hypnopompic
states)
Intermediate stages between waking and
sleep, during which the mind is receptive
to sounds, images, ideas, feelings, and intuitions. Most likely the material rises up
from the unconscious, but some of it may
be psychic in nature. If dreams provide,
as Edgar Cayce said, contact with spiritual and psychic forces, then the hypnagogic and hypnapompic states are the
gateways to those forces.
As one descends into the first stage
of sleep, one enters the hypnagogic state,
a semiconscious twilight during which
the conscious mind quiets and transfers
dominance to the subconscious mind.
During this state one experiences a spontaneously generated reverie of sketchy
and fleeting images, impressions, and,
quite often, clairaudient voices. The reverie ends as one enters sleep.
The hypnapompic state is similar to
the hypnagogic state, occurring at the end
of the sleep cycle as one emerges from
sleep into wakefulness.
The imagery that occurs in the hypnagogic and hypnapompic states is not
the same as dream imagery, but can be
equally instructive to the individual in
terms of self-understanding. The hypnagogic/hypnapompic
reveries are the
equivalent of visual thinking, often expressed in the individual's own system of
symbols. Interpreted, these symbols can
provide answers to questions and problems, and even alert one to future circumstances and events. Rousing oneself
from a hypnagogic reverie to record the
images, feelings, and sounds is as benefi-

Huxley,

Aldous

(Leonard)

(1894-1963)

cial as recording dreams upon awakening. See Dreams.

Sources: Harmon H. Bro. Edgar Cayce on
Dreams. New York: Warner, 1968; Patricia Garfield. Creative Dreaming. New

York: Ballantine, 1974; Craig Junjulas.

Psychic Tarot. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Morgan
& Morgan, 1985; D. Scott Rogo. Psychic
Breakthroughs
Today.
Wellingborough,
Northamptonshire, England: The Aquarian
Press, 1987; Joan Windsor. The Inner Eye:
Your Dreams Can Make You Psychic. En-

glewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985;

Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook of
Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold, 1977.

Hypnosis
An induced altered state of consciousness
in which the subject becomes passive and
is responsive to suggestion, and may also
exhibit heightened psychic awareness. The
term "hypnosis" comes from Hypnos, the
Greek god of sleep, and was coined in
1842 by James Braid, a celebrated English surgeon.
The altered state is induced through
a variety of methods, such as a fixed
gaze; monotonous rhythm of color, movement, or sound; and suggestion. States of
hypnosis are (1) light, in which the subject is lethargic and is aware of what is
taking place around him or her; (2) cataleptic, in which the muscles become rigid;
and (3) somnambulistic, a deep trance in
which the subject can be manipulated by
the hypnotist's suggestions and experiences hallucinations, anesthesia, and psi
phenomena. Contrary to popular belief,
hypnosis cannot be used to force a person
to act against his or her will.
It is estimated that 90 percent of the
population can be hypnotized, although
only a small percentage can attain a deep
trance. Left-brain dominant people are
more susceptible to hypnosis than rightbrain people.
The precursor of hypnosis was ani-

Hypnosis

mal magnetism, developed in the 1770s

by Franz Anton Mesmer as a means of
healing and eradicating pain. "Animal
magnetism" was Mesmer's term for the
universal life force, which he sought to
restore to balance in sick persons with
the application of appropriate magnetic
forces. Mesmer's methods included laying
on of hands, staring fixedly into the eyes
of the patient, and making slow passes in
front of the patient with hands or a
wand. See Mesmer, Franz Anton.
Animal magnetism spread throughout Europe and to a lesser extent America, with spectacular successes reported at
healing clinics and temples. Furthermore,
magnetized patients, or "somnambules,"
as they were called, felt no pain during
surgery. Side effects of the deep magnetized trance, called "higher phenomena,"
included clairvoyance, clairaudience, telepathy, mediumistic ability, hallucinations, remote viewing, and eyeless vision.
One of the first early documented cases
of the higher phenomena occurred on
May 4, 1784, in a healing session conducted by one of Mesmer's students, the
Marquis de Puysegur, on a peasant
named Victor, who was suffering from
toothaches. Puysegur was astonished
when Victor began talking volubly while
in trance, then acted out instructions
from Puysegur, including marking time to
a tune which Puysegur sang mentally.
Mesmer had little interest in the
higher phenomena, preferring to f~cus on
healing, but other magnetists began to explore them and then exploit them in stage
shows. Fraud was not uncommon.
In the 1840s James Braid set out to
expose animal magnetism as a fraud; but
after attending some demonstrations, became convinced of its validity. He used
animal magnetism on his own patients
with great success, despite disapproval by
the medical establishment. Braid's original term was "neurypnology" or "neurohypnosis," which later was shortened to
hypnosis.

275

Braid also was first to discover that

old methods of inducing trances-the
waving of hands, fixed gazes, and
suggestions-were not necessary. Patients
could be hypnotized merely by staring at
a bright light or by suggestion alone.
Hypnosis became a frequently used medical tool to relieve discomfort and pain
and to perform surgery without anesthetic.
When chloroform was discovered as
an anesthetic in 1848, medical interest in
hypnosis dropped sharply in America and
England, but less so in Europe, where animal magnetism was more prevalent
among doctors. Serious research resumed
in the late nineteenth century, when it became recognized as a therapeutic tool in
medicine, and when societies for psychical research were established in England
and America for the purpose of investigating the paranormal phenomena associated with hypnotism.
Beginning in the 1940s, scientific
studies established that hypnosis can enhance performance in psi games, especially if positive suggestions are made
that the subject will demonstrate psi ability. Conversely, negative suggestions can
adversely affect performance. Studies in
the 1960s and 1970s moved away from
guessing games to free-response tasks in
hypnotically-induced meditation, dreaming, and remote viewing.
Hypnosis also has been demonstrated to be effective in enhancing memory and learning, in treatments for physical and psychological disorders, and in
self-improvement. Hypnosis is the most
popular means of past-life recall. Selfhypnosis is used in behavior modification, and by mediums and channelers to
communicate with spirits.
In the Soviet Union the potential of
hypnotism was recognized as early as
1818, when D. Valenski, a surgeon and
professor of physiology at the Imperial
Academy of St. Petersburg, termed ani-

276

mal magnetism the most important physical discovery in several centuries. The
first public demonstration of hypnotism
in the Soviet Union took place in 1924,
conducted by Dr. L. L. Vasiliev in a demonstration of telepathic hypnosis. During
Stalin's oppressive regime, hypnotism fell
into disrepute along with all psychic phenomena. Research resumed after Stalin's
death in 1953. See Gurdjieff, Georgei
Ivanovitch; Past-life recall; Telepathic
hypnosis.
Sources: Slater Brown. The Heyday of Spiritualism. New Yark: Hawthorn Books,
1970; Eric Cuddon. The Meaning and
Practice of Hypnosis. New York: Citadel
Press, 1965; Alfred Douglas. Extrasensory
Powers: A Century of Psychical Research.

London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1976; Martin Ebon. Psychic Warfare: Threat or Illusion? New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983;
Henry Gris and William Dick. The New
Soviet Psychic Discoveries.
Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978; Thomas
Jay Hudson. The Evolution of the Soul.
Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1904; Ron
McRae. Mind Wars. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984; Janet Oppenheim. The
Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical
Research in England, 1850-1914. Cam-

bridge, England: Cambridge University

Press, 1985; Robert E. Ornstein, ed. The
Nature of Human Consciousness.
New
York: Viking Press, 1974; Sheila Ostrander
and Lynn Schroeder. Psychic Discoveries
Behind the Iron Curtain. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970; Sheila Ostrander
and Lynn Schroeder with Nancy Schroeder.
Super-Learning. New York: Avon Books,
1979; D. Scott Rogo. Psychic Breakthroughs Today. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England: The Aquarian Press,
1987; Michael Talbot. Your Past Lives: A
Reincarnation Handbook. New York: Harmony Books, 1987; Charles T. Tart. Altered States of Consciousness: A Book of
Readings. New York: John Wiley & Sons,
1969; Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook
of Parapsychology. New York: Van Nos-

trand Reinhold, 1977.

Hypnosis

I
"I AM" Religious Activity, the
Religious movement founded in 1931 by
Americans Guy W. and Edna Ballard.
The "I A.\1" Religious Activity offers believers the opportunity to communicate
with the Ascended Masters, particularly
Jesus and Saint Germain, and through
them to realize the divinity of the Mighty
"I A1\1" Presence in all people.
The group takes its name from Exodus 3: 14-15, in which God tells Moses
from the burning bush, "I AM who I
A.\1." The Mighty "I A1\1" Presence represents the individualized existence of
God in all people: the light, love, and
power of God; God in Action. "I AM"
itself comes from YHVH, the Israelite
name for God, usually pronounced "Yahweh." The letters are a third-person verb
form possibly meaning "He causes to
be."
Founder Guy W. Ballard (18781939), a Spiritualist and occultist, had
been seeking proof of the Ascended Masters for years when he allegedly encountered Saint Germain in 1930 on a trip to
Mt. Shasta in California. Ballard was investigating reports that a group of "Divine Men" called "the Brotherhood of
Mt. Shasta" had been sighted walking in
the mountains. While hiking he met a
stranger who looked like another young
walker but instead revealed himself as the
Ascended Master Saint Germain. He offered Ballard a creamy liquid to slake his

"[ AM" Religious Activity, the

thirst, claiming it came from the "Universal Supply." Ballard wrote that the
draught had a vivifying effect on him.
Saint Germain explained that he had been
seeking a person in Europe and America
worthy to receive the instructions of the
"Great Laws of Life," and had decided
that Guy, his wife, Edna, and their son,
Donald, should be his "Accredited Messengers." Through a series of meetings,
Ballard received Saint Germain's wisdom
and plans for implementing the Seventh
Golden Age: the "I AM" age of earthly
perfection. Ballard also witnessed his
own past lives, learning that he had been
George Washington.
As a result of the experiences, the
Ballards founded the "I AM" Religious
Activity, the Saint Germain Press, and the
Saint Germain Foundation in Chicago in
1932. Ballard wrote of his enlightenment
under the pseudonym "Godfre Ray
King" in Unveiled Mysteries (1934) and
The Magic Presence (1935). The Ballards
began holding classes and seminars
around the country, selecting devoted
students, or chelas, as "appointed messengers" to carry on the work.
By 1936 the Ballards had published
the "[ AM" Adorations and Affirmations
(1935), outlining the decrees, affirmations, and invocations used by students of
the "I AM"; "[ AM" Discourses, a series
of lectures by Saint Germain; the "I AM"
Songs, a hymnal; and the Foundation's
magazine, The Voice of the "[ AM."

277

Their channeling of Saint Germain and

their teachings drew from 1 million
to 3 million followers by 1938. The Ballards established a second base in Los Angeles and opened reading rooms and
schools.
Bur pressure and scrutiny from the
press, as well as too many mentally unstable people in the audiences, led the
Ballards to close their open classes in
1939 and require all chelas to obtain an
admission card. One former student, Gerald B. Bryan, published Psychic Dictatorship in America, charging the "I AM" activity as fraudulent and a rehash of old
occult practices.
Guy Ballard died on December 29,
1939. Edna announced on January 1,
1940, that he had ascended, causing
many disbelieving followers to quit. The
Ballards had taught that ascension meant
victory over physical death and reincarnation, but Guy seemed to leave in the
usual manner. Edna carried on and began
channeling for Guy as well as Saint Germam.
Disgruntled students filed suit for
fraud, and in 1940 Edna and her son,
Donald, were indicted for using the mails
to obtain money for a religion they allegedly knew was false. The case came to
trial in 1942, and the Ballards were convicted, subsequently losing the right to
use the mails. After a lengthy appeals
process, the verdict was overturned in
1954, and the movement's tax-exempt
status as a formal religion was granted in
1957.
In 1941 Edna moved to Santa Fe,
New Mexico, and quietly rebuilt the
movement. In 1951 the movement
bought the famous Shasta Springs Water
Company and resort. Donald quit the
foundation in 1957 but continued to handle recording activity. Edna died in 1971.
Administration passed to a board of directors. The Santa Fe properties were sold
and all operations were consolidated in a
new world headquarters in Schaumburg,

278

Illinois, by 1978. The movement still runs

one school in Denver.
The beliefs of students of the "I
AM" Presence center around the reality
of one God, all-powerful and all-seeing.
God permeates all things as the life and
light of the universe, represented by the
sun. As God's presence radiates outward,
creation occurs, making each person a divine spark of the Mighty "I AM" Presence. God is individualized in each person, and the mission of each person is to
realize that presence, the Christ Self,
within. The truth of the "I AM" revealed
by Saint Germain also explained the
power of the Violet Consuming Flame of
Divine Love (Saint Germain served as
high priest of the Violet Flame) and how
to use it to eliminate hatred and discord
in the world.
Contact with the Ascended Masters
and cooperation with their work is a
main goal of the students' lives. The Master Jesus-separate
from the Christfigures as prominently as Saint Germain
in "I AL\1" teachings, leading members to
affirm themselves as Christians. The realization of the "I AM" power and its
development will enable students to enter
the light of divine love and eliminate evil,
injustice, and tyranny.
Worship .is accomplished through
quiet contemplation and study and the
repetition of affirmations and decrees.
The affirmations are sentences that affirm
the person's harmony with God and the
blessings due the person as a result of
that coexistence. Decrees are fiats from
the Mighty "I AM" Presence that may be
peaceful or powerful, depending on the
occasion. They are repeated daily to release the Violet Flame and to dissipate
discord and uncertainty.
Students of the "I AM" place great
emphasis on freedom and America's destiny in the plan for the Seventh Golden
Age. Consequently, they are quite patriotic and always fly the American flag at
teaching centers and meetings. See Alter-

"1 AM" Religious Activity, the

native religious movements; Saint Germain.

Sources: Bruce F. Campbell. Ancient Wisdom Revived: A History of the Theosophical Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980; J. Gordon Melton.
Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America. New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1986; Rudolf Steiner. Rosicrucian Esotericism. 1961. New York: The
Anthroposophic Press, 1978.

I Ching
An ancient system of Chinese wisdom, often consulted in oracular divination. The
I Ching, or Book of Changes, consists of
sixty-four hexagrams of solid and broken
lines. A hexagram is determined by the
results of tossing three coins three times,
or tossing fifty yarrow sticks. Each hexagram has a meaning, which must be interpreted by the inquirer.
The I Ching represents an entire philosophy based on the concept of a unified
and cyclical universe, in which the future
develops according to fixed laws and
numbers. There is no "coincidence" or
"chance," but causality. The I Ching
shows what is possible when the mature
"superior man" is in harmony with the
flow of yin and yang energy. Its symbols
reveal a high moral, social, and political
code.
The I Ching does not give definitive
answers, but forces the inquirer to look
within for answers. It reflects a moment
in time, and shows probable outcomes if
various alternatives are undertaken. As a
teacher it instructs the pupil in how the
superior man would respond to situations. Like the Tarot the I Ching requires
intuitive thought, and an awareness of
the flow and flux of energy throughout
the universe.
Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung appreciated
the I Ching for its demonstration of the
principle of synchronicity, or "meaningful coincidences": the random tossing of

I Ching

the coins or sticks and their meaningful

association with events.
The foundation of the I Ching probably dates back thousands of years in
Chinese history, the evolutionary product
of thought that pondered humankind's
relationship to the Universal Principle.
The hexagrams are composed of two trigrams, which, according to tradition,
were developed by Emperor Fu-hsi
around 2852 B.C. The solid lines represent
the yang, or male/active/creative energy,
and the broken lines represent the yin, or
female/passive/receptive energy. Initially,
Fu-hsi developed eight trigrams, which
represented the eight components of the
universe: heaven, earth, thunder, water,
mountain, wood and wind, fire, and
marsh and lake.
The trigrams were doubled into
sixty-four hexagrams by King Wen, a
founder of the Chou dynasty, around
1143 B.C. Wen organized the hexagrams,
and gave a name and a summary text of
attributes and advice to each one. A commentary on the symbolism and meaning
of the lines was added by the king's son,
the duke of Chou.
The I Ching inspired Lao-tzu (604
B.c.-531 B.C.),who drew upon it in the
writing of Tao Teh Ching, the central
text of Taoism. Confucius (c. 551 B.C.479? B.C.) also was inspired by it in his
later years, and added ten commentaries,
now called the "Ten Wings" appendices.
Confucius is credited with saying, "If
some years were added to my life, I
would give fifty to the study of the I, and
might then escape falling into great errors."
For several centuries after the death
of Confucius, scholars reinterpreted and
commented upon the I Ching. In 213 B.C.
Emperor Chin ordered the burning of numerous books, among them the Confucian commentaries to the I Ching. Some
copies survived. In 136 B.C. imperial authorities sponsored a special study of the
work. By A.D. 1715 one edition of the

279

book included commentaries from 218

scholars dating back to the second century B.C.
The work did not reach the West until the nineteenth century, when it was
translated by James Legge and Richard
Wilhelm. Wilhelm's translation-first
into German and then into Englishincludes a foreword by Jung, who saw
the I Ching as a way to tap into the collective unconscious through meditation
upon the symbols.
The methods of consulting the oracle
may be simple or elaborate ritual, depending on the individual. Some people
toss Chinese coins, others use copper pennies. Yarrow sticks are more complex. In
a formal ritual, the inquirer faces south,
prostrates himself or herself on the
ground, then passes the yarrow sticks
through incense smoke while mentally
pondering his question. One stick is set
aside, and the forty-nine remaining ones
are tossed. The language of the text is obscure to the Western mind, and requires
patience and a reverent attitude toward
the oracle itself in order to be properly
understood. See Synchronicity; Tarot.
Sources: Judy Fox, Karen Hughes, and
John Tampion. An Illuminated I Ching.
New York: Arco Publications, 1984; Joseph L. Henderson, M.D. "A Commentary
on the I Ching." New Realities 6, no. 4
(January/February 1985): 31+; James
Legge, trans. The I Ching. New York: Dover Publications, 1963; Michael Loewe and
Carmen Blacker. Oracles and Divination.
Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 1981; Larry
Schoenholtz. New Directions in the I
Ching. Secaucus, NJ: University Books,
1975. Raymond Van Over. I Ching. New
York: New American Library, 1972; Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes, trans.
The I Ching. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, Bollingen series 19, 1969.

Iddhis.
See Siddhis.

280

TIluminati
Term first used in fifteenth-c~ntury Europe to signify adepts, specifically those
who were quite learned or who possessed
"light" from direct communication with a
higher source. It was associated with various occult sects and secret orders, including the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons.
The most highly organized sect, the
Order of Illuminati, was founded in Bavaria on May 1, 1776, by Adam Weishaupt, a twenty-eight-year-old professor
of law. There were five initial members.
Weishaupt may have created the order
because he aspired to join the Masons,
which he did in 1777. In 1780 he was
joined by Baron von Knigge, arespected
and high-level Mason, which enabled him
to incorporate Masonic elements into his
organizational structure and rites. The
Order failed to obtain official Masonic
recognition, however, at a Masonic conference in 1782.
Illuminism was antimonarchial, and
its identification with republicanism
gained it many members throughout Germany. In 1784 Masonry was denounced
to the Bavarian government as politically
dangerous, which led to the suppression
of all secret orders, including the Masons
and Illuminati. Later the name "Illuminati" was given to followers of Louis
Claude de St. Martin (1743-1803),
French mystic, author, and founder of the
Martinist sect in 1754. See Cagliostro,
Count Alessandro.
The Order of Illuminati included
such distinguished figures as Goethe, Cagliostro, and Franz Anton Mesmer. Cagliostro was initiated in 1781 at Frankfurt to the Grand Masters of the
Templars, the name used by the order
there. Cagliostro supposedly received
money from Weishaupt to be used on behalf of Masonry in France. Cagliostro
later connected with the Martinists.
Following its suppression in Bavaria,
the Order was revived in 1880 in Dresden

I Ching

under the aegis of Leopold Engel. In 1895

Engel's order was taken over by Dr. Karl
Kellner and renamed the Ordo Templi
Orientis (Order of the Temple of the Orient), officially abbreviated O:.T:.O. Kellner brought in elements of Tantric mysticism and magic. Famous members
included the adept Aleister Crowley and
Franz Hartmann, a Theosophist who had
studied with a secret sect of Rosicrucians
in his Bavarian home town, and who was
an occultist with a shady reputation.
In 1906 Rudolf Steiner, philosopher,
one-time Theosophist, and founder of
Anthroposophy, accepted a charter from
the O:.T:.O to establish a lodge named
Mysteria Mystica Aeterna. It is unlikely
that Steiner ever practiced the O:.T:.O's
magic; nevertheless, his involvement in
the O:.T:.O brought Anthroposophy
much criticism. In his autobiography
Steiner refers to the O:.T:.O only as the
Order, and describes it as "an institution
of Freemasonry of the so-called higher
degrees." He said he had "no intention
whatever of working in the spirit of such
a society," but had always respected what
had arisen throughout history. "Therefore I was in favor of linking whenever
possible, the new with what exists historically ... I took over nothing, absolutely
nothing from this society except the
merely formal right to carry on in historical succession my symbolic-ritualistic activity," he said.
Upon Kellner's death in 1947, the
O:.T:.O separated. There are now two
organizations, one based in England and
one based in Berkeley, California.
In Western ritual magic, "Illuminati"
refers to any number of secret masters or
adepts called upon by magicians to aid
their work. Such masters include holy figures such as Jesus, mythical figures such
as the mage Merlin, and great reputed adepts from history. The illuminati may exist only on the inner planes; however,
Madame Helena P. Blavatsky, cofounder
of the Theosophical Society, maintained

Imagery

that her Eastern Masters had a physical

reality.
The idea of a secret brotherhood of
adepts called the "Illuminati" has been
popularized in the fictional writings of
novelist Robert Anton Wilson. See Crowley, Aleister; Freemasonry; Steiner, Rudolf.
Sources: Richard Cavendish, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Unexplained. New Yark:
McGraw-Hill, 1974; Manly P. Hall. Ma- '
sonic Orders of Fraternity. Los Angeles:

The Philosophical Research Society, 1950;

Leslie A. Shepard, ed. Encyclopedia of Oc2d ed. Decultism and Parapsychology.
troit: Gale Research Co., 1984; Rudolf
New trans.
Steiner. An Autobiography.
First English translation published as The
Story of My Life. 1928. Blauvelt, NY: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1977; Arthur
Edward Waite. A New Encyclopedia of
Freemasonry. Combined ed. New York:
Weathervane Books, 1970.

Imagery
Mental phenomena that play significant
roles in psi activity, creative and physical
performance, behavioral medicine and
healing, meditation, mystical experiences,
and magic. Imagery includes visual pictures of colors, shapes, patterns, inanimate and animate objects; auditory sensations of words, music, and sound; and
thoughts and feelings associated with various stimuli. Imagery is a way to contact
the unconscious mind and harness its
powers. As such it has been employed
since ancient times in the East and among
preindustrial societies.
Imagery occurs spontaneously during waking fantasies, dreams, and in hallucinations (apparitions). With training it
can be employed deliberately in goaloriented tasks. Studies have shown imagery to be enhanced in the hypnotic
state.
Imagery is subjective. Studies have
shown that some people naturally are
"high-imagers," while others are "low-

281

imagers." High-imagers tend to develop

their own systems of imagery use and associations, employed frequently in everyday situations.
In parapsychology research has been
devoted to the relationship between psi
and imagery since the late nineteenth century. While spontaneous psi cases indicate that the vividness of imagery is important to the manifestation of psi,
laboratory research has been inconsistent,
with many tests showing inconclusive
or insignificant results. Tests with positive results have indicated, for example,
that high-imagers can score significantly
above chance in forced-choice clairvoyance tests, and that psi-gifted subjects attribute at least some of their success to
their daily practice of imagery exercises.
, Test results have varied concerning
process-oriented imagery (visualizing the
performance of a task) versus goaloriented imagery (visualizing the task as
already completed). Imagery training has
been shown to enhance scores in psychokinesis (PK) tests. While it is generally
concluded that imagery training does
benefit psi, there is little agreement on the
nature of the training itself. Controversy
also exists whether to regard imagery as a
trait, skill, state, way of speaking, and
so on.
Imagery is a function of the right
brain, which synthesizes spatial relationships, pictures, sounds, and emotions.
Little is known as to whether subjective
imagery is processed by the brain the
same way as external sensations. If it is it
would pass through three stages: (1)
sense data, or impressions without order;
(2) gestalt organization into meaningful
and recognizable patterns; and (3) associations with memories, thoughts, ideas,
and so on, which are activated.
Experiments have shown that psi imagery generally falls into five categories
that reflect various stages of mental processing: (1) the target image is presented
to conscious awareness unchanged; (2)

282

the target image is reorganized in a recognizable pattern, but different from the
original; (3) part of the target image is
embedded in additional and new material, and missing elements are filled in by
imagination, memory, and so on (this is
often a "near-hit" or "near-miss" in
tests); (4) the target image is transformed
into a different but similar image; and (5)
the target image is not perceived, but
does simulate associations on the part of
the percipient.
Gifted psychics may receive their psi
information in one or two dominant
ways, or may experience all five. Gerard
Croiset, for example, received both unchanged images and associations. In some
cases, a vibration would begin and make
him feel filled inside. A serious problem
caused him to see many colors, which
would begin to spin around him until
they formed three-dimensional pictures.
In diagnosing illness, for example, an image of peaches meant cancer to him. The
association was formed because the night
his mother had died of cancer, she had
left half-eaten peaches by her bedside. See
Croiset, Gerard.
Russian psychic Wolf Messing said
the thoughts of others became colorful
images in his mind; he saw pictures
rather than heard words. The thoughts of
the deaf and dumb were clearer than
those of others. See Messing, Wolf Grigorievich.
Some of the most promising research
in the manifestation and processing of psi
imagery has been done in the Ganzfeld
stimulation test. See Ganzfeld stimulation.
Both the process-oriented and goaloriented imagery are used in various techniques for creative visualization, which
are intended to yield a host of benefits,
including improved health, relationships,
career and financial success, spiritual
growth and happiness. See Creative visualization. Imagery is integral to the martial arts disciplines of the East, and to the

Imagery

moving meditation of Tai Ji Chuan. See

Martial arts; Tai Ji Chuan. Individuals in
the creative arts and in sports use imagery
to boost their performance. Studies of
athletes show that physiological changes,
such as increased heart rate, occur during
visualization of performance. The internal
imagery is more effective than watching
films or videotapes of one's own performance. The imagery is effective, however,
only in situations with which the individual has had experience. A baseball player,
for example, would not necessarily demonstrate skill as an archer simply by visualizing shooting an arrow. See Sports,
mystical and psychic phenomena in.
Imagery has played an essential role
in many forms of healing. Sick organs
and parts of the body are manipulated by
vivid images on the part of the patient
and the healer. The ancient Greeks recognized the importance of imagery to
emotional health, and also used dreams
and visions to aid in diagnosis. Paracelsus, one of the leading physicians of the
Renaissance, said the imagination had the
power to cause and cure illness. The Cartesian split between science and religion
in the seventeenth century, however, led
medicine down the path of empiricism
and the external treatment of symptoms.
Western medicine has only recently
begun to reconsider the potential of mental imagery in health care. Since the
1970s imagery has been used increasingly
as an alternative or supplemental treatment for a variety of illnesses and disorders, in particular cancer.
According to surgeon Bernie S. Siegel, imagery is one of the most successful
psychological techniques that can be applied to physical illness. It is unknown
why imagery helps some patients and not
others, but Siegel theorizes that in order
to be heneficial, imagery must be created
by the patient, must be clear, and must be
comfortable to the patient. See Behavioral medicine.
Imagery is employed in Eastern med-

Imagery

itation techniques as a means to transcend thought and reach a unitive consciousness. Images are either geometric
shapes, such as a lotus or yantra, or divinities. Tantric Buddhism in particular
makes extensive use of vivid and complex
imagery. Through yoga concentration exercises, the adept trains himself or herself
to visualize shapes and colors, then
progresses to more complex imagery of
Tibetan letters, deities, and mandalas.
Ritual dramas are projected through imagery that attains a dream-like state,
which the adept controls at will. The visualization demonstrates the illusory nature of the material plane, and that the
physical body is created by the mind. See
Lotus; Mandala; Meditation; Yoga.
While imagery is employed to reach
supreme illumination, the state itself is
characterized by an absence of all
thought, and thus no imagery-one of the
reasons why mystics have such a difficult
time describing their experiences. See
Mystical experiences; Peak experiences.
Meditating upon geometric shapes
has been shown to enhance intuitive faculties. See Intuition.
In magic imagery is used to effect
spells and transcend ordinary consciousness. It is both process- and goaloriented, and employs various symbols
and sigils, which are ritually imbued with
power. By visualizing the symbol or sigil,
the magician accesses the power, spirit, or
deity represented by it. Poet William Butler Yeats, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, recognized the
great power of symbols, not only in
magic but in art as well. The artist, he
believed, could access metaphysical truths
through magic (the use of imagery) and
translate the truths into the concrete imagery and symbolism of art. See Magic.
See also Altered states of consciousness;
Drugs in mystical and psychic experiences; ESP (extrasensory perception) ;
Hypnagogic/hypnapompic
states; Psychic; Shamanism; Symbol.

283

Sources: Jeanne Achterberg. Imagery in

Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine. Boston: Shambhala Publications,

1985; Edwin Bernbaum. "The Way of

Symbols: The Use of Symbols in Tibetan
Mysticism." The Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology no. 2 (1974): 93-110; Mircea
Eliade. Yoga: Immortality and Freedom.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1958; Henry Gris and William Dick. The
New Soviet Psychic Discoveries. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978;
Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The Encyclopedia
of Witches and Witchcraft. New York:
Facts On File, 1989; George Mills Harper.
Yeats's Golden Dawn. 1974. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England: The
Aquarian Press, 1987; Serge King. Imagineering for Health. Wheaton, IL: The
Theosophical Publishing House, 1981;
Stanley Krippner, ed. Advances in Parapsychology 4. Jefferson, NC: McFarland &
Co., 1984; Jack Harrison Pollack. Croiset
the Clairvoyant. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964; Martin L. Rossman. Healing
Yourself: A Step-by-Step Program for Better Health through Imagery. New York:
Pocket Books, 1987; Bernie S. Siegel. Love,
Medicine & Miracles. New York: Harper

& Row, 1986; Will Stapp. "Imagine

That!" New Realities 9, no. 4 (March/April
1989): 43-47; Frances Vaughan. Awakening Intuition. Garden City, NY: Anchor!
Doubleday, 1979; "Effectiveness of Sports
Imagery Linked to Physiological Changes."
Brain Mind Bulletin 14, no. 9 (June 1989):
1-2; Research in Parapsychology 1975:
Abstracts and Papers from the Eighteenth
Annual Convention of the Parapsychology
Association,
1975. Metuchen, NJ: The

Scarecrow Press, 1976.

Incline effect
See Decline/incline effects.

Inspiration
A right-brain phenomenon in which profound insights, information, intuitions,
and creativity burst through to the waking consciousness in startling clarity. In-

284

spiration enables the great leaps of

thought behind the genius, innovation,
and invention in all manner of scientific
and artistic disciplines. Virtually everyone
experiences inspiration; individuals who
work in creative or problem-solving occupations seem blessed with frequent inspiration. Some attribute it to divine
sources, others to supernormal, spirit, or
psychic sources.
Research by the American Society
for Psychical Research (ASPR) in the relationship between creativity and extrasensory perception (ESP) shows three
shared principles: positive motivation, relaxation, and dissociation. Positive motivation is the need to make contact with
material distant in time and space. Relaxation of mind and body is a factor in the
richest experiences of both psi and inspiration. In a dissociated state, the mind is
passive and receptive. The same factors
may be said to apply to many mystical
experiences as well.
Inspiration usually occurs suddenly
and often with overwhelming intensity,
the proverbial bolt out of the blue. However, it is the product of a long period of
incubation of processes beyond the waking consciousness. English psychical researcher Frederic W. H. Myers likened inspiration and genius to an expression of
"subliminal uprush," in which the unconscious self integrates and reorganizes information into new patterns, which are
then pushed into the consciousness in a
rush.
Like a mystical or psychic experience, inspiration is fleeting, lasting only a
few moments or minutes. Ideas must
quickly be written down or acted upon
in order to be preserved, for inspiration
left solely to memory will fade. Inspiration can fuel prolonged periods of heightened creativity. Poet Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow often was inspired as he
drifted off to sleep, and would leap from
his bed to write down his ideas. Mozart
experienced inspiration when he was

Imagery

alone and in "good cheer," such as walking after a good meal, or traveling in a
carriage, or during sleepless nights. At
those times the ideas flowed best and
most abundantly, he said, and he heard
his compositions all at once and not as
successive parts. The music poured into
his thoughts in finished form, needing
only to be committed to paper. Albert
Einstein's breakthrough to the theory of
relativity came with what he called "the
happiest thought of my life," when he
was inspired by the vision of a person
falling off a roof, and the realization that
the person was both at rest and in motion
simultaneously.
The onset of inspiration sometimes is
accompanied by physical sensations, such
as chills, burning, tingling, "electric
glows," and "fuzzy" feelings that something profound is about to happen. Beethoven said his whole body shivered and
his hair stood on end when inspiration
struck. He felt plunged into a mysterious
state of oneness with the world, in which
all the forces of nature were his instruments.
Inspiration can be triggered by meditation, deep prayer, fasting, psychedelic
drugs, and even the onset of acute psychosis. Individuals who are skilled in
meditation, and thus spend more time in
an alpha state, are likely to experience a
higher frequency of inspiration. See Altered states of consciousness; Intuition;
Mystical experiences.
Sources: Nandor Fodor. An Encyclopedia
of Psychic Science. 1933. Secaucus, NJ:
Citadel Press, 1966; Philip Goldberg. The
Intuitive Edge. Wellingborough, Nonh-

amptonshire, England: Turnstone, 1985;

Gardner Murphy. "Creativity and Its Relation to Extrasensory Perception." The Journal of the American Society for Psychical
Research 57, no. 4 (October 1963): 203-

14; Gardner Murphy. "Research in Creativeness: What Can It Tell Us about Extrasensory Perception?" The Journal of the
American

Intuition

Society

for Psychical

Research

60, no. 1 (January 1966): 8-22; Frederic

W. H. Myers. Human Personality and Its
Survival of Bodily Death. Vols. 1 and 2.
1903. New ed. New York: Longmans,
Green & Co., 1954; Edmund Shaftesbury.
Operations of the Other Mind. Meridien,
CT: Ralston University Press, 1924; Lyall
Watson. Beyond Supernature. New York:
Bantam Books, 1987.

Institut fUr Parapsychologie

See Paraspsychology.

Institut Metaphysique
International
See Parapsychology.

International Society for Krishna

Consciousness (ISKON)
See Alternative religious movements.

Intuition
A clear and direct knowing from within,
also referred to as a hunch, a gut feeling,
a gut response, and even luck. Intuition is
a knowingness that comes without explanation as to how or why. It is a rightbrain function involving extrasensory
perception (ESP), but much broader; it
functions on physical, emotional, mental,
and spiritual levels. Each individual experiences intuition differently. There may
be physical sensations, such as tingling of
the skin or a feeling of leaden weights in
the stomach; clairaudient or inner voices;
seemingly inexplicable attractions or
aversions to newly met people; inspirational solutions to problems; feelings of
closeness to God or the Divine Force;
mental imagery; or cues from the environment, such as circumstances that alter
plans.
Some definitions of intuition include
visions, as well as the transmission of information from spirit guides or entities,
though these broad definitions may be
disputed by some.

285

In her studies of ESP, American

parapsychologist Louisa Rhine identified
intuition as one of four forms in which
ESP messages enter the consciousness; the
other three are hallucinations (apparitions), realistic dreams, and unrealistic
(highly symbolic) dreams. See ESP (extrasensory perception). An estimated 30 percent of ESP messages come through intuition, and concern both events happening
at the moment as well as impressions
about the future. See Precognition; Premonition. Rhine specifically excluded
hallucinations from intuition, but said
that hallucinations can accompany intuition.
Intuition is highly active in children
and adolescents, but by adulthood often
becomes repressed in favor of left-brain,
analytic thinking. Yet it invariably proves
to be right. ESP studies of business executives have shown that highly successful
executives have a stronger sense of intuition and rely upon it more than others
who are less successful. Individuals in the
creative arts, who give freer rein to fantasy and imagination, also tend to be
highly intuitive. Intuition is integral to all
forms of divination and psychic consultation. See Divination; Psychic reading.
All individuals possess intuition,
though some are more highly developed
intuitively than others; in Western culture
women have been conditioned to permit
its manifestation more than men. The
more a person recognizes and acts upon
intuition, the stronger it becomes. An individual may cultivate and strengthen intuition by paying closer attention to
whole-body responses to information,
people, and situations; by relaxing both
body and mind through diet, exercise,
yoga, meditation, and prayer; by working
with dreams; and by becoming attuned to
spiritual forces. Intuition also develops in
close personal
relationships.
Edgar
Cayce, who lived in a constant flow of
intuition, said one must "know thyself,"
be close to the Maker, and trust what

286

comes from within. Cayce said that impressions obtained from the physicaV
mental self, rather than the spiritual self,
were not intuition.
According
to
William
Kautz,
founder (1979) and director of the Center
for Applied Intuition in San Francisco, intuitive information comes from the superconscious mind. To reach the conscious
mind, it must travel through the subconscious, where it may be distorted by fears,
memories, and impressions stored there.
By cultivating intuitive growth through
processes previously mentioned, the subconscious obstacles can be reduced or
eliminated.
Environmental factors can enhance
or inhibit intuition. An ideal intuitionstimulating room is painted light green,
aqua, or chartreuse, lit with natural sunlight, and warmed to between 70 degrees
or 73 degrees Fahrenheit with a humidity
between 60 percent and 70 percent. See
Colors. Music aids receptivity to intuition
by stimulating a relaxed state, triggering
memories, and causing right- and leftbrain hemispheres to work in greater
unity. See Music. The presence of plants
helps to keep air clean of irritating pollutants.
Intuition, along with other psychic
skills, has been applied on an increasing
basis since the early 1970s to a wide
range of scientific and business endeavors. Kautz developed a technique called
"intuitive consensus," in which highly
skilled channelers and psychics are given
questions related to problems or situations; the information is validated as
much as possible by empirical methods.
The process has been shown to be effective and save time and money over traditional methods of validating hypotheses.
Similar programs have been employed in
California by the Stanford Research Institute of San Francisco (SRI) and the
Mobius Group of Los Angeles. The importance of intuition in the business
world also has received greater recogni-

Intuition

tion since the 1970s, as a vital tool to

compete and to assess an ever-increasing
flood of data. See Applied psi.

Intuition and Psychology and

Mysticism
Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung described
intuition in Psychological Types (1923)
as "a perception of realities which are not
known to the consciousness, and which
goes via the unconscious." Intuition, he
said, is not merely a perception, but a creative process with the capacity to inspire.
See Inspiration. Intellect requires intuition for maximum performance, and
dream symbols cannot be interpreted
without intuition and imagination.
Jung said human beings orient themselves to the world with four functions:
sensation, feeling, thinking, and intuition,
the latter of which gives information
about both future possibilities and the atmosphere surrounding all experiences;
archetypes are inborn forms of intuition.
See Collective unconscious. Jung used
these four types to classify the psychological types. He described extraverted intuitive types as natural risk-takers who tend
to have little respect for custom, law, or
the feelings of others; they squander their
energies and live in the world of reality.
Introverted intuitive types tend to be artists, mystics, seers, and prophets, and live
with the collective unconscious; they may
seem strange and odd to others.
Psychiatrist
Roberto
Assagioli,
founder of Psychosynthesis, a transpersonal psychology, said only intuition
gives a true psychological understanding
of oneself and others, in an immediate
and holistic sort of way. Assagioli distinguished between day-to-day intuition and
spiritual intuition. He said intuition may
be activated by using the will to quiet the
mind.
In mysticism intuition is considered
the means by which to achieve direct and
immediate truth, and knowledge of the

Intuition

most intimate secrets of life. In deep meditation or contemplation, mystics experience intuitive flashes in which they perceive the ineffable nature of the cosmos,
the Divine Force, the soul, and the unity
of all things. P. D. Ouspensky, who popularized the Gurdjieff Work, gave the
name "Tertium Organum" to what he
called "intuitive logic" or "higher logic,"
defined as the "logic of infinity, the logic
of ecstasy," which he said has existed
since time immemorial in great philosophical systems and holds the key to the
mysteries. The formula of this intuitive
logic may be expressed as "A is both A
and not A," or "A is All." Ouspensky
said Plotinus's treatise, On Intelligible
Beauty, embodies the fullest expression
of this logic. Plotinus said that "every
thing contains all things in itself ... so
that all things are everywhere, and all is
all. ... And the splendour there is infinite." See Imagery; Mystical experiences.
Sources: Roberto Assagioli. Psychosynthesis: A Manual of Principles and Techniques. 1965. New York: Penguin Books,
1976; Harmon Bro. Edgar Cayce on Religion and Psychic Experience. 1970. New

York: Warner Books, 1988; Litany Burns.

Develop Your Psychic Abilities. 1985. New

York: Pocket Books, 1987; Douglas Dean

and John Mihalasky, and Sheila Ostrander
and Lynn Schroeder. Executive ESP. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974; Marcia Rose Emery. "Intuitive Awareness."
1987 Annual Conference Proceedings: Psychical Research and Spirit. Bloomfield, CT:

The Academy of Religion and Psychical Research (1988): 73-89; Frieda Fordham. An
Introduction

to Jung's Psychology.

1953.

Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books,

1985; Shakti Gawain. Living in the Light.
San Raphael, CA: Whatever Publishing,
1986; Robert J. Holder. "Intuition Begins
in the Home." New Realities 8, no. 3
(JanuaryIFebruary 1988): 32-33; Carl G.
Jung, ed. Man and His Symbols. First published in the United States 1964. New
York: Anchor PresslDoubleday, 1988; William H. Kautz and Melanie Branon. Chan-

287

neling: The Intuitive Connection. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987; William H.
Kautz, Sc.D., and Melanie Branon. "The
Intuitive Connection." New Realities 8, no.
4 (March/April 1988): 28-39; Jacques de
Marquette.
Introduction to Comparative
Mysticism. New York: Philosophical Library, 1949; P. D. Ouspensky. Tertium Organum. 1916. Rev. ed. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1981; Louisa Rhine. ESP in Life
and Lab. New York: Collier Books, 1967;
Louisa Rhine. Hidden Channels of the

288

Mind. New York: William Sloane Assoc.,

1961; Edmund Shaftesbury. Operations of
the Other Mind. Meridien, CT: Ralston
University Press, 1924; Samuel Umen. The
World of the Mystic. New York: Philosophical Library, 1988; Alan Vaughan.
"Intuition, Precognition, and the Art of
Prediction."
The Futurist (June 1982):
5-10; Frances Vaughan. Awakening Intuition. Garden City, NY: AnchorlDoubleday, 1979; Lyall Watson. Beyond Supernature. New York: Bantam Books, 1987.

Intuition

Jainism
See Mysticism.

James, William (1842-1910)

American philosopher and psychologist,
a founding member of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR), and
president and vice president of the Society
for Psychical Research (SPR), London.
James was born in New York City,
the oldest of four children in a prestigious, wealthy family. His father, Henry
James, was a renowned philosopher who
eventually followed the religious teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, but only after intense spiritual struggles. One of William James's three brothers, also named
Henry James, was a great novelist.
William James received a privileged
education in London, Paris, Boulogne,
Geneva, and Bonn. He studied art, science, and medicine, and explored the
Amazon before graduating with a medical degree from Harvard at age twentyseven. Two years later he began a brilliant thirty-five-year career at Harvard
teaching physiology, psychology, and
philosophy. He was especially interested
in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution,
and in the works of English philosopher
Herbert Spencer, who aided the acceptance of Darwin's theory. During this period James became recognized as Ameri-

Jainism

ca's foremost living philosopher, as well

as an exceptional writer. He was controversial, however, in his opposition to
American imperialism and the SpanishAmerican War.
His first book, The Principles of Psychology (1890), written over a twelveyear period, developed the pragmatism
founded by Charles Peirce and established James's international reputation. In
this initial work James also documented
his hypothesis that the human mind and
body are basically inseparable. in his
writing about "the symptoms of the
trance" near the end of this book he discusses mystical experience, but only in
the context of "hyperaesthesia of the
senses." He mentions specifically the
"changes in the nutrition of the tissues
[which] may be produced by suggestion."
He describes the "reported noninflammatory character of the wounds made on
themselves by dervishes in their pious orgies." He also mentions "the accounts
handed down to us of the stigmata of the
cross appearing on the hands, feet, sides
and forehead of certain Catholic mystics." He attacks discrimination against
Spiritualism and Christian Scientists. After the publication of the book, James
lost interest in psychology, calling it a
"nasty little subject," adding that "all one
cares to know lies outside it."
As a young man, William James suffered severe mental depression in relation
to his career indecision, and, like his fa-

289

ther, he experienced a "dark night of the

soul." But, at age fifty-seven, he had a
variety of religious experiences while
climbing the Adirondacks, which he described as a meeting in his breast between
the gods of all the nature-mythologies
and moral gods of the inner life. It has
been said that he helped organize the
ASPR because of these Adirondack experiences, but in fact they occurred thirteen
years after the founding of the society.
In 1886 James began his Gifford
Lectures on Natural Religion at the University of Edinburgh. The lectures were
interrupted by his Adirondack experiences and two years of illness that followed. Once completed in 1902, the lectures were published in book form as The
Varieties of Religious Experience: A
Study in Human Nature (1902). In these
milestone writings, James matured the
work he had explored as a "radical empiricist" in the collection of essays he
published previously under the title The
Will to Believe (1897). In his mature
writings he saw personal religious faith as
a pragmatic solution for people in whom
such willingness to believe makes a positive contribution, and proposed that personal faith need not be in conflict with
SCIence.
As early as 1896, James had described his philosophical method as
"pragmatism," which he said concerned
the practical and the concrete; in a choice
between the two, it is better to be concrete than practical. His process and its
context were more revolutionary than his
conclusions, as reflected in the subtitle of
his work, Pragmatism: New Name for
Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907),
which he completed during his last year
at Harvard. Two years later he wrote a
sequel: Pragmatism: The Meaning of
Truth (1909). The same year his A Pluralistic Universe was published. Because
of ill health, he was unable to complete
writing his philosophical system in Some
Problems of Philosophy (1911), which

290

was published posthumously, as were

other writings collected as Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912).
Throughout his metaphysical writings, James envisioned a universe that an
individual can order only through his or
her own experience, through an ongoing
and never-ending evolutionary process.
His leadership of the pragmatist movement was continued by John Dewey
(1850-1952). James never constructed a
system of either philosophy or psychology, but instead wrote on philosophies
and psychologies.
James and Parapsychology
As early as 1869, James was interested in paranormal phenomena, and remained so for the rest of his life. His approach to the paranormal was cautious,
and he was adamant about obtaining
facts. While in London in 1882, James
met the key founders of the SPR- Henry
and Eleanor Sidgwick, Frederic W. H.
Myers, Edmund Gurney, Frank Podmore,
and Richard Hodgson-and
joined in
collaborative research and investigations.
Like the Sidgwicks he set high standards.
He profoundly admired Myers, who became one of his close friends. At Harvard
James joined with William Barrett and
others to found the ASPR in 1885. James
also founded the Lawrence Scientific
School, a part of Harvard, where psychical research was conducted.
The same year James discovered Boston trance medium Leonora E. Piper
through his mother-in-law, Elizabeth
Gibbens, who had been to see Piper and
was impressed with her abilities. James
was so impressed himself that he began
sittings with Piper, and continued sittings
with mediums throughout the rest of his
life. In 1890 he delivered his famous
"white crow" lecture, stating that "to upset the conclusion that all crows are
black, there is no need to seek demonstration that no crows are black; it is suf-

James, William (1842-1910)

ficient to produce one white crow; a single one is sufficient." Piper possessed
"supernormal knowledge," he said, and
thus was a white crow. While James remained committed to empiricism, as he
stated in a lecture in 1896, he also was
concerned with enlarging the scope of science to include phenomena that cannot be replicated and occur according to
no known physical laws. See Piper, Leonora E.
James served as vice president of the
SPR from 1890 to 1910, and from 1894
to 1895 served as president of the society
as well. Around 1898 to 1899, an incident of clairvoyance piqued his curiosity,
and he investigated it. The case concerned
a Mrs. Titus of Lebanon, New Hampshire, who dreamed where the missing
body of a drowned girl could be found.
James approached it with skepticism, but
concluded in a 1907 article in the ASPR's
Proceedings, that the case "is a decidedly
solid document in favor of the admission
of a supernormal
faculty of seership"

I
I

(italics are James's).

With the deaths of Myers in 1901
and Hodgson in 1905, James hoped they
would provide proof of survival after
death. He believed that Hodgson, who allegedly became one of Piper's controls,
provided information that could have
come only from him, but the proof positive was lacking, and James was disappointed. Nonetheless, he spent time editing Hodgson's alleged communications
through Piper.
James had little interest in physical
mediumship such as table-tipping, apports, and slate writing, believing there
were too many possibilities for fraud. His
views of the paranormal were intertwined
with his religious philosophy. He was far
ahead of the scientists of his day in not
accepting the separation of mind and
body.
James lauded Myers's theory of the
subliminal self, a secondary consciousness or psychic region in which higher

James, William

(1842-1910)

mental processes occur. His own theory

of a "hidden self" was developed prior to
Myers's theory of the subliminal self, and
Freud's theory of the unconscious. In Varieties James describes the subliminal self
as "the most important step forward that
has occurred in psychology."
Psychical research convinced James
of the validity of telepathy, but not of
survival after death. He did, however,
consider the possibility of survival.
James died on August 26, 1910, in
his summer home in Chocurua, New
Hampshire. Various people since have
claimed to make contact with him
through mediumship or automatic writing. See American Society for Psychical
Research (ASPR); Mysticism; Parapsychology; Psychology; Society for Psychical Research (SPR).
Sources: Frederic Burkhardt, gen. ed. and
Fredson Bowers, text ed. The Works of
William james: Essays in Psychical Research. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986; Howard M. Feinstein. Becoming William james. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1984; William James. The
Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study
in Human Nature. 1902. London: Long-

mans, Green

& Co., 1911; William James.

The Principles of Psychology. Great Books

of the Western World. Vol. 53. Edited by

Robert Maynard Hutchins. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952; William James.

"A Case of Clairvoyance." Proceedings of
the American Society for Psychical Research 1, part 2 (1907): 221-31; Louis
Kronenberger, ed. Atlantic Brief Lives. Bos-

ton: Little, Brown, 1971; Gardner Murphy

and Robert O. Ballou, eds. William james
on Psychical Research. New York: Viking
Press, 1960; Gerald E. Myers. William
james: His Life and Thought. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1986; J. White.
"William James." In Webster's New Word
Companion to English and American Literature. New York: Popular Library, 1976;
Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook of
Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand

Reinhold, 1977.

291

..,--""m~~ll
'...

Jesus saving Peter (Matthew 14:30-31)

Jesus
In Christianity the son of God, son of
man, Messiah, and redeemer of humankind. Mainstream Christianity believes
the crucifixion and death of Jesus, c. A.D.
33, to be the central reality of humankind's spiritual salvation. By his death
and resurrection from the dead, Jesus restored the relationship between God and
humankind, which had been broken by
original sin: the fall of Adam and Eve as
described in Genesis, the first book of the
Bible. Various modern theories dispute
the divinity and even the sex of Jesus.

The Historical Jesus

Jesus was a historical person who
was documented by several contemporary scribes and historians. The former
include the writers of the New Testament
Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John, and the epistles. The Gospels are
primarily testimonies of faith from the

292

early Christian community rather than

objective historical records, and thus are
admittedly biased as evidence of the historical Jesus. Nonetheless, the use of critical methods of review has led scholars to
at least a few generally accepted views.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, Hebrew
manuscripts discovered in 1947 on the
West bank of the Dead Sea, also include
valuable documentation on Jesus and
early Christianity. Most significant of the
scrolls are the Codex Jung, once the disputed property of the C. G. Jung Institute, and the Gospel of Thomas, a favorite reference of mythologist Joseph
Campbell. The Dead Sea Scrolls are important because they are unaltered by
scribes or translators, and are closest to
the oral tradition that preceded the New
Testament Gospels. The subject of ongoing scrutiny by scholars, the scrolls offer
no major contradictions to the Gospels.
See Essenes; Gnosticism.
Jesus was born a Jew in Galilee,
probably Nazareth, to parents Mary and
Joseph, who were poor (orthodox Christianity presents the birth as virgin). His
actual birth date is calculated to be sometime between 8 B.C. and 4 B.C. Little is
known about his family life, including the
other children of Mary and Joseph. As a
youth Jesus worked in his father's trade
of carpentry. There is no documentation
of what happened to Jesus between the
ages of thirteen and twenty-nine; these
so-called "missing years" are the subject
of continuing speculation and theories.
At about age thirty, he was drawn to
John the Baptist, who prophesied repentance and the coming of the Kingdom of
God. Jesus was baptized by John and
probably became one of his followers,
considering himself also a prophet of the
coming Kingdom. For at least a year, and
perhaps three, he preached, healed the
sick by a laying on of his hands, exorcised demons, and allegedly performed
various miracles, including producing apports.

Jesus

He was known as Jeshua ben Joseph,

and was addressed respectfully as "my
Lord," as rabbis were in his day. He refused to be called Messiah, both because
of its political implications and also because he apparently did not consider himself as such. Yet the Palm Sunday crowds
called him "King of the Jews," a phrase
commonly used by revolutionaries of the
day.
Jesus' growing popularity, and that
of John the Baptist, aroused the ire of
King Herod Antipas and the Romans.
John the Baptist was beheaded. Jesus then
left Galilee for Jerusalem, where he
quickly became popular with the masses.
Fearing that the proclaimed Kingdom of
God would threaten the Roman Empire,
Pontius Pilate, the Roman military governor, arrested Jesus. His crime was his
alleged claim to be "King of the Jews."
He was condemned and crucified.
Jesus' followers believed that on the
third day, he rose from dead and left his
tomb, which was discovered empty, and
after forty days he ascended to heaven.
Furthermore, they believed he would return as the Messiah to save humankind.
A movement started by his followers
within Judaism became the basis of
Christianity. The religion gained a firm
foothold in the fourth century under Emperor Constantine, who in 312 was converted after he saw a vision of the Greek
letters chi and ro appear in the sky, followed by a dream in which Christ appeared to him bearing those letters as a
symbol.
Judaism does not accept the alleged
divinity of Jesus, or that he was the Messiah.

Non-Christian Historical
Sources
Historians contemporary with Jesus
who wrote about him include Flavius Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian

Jesus

whose work includes the earliest nonChristian references to Jesus. Josephus's

references to Jesus in Antiquities of the
Jews, written in the last decade of the
first century, raise problems and serious
challenges. In his first mention of Jesus,
Josephus simply refers to James, "the
brother of Jesus, the so-called Christ."
His second reference is more controversial; some scholars think it was Christianized after its original writing. In its present form it declares that Jesus "led many
Jews and many of the Greeks [who said
that] this was the Christ."
Among Roman historians Tacitus,
Suetonius, and Pliny the Younger refer directly or indirectly to Christ. Later, antiChristian propaganda refers to a false
prophet (Jeshu ha-Nocri) who was
hanged on the eve of the Passover for sorcery and false teaching.

Modern Theories
Various recent studies of Jesus throw
new light on previously unconsidered
possibilities. These are often not developed Christologies, but single-concept
theories presented somewhat out of any
theological context. Most theories that
depart from orthodox Christianity are
routinely rejected by the ecclesiastical
community, sometimes with a great deal
of hostility.
Many academic discussions concerning Jesus are comparatively harmless, and
even uncontroversial, such as Richard A.
Batey's hypothesis that Jesus was an actor, or at least was familiar with contemporary theater. More radical theories include the opinion that Jesus never existed,
or that he did not die on the cross, or
even the extreme notion that he was an
Anti-Christ.
The idea that Jesus was one of the
many Levantine magicians is presented
by renowned Columbia University scholar Morton Smith in his Jesus the Magi

293

cian (1978). The Smith study includes

detailed comparisons between Jesus and
other prophets, pointing out many
unique aspects of Jesus (such as his exorcisms, cures, and eschatological sermons),
which are shown to relate more to contemporary magicians than to traditional
prophets. Smith carefully documents
what "magic" and "magician" meant at
the time of Jesus, and he documents what
contemporary non-Christians said of Jesus. Smith also shows how a subsequent
stylized image of Jesus has been formed
and perpetuated.
Other recent and unique commentaries on the life of Christ include that of the
psychic Edgar Cayce in Edgar Cayce's
Story of Jesus (1968), based on Cayce's
trance readings. Among the more unorthodox revelations is the premise that Jesus had lived prior lives. This theme in
Cayce's readings is developed by Glenn
Sanderfur in Lives of the Master (1988),
in which incarnations of the "Jesus soul"
are said to have included Adam, Enoch,
Hermes, Melchizedek, Joseph (son of Jacob), Joshua, Zend (father of Zoroaster),
and Jesus the Christ.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints' The Book of Mormon, subtitled "Another Testament
of Jesus
Christ," refers to appearances of Jesus
Christ in ancient America following his
resurrection.
Elizabeth Clare Prophet, a channeler
who leads the Church Universal and Triumphant, has written and preached extensively about the "hidden years" of Jesus before his resurrection, especially in
her book The Lost Years of Jesus (1984).
The controversial book cites Buddhist
manuscripts that state Jesus had spent his
"missing years" in India. The manuscripts were discovered in 1887 by Nicolas Notovitch, a Russian journalist. With
several collaborators Prophet also analyzes "eyewitness accounts" of travelers
who recreated the alleged trek of Jesus to
the Himalayas, where he is said to be

294

known as Saint Issa. See Alternative religious movements.

Similarly, Kersten Holger, in the
popular book, Jesus Lived in India
(1986), asserts that at age thirteen Jesus
traveled the Silk Route toward India,
where he studied Buddhism. Holger advances the claims of Ahmadiya Muslims
that Jesus survived the crucifixion, after
which he went to the Near East and then
to India, where he lived to a very old age,
perhaps 120. His tomb allegedly exists in
Kashmir. Holger hinges part of his theories on the controversial Shroud of Turin
as proof that Jesus survived. However,
carbon tests in 1988 proved that the
Shroud was woven around 1350 and is
therefore a fake. See Shroud of Turin.
The question of whether or not Jesus
actually rose from the dead has given rise
to numerous theories. Gospel accounts of
the discovery of the empty tomb are inconsistent. Theories propose that the
wrong tomb was visited; that the body
was stolen; that Jesus' disciples invented
the story of the resurrection; that they
saw hallucinations and not the real Jesus;
and that he survived and somehow escaped. The latter has some modern popular appeal.
Others who claim Jesus survived are
Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and
Henry Lincoln, authors of Holy Blood,
Holy Grail (1982). They theorize that Jesus was married-as was expected of all
rabbis-either
to the Magdalen or to
Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha
and Lazarus, and sired children. According to their scenario, Jesus was alive
when he was removed from the cross,
though he was pronounced dead (presumably Pontius Pilate agreed to this subterfuge). Jesus and his family then were
smuggled to Marseilles by Joseph of Arimathea. There they established a bloodline that intermarried with the Merovingians, a dynasty of Frankish kings that
reached its height from the fifth century
to mid-eighth century.

Jesus

Divinity of Jesus
Various theories question whether
Jesus was truly divine or was merely a
great ~~l'.t,_.The Gospels do not refer to
Jesus as God, but present him as the Messiah, the anointed of the Lord. The divinity of Jesus was confirmed at the Council
of Nicaea in 325, although the affirmation perhaps was influenced more by politics than theology. The Alexandrians at
the council stressed the divinity of Jesus,
and Emperor Constantine, perhaps not
wanting to alienate Alexandria because
of its strategic and commercial values,
agreed. The deification of mortals was
not an extraordinary matter in those
times. Emperors routinely were made
gods following their deaths, and Constantine anticipated this for himself.
Fundamental to nearly every Christian tradition that has evolved since Constantine is the tenet that Jesus is God incarnate who r~om
the dead; to m~st
Chrlsuans he is the one and only GodMan. Traditional Christians believe they
share in this union of God and Man
"through, with, and in" Christ. To most
of those who believe in the Trinity (God
the Father, God the Son, and God the
Holy Spirit), Christ is the incarnated second person of the Trinity (God the Son).
The Trinity is rejected as a doctrine by,
for example, the Unitarian Church, a
Christian denomination that stresses tolerance of difference in religious opinions.

Sex of Jesus

I
I

I
I

Theories demonstrating the possibility that Jesus was female ("Christa") have
been made by various serious scholars
since the Inquisition. The Sacred Virgin
and the Holy Whore (1988), by Anthony
Harris, calls upon both traditional and
original sources. The former include new
interpretations of the reference by Josephus to Jesus being only five feet tall, and
the reference in the Gospel of physician-

evangelist Luke to Jesus' "sweating of

blood" in Gethsemane. Harris builds a
case for Jesus having Turner's syndrome,
a form of degeneration of the gonads.
The less traditional clues considered by
Harris include the study of a female's relics presently in Villeneuve, France, said to
be those of Jesus. Critics have pointed to
the image of a six-foot man on the
Shroud of Turin to discredit the height
theory. That argument, however, has
been discredited along with the Shroud
itself.

Liturgical Presence of Jesus

All the known events in Jesus' life
are commemorated in the Christian liturgical year. The most important are his
birth (on Christmas), his revelation to the
world (on Epiphany), his death (on Good
Friday), his Resurrection (on Easter), and
his return to heaven (the Ascension). Similarly, Pentecost celebrates the coming of
the Holy Spirit to the first Christian communities. The latter phenomenon is of
special interest to the contemporary Pentecostal movement.
While the Christology of the postPentecost Christian community recalled
and commemorated the earthly life of Jesus, it mainly looked forward to his Second Coming (Acts 3:21).
In Catholic and a few Protestant
churches, the recreation of the essential
mysteries is performed by ordained
priests (representing Christ) in the celebration of the Eucharist (called the Mass
by Roman Catholics), which is inspired
by the historic Last Supper of Christ with
his apostles.

Christology and the New Age

The term "New Age" is used by
many modern theologians and clergy to
refer broadly to all time since the first
Pentecost, that is the "new creation" in-

Jesus

295

augurated through the death and resurrection of Christ. In this sense an emphasis is given to the theological virtue of
hope-the stress on the teaching of Jesus
that the future realm of Jewish hope was
now becoming a reality and would (soon)
be consummated. However, the term in
ecumenical theology more recently has
been used to refer to a new understanding
of the church's conciliation (representative government) and catholicity (universality). See Christology.
Sources: Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh,
and Henry Lincoln. Holy Blood, Holy
Grail. New York: Delacourte, 1982; John
Dart. The Jesus of Heresy and History: The
Discovery and Meaning of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Library. Rev. and expanded
edition of The Laughing Savior: The Discovery and Significance of the Nag Hammadi Library. San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1988; Vergilius Ferm, ed. The Encyclopedia of Religion. Secaucus, NJ: Poplar Books, 1955; Jeffrey Furst, ed. Edgar
Cayce's Story of Jesus. 1968. New York:
Berkley Books, 1976; Flavius Josephus. Antiquities of the Jews. Grand Rapids, MI:
Kregel, 1960; Kersten Holger. Jesus Lived
in India. Longmead, Dorset, England: Ele-

ment Books Ltd., 1986; Elizabeth Clare

Prophet. The Lost Years of Jesus. Livingston, MT: Summit University Press, 1984;
James M. Robinson. The New Quest of the
Historical Jesus. Minneapolis: Augsburg
Fortress, 1959; Glenn Sanderfur. Lives of
the Master:

The Rest of the Jesus Story.

Virginia Beach, VA: ARE Press, 1988;

iMorto.!L$.mith. Je.sus the -1vragician. San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978; Ian Wilson. Jesus: The Evidence. San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1984.
l

:.::.>

Jin Shin Do
See Bodywork.

Jin Shin Jyutsu

See Bodywork.

296

Joan of Arc (1412-1431)

French peasant girl who took up arms
against the English on the counsel of disembodied saints, and secured the crown
of France for the dauphin Charles. Called
the Maid of Orleans, she was executed
by the English on charges of relapsed
heresy.
Joan, the daughter of a plowman,
was born in Domremy, a village between
the Champagne and Lorraine districts.
She was thirteen when she began to experience visions and voices. At first the
voices were accompanied by a light. They
instructed her to be a good girl, and go
often to church. The voices then began to
intervene often in her life, and to be accompanied by forms that Joan identified
as the saints Michael, Catherine, and
Margaret. The voices usually came during a waking state, but sometimes roused
Joan from sleep. Sometimes they were unintelligible.
The saints began to give Joan more
instructions and predictions, the latter of
which included her taking up of arms like
a man; her raising of the English siege of
Orleans; the crowning of the dauphin
Charles as King of France; her wounding
in battle; and that a great victory would
be won over the English within seven
years. At the time the dauphin, the son of
Charles VI, was being challenged as successor to the throne by the English, who
controlled portions of France.
On the guidance of the voices, Joan
gained an audience with the dauphin in
1429 and impressed him by telling him
his daily personal prayer to God.
Charles gave her troops, which she
led into battle against the English. She
raised the siege of Orleans in May 1429,
and Charles was crowned Charles VII on
July 17. In gratitude he ennobled Joan
and her family. Among the people she
was hailed as the savior of France. Her
success and popularity were short-lived,
however.

Jesus

I
,

I
I
I

I
I

I
I

Despite Charles's victory, the English

retained a firm hold on Paris and parts of
Normandy and Burgundy. Joan attempted to wrest control of Paris, but she
was ordered to retreat before the battle
was decided.
Joan then attempted to raise the English siege of Compeigne on May 23,
1430, but was wounded, unhorsed, and
captured. The Duke of Burgundy, an ally
of the English, imprisoned her in the
tower of Beaurevoir castle. Joan attempted to escape by jumping out of the
tower-against
the instructions of her
saints-and was apprehended. The duke
then in effect sold her-for
10,000
francs-to the Bishop of Beauvais, also
an English ally, who intended to have her
executed.
Joan, interrogated in her cell, honestly described her communication with
the saints, and said she could see, hear,
kiss, and embrace them. She was charged
with sevenry counts of sorcery, witchcraft, divining, pseudo-prophecy, invoking of evil spirits, conjuring, being given
to the arts of magic, and heresy. She was
tried by thirry-seven ecclesiastical judges.
The charges of sorcery and witchcraft could not be substantiated and were
dropped. The remaining charges were reduced to twelve, chief among them heresy, the wearing of men's clothing, and
the abiliry to see apparitions. In answering questions Joan demurred until permitted to do so by her voices. She admitted to hearing them daily. She remained
unrepentant and was turned over to the
English secular arm for punishment.
On May 24,1431, Joan was publicly
condemned as a heretic, but saved herself
from execution by recanting at the last
moment. She renounced her voices and
promised to obey the church. She was
sentenced to life in prison.
There, however, she was found once
again in men's clothing, and was accused
of dressing so on the instructions of her
saints. More likely, the guards stole her

Joan of Arc
own clothing and left her nothing but
men's clothing to wear. She was condemned as a relapsed heretic on May 28,
1431. On May 30 Joan recanted her confession and was excommunicated. She
was burned at the stake the same day in
Rouen. Charles VII never once attempted
to help her.
According to legend Joan's heart refused to burn, and the executioner discovered it whole in the ashes.
Pope Calixtus III annulled her sentence in 1450. She was canonized in 1920
by Pope Benedict XV. A national festival
in her honor is held in France on the
second Sunday in May. Her feast day is
May 30.
English psychical researcher Frederic
W. H. Myers hypothesized that Joan's visions and voices were externalizations of
her own inner voice coming from her
subconscious, which Myers called "the
subliminal self." He compared her saint
guides to the daimon of Socrates, an inner voice Socrates credited to a guiding
spirit from childhood. Joan's case, Myers
said, exhibited characteristics of motor

I
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i

Joan of Arc (1412-1431)

297

automatism, in which voices are accompanied by an overwhelming impulse to

act in obedience to them. See Automatisms; Spirit guide.
In the early twentieth century, English anthropologist Margaret A. Murray
put forth the theory that Joan of Arc had
been a witch, a member of the "Dianic
cult" of paganism, which Murray maintained had survived intact from classical
times into the Middle Ages and beyond.
Murray said Joan had served as the
leader and "Incarnate God" of her group
of witches. Murray's theories, published
in The

Witch-cult

in Western

Europe

(1921), were severely criticized by scholars and subsequently discredited. See Apparition; Witchcraft.
Sources: Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft. New

York: Facts On File, 1989; Frederic W. H.

Myers. Human Personality and Its Survival
of Bodily Death. Vols. 1 and 2. 1903. New
ed. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.,
1954; Regine Pernoud. Joan of Arc: By
Herself and Her Witnesses. 1962. New
York: Dorset, 1964; Montague Summers.
The Geography of Witchcraft. 1927. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978; Colin
Wilson. Mysteries. New York: Perigee
Books/G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1978.

John of the Cross, St. (also San

Juan de la Cruz) (1542-1591)
Spanish mystic, critically acclaimed as
one of the greatest poets of the Spanish
Renaissance, as well as one of the greatest
Western authorities on mysticism. Born
Juan de Yepes y Alvarez, he was at a
young age attracted to the Carmelites, a
Roman Catholic order founded in the
twelfth century by a group of hermits on
Mount Carmel, Israel, and devoted to the
ancient prophets Elijah and Elisha, who
once lived on the mount. St. John of the
Cross became a Carmelite monk at age
twenty-one and was ordained a priest at
age twenty-five.

298

He became unhappy with the laxity

he saw in the order, and worked toward
reform with his confidant and friend, St.
Teresa of Avila. Together they founded
Carmelite monasteries and advocated disciplinary reforms. The intensely mystical
correspondence between the two expresses in terms of human love the ecstasy and the agony of their extraordinary struggles for personal spiritual
perfection, and specifically the mystical
experience of the union of the human
soul with God.
At age thirty-five St. John of the
Cross was kidnapped and imprisoned by
unreformed Carmelites. He escaped after
two years in prison, and founded the Discalced Carmelites at age thirty-seven.
(The term "discalced" literally refers
to being barefoot; however, discalced
monks in modern times may wear sandals, rather than shoes, as symbolic of
their stricter observance.) He was appointed rector of a new Carmelite college
at. Baeza.
During his two years in prison St.
John of the Cross wrote The Spiritual
Canticle. Shortly after his escape, he
wrote The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The
Living Flame of Love, and his most famous work, The Dark Night of the Soul,
which is a continuation of The Ascent of
Mount

Carmel.

These works describe the soul's mystical journey toward God, a.nd detail
three stages of mystical union: purgation,
illumination, and union. Detachment and
suffering are presented as requirements
for the purification and illumination of
the soul. St. John of the Cross describes
the "dark night of the soul" as "an inflowing of God into the soul, which
purges it from its ignorances and imperfections, habitual, natural, and spiritual,
and which is called by contemplatives infused contemplation, or mystical theology." The phrase "dark night of the soul"
has since become a reference to the state
of intense personal spiritual struggle, in-

Joan of Arc (1412-1431)

cluding the experience of utter hopelessness and isolation.

Trained by Jesuits and thoroughly
familiar with the teaching of St. Thomas
Aquinas, St. John of the Cross brought
scholastic theology and philosophy to his
poetic genius.
His poems and prose commentaries
are classic documents of profound mystical and spiritual theology. He avoided
stylist ornamentations found in the baroque poetry of his day, but did use mystical metaphors typical of the period. To
appreciate the original and progressive
quality of his works as art, they can be
compared to those of his contemporaries,
such as Luis Ponce de Leon (1527-1591),
also a Spanish monk (Augustinian) and
religious poet, but whose typical style is
significantly dated when compared to the
more universal and timeless work of St.
John of the Cross.
His theology flows from and leads to
his poetry. In The Spiritual Canticle, he
describes the "Spiritual Marriage" of
God and the human soul: "In this tranquillity the understanding sees itself
raised upon a new and strange way,
above all natural understanding, to the
Divine light, much as one who, after a
long sleep, opens his eyes to the light
which he was not expecting."
In 1582 St. John of the Cross was
sent to Granada. He became Vicar Provincial of Andalusia. He did not get along
with the Vicar General, who removed
him from authority and had him disgraced. He died on December 14, 1591,
in Ubeda.
St. John of the Cross was canonized
in 1726. Two hundred years later he was
given the extremely rare title Doctor of
the Church, that is, an ecclesiastic of extraordinary learning and saintliness. His
feast day is December 14. See Mysticism,
Christian; Teresa of Avila, St.
Sources: Bede Frost. Saint John of the
Cross: Doctor of Divine Love, an Introduction to His Philosophy, Theology, and Spir-

Julian of Norwich

(also Juliana of Norwich)

ituality. New York: Vantage, 1980; F. C.

Happold. Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology. Rev. ed. New York: Penguin,
1970; Robert Maynard Hutchins, ed.
Great Books of the Western World. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952;
Louis Kronenberger, ed. Atlantic Brief
Lives. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971; St.
John of the Cross. Dark Night of the Soul.
3d rev. ed. Translated by E. Allison Peers
from the critical ed. of P. Silverio de Santa
Teresa, C.D. Garden City, NY: Doubleday/
Image Books, 1959.

Judge, William
See Theosophy.

Judo
See Martial arts.

Julian of Norwich (also Juliana

of Norwich) (1342-after 1416)
Medieval English mystic, known as
"Dame" or "Lady Julian." Apart from
mention of her in wills, and an account of
a visit to her by Margery Kempe, the sole
source of information about Julian is her
own work, The Revelation of Divine
Love. This exists in two manuscript versions: a longer version, found in the British Library in London and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris; and a
shorter version, found in the British Library. The shorter version is also referred
to as Showings. Some scholars have assumed that the shorter version is simply
an abridgement of the longer, but most
scholars consider it an earlier one, written
shortly after the original revelations. The
longer version appears to be the fruit of
Julian's "twenty years, all but three
months" of meditation on the first revelation, as she says in chapter 51.
By her own account, she was thirtyone-and-a-half years old in May 1373

(1342-after

1416)

299

when she received the revelations during

the crisis of a severe illness. She is mentioned in wills dated 1404, 1415, and
1416, where she is further designated as a
"recluse atte Norwyche," being enclosed
in an anchorhold at the Church of St. Julian and St. Edward, Conisford. This
church belonged to the Benedictines of
Carrow, and so it is possible that she had
spent some time as a Benedictine nun before embarking on the solitary life of an
anchoress, but the evidence is insufficient.
Evidence also is lacking of the date of her
reclusion, whether before or after the revelations, and of the exact date of her
death. Though she is mentioned in various Benedictine martyrologies, the same
lack of biographical data has prevented
the institution of a formal cause of her
beatification.
Julian's book shows certain similarities with the works of fourteenth-century
English mystic Walter Hilton, bur either
might have influenced the other-or the
similarities may simply be the result of a
similar experience of the divine. Julian
quotes the Bible with the freedom and familiarity of one who is intimate with it.
There are also traces of the concepts derived from the Neoplatonic works of the
early Christian writer Pseudo-Dionysius,
but those were part of the whole medieval mystical tradition. When all allowances for influences and sources have
been made, The Revelations of Divine
Love remains a unique and singular but
on the whole orthodox work.
According to Julian's account of the
original revelations, she had at one time
in her youth asked God, if it was his will,
that she be given a severe illness so that
she might be purged of worldly desires
and live the rest of her life more worthily.
She had also asked, again subject to the
divine will, to have a vision or other experience of the Passion of Christ, that she
might truly understand it. She had forgotten these requests when, halhvay
through her thirty-first year, she fell

300

gravely ill, received the last rites, and believed herself to be dying. At that point
she began to see visions of the suffering
of Christ, of the role of the Blessed Virgin, and of the whole plan of salvation,
accompanied by spiritual understanding
of these matters. The entire experience
happened quickly; Julian writes that she
saw God "in the twinkling of an eye." It
was accompanied by such extreme pain
that she later said that had she known it
would be so bad, she never would have
asked for it, nor would counsel anyone
else to ask for the same.
Julian reportedly felt the lower part
of her body die away (she may have suffered a heart attack or experienced a kundalini awakening). She asked to be
propped up so that she could fix her gaze
on a crucifix. She felt death take over as
her chamber constricted to a dark and
narrow space around her bed. Then the
visions began: She saw the crown of
thorns upon the head of the crucified Jesus, and a shower of dark red pellets of
blood running down from it like a summer rain, until the entire chamber was
filled with blood. The sixteen visions and
their teachings sprang from Jesus
crowned by thorns, his skin ripped by
flagellation. They occurred as she followed the blood, which first rushed to
hell, where she felt the Devil clutching her
throat, smelled his breath, and saw his
face and claws. The realm of the damned
was dark with devils all around. Then the
blood rushed upward to a high mountain
cathedral (the heart), where Christ sat on
a throne (coming to live in the heart).
This cosmos was filled with light.
Julian spent the next twenty years
contemplating these visions. In her writings she does not present her revelations
systematically; images and ideas recur
and lead to one another in a way that has
its own inner order. She interprets all her
images in terms of the scriptures and
Christian theology. Certain themes are
typically hers: Though she acknowledges

Julian of Norwich (also Juliana of Norwich) (1342-after 1416)

the insignificance of everything else compared to God ("all that is made" is

shown to her like "a little thing, the size
of a hazel-nut"),
yet she also maintains,
with Genesis, the goodness of all he has
made: His works "are wholly good," and
all that is made "exists ... because God
loves it."
Julian is deeply aware of God as the
Trinity in Unity of orthodox
Catholic
Christianity,
and of Jesus as the Second
Person of that Trinity incarnate. More
unusual, but far from unique, is her reference to Jesus as "Mother":
St. Anselm
had used the same image, and there are
scriptural precedents
(Isaiah 49: 15 and
66:13; Matthew 23:37; and also the passages in the Deuterocanonical
books, accepted by the Roman church as inspired,
where Wisdom is personified as female,
Wisdom 7:22-8:1 and Sirach 24:1-22,
30-34). God is also described as both
"homely" and "courteous"
in his dealings with the soul, which is his royal city,
where he delights to dwell.
But first and last it is love that is
Julian's message: God's love for his elect
(Julian is puzzled by sin and damnation,
and her solutions are not quite in accord
with correct Catholic doctrine, to which,
nevertheless, she submits and clings fast),
and the soul's need to return that love:
"Wouldst thou witten thy Lord's meaning? Wit it well: Love was his meaning"
(chapter 86).
It has been suggested that Julian's
revelations are shamanic in nature, involving such hallmarks
as the "initiatory" illness, descent to the underworld,
exposure to horror and suffering, and
spiritual
rebirth.
After her experience
people from all over were drawn to her,
though she confined herself to a cell. She
had a great reputation
as a healer and
counselor.
Margery
Kempe, who was
born in 1373, the year of the revelations,
recorded her visit to Julian in about 1403
for spiritual
counsel.
See Mysticism;
Mysticism, Christian.

Jung, Carl Gustav

(1875-1961)

Sources: P. Franklin Chambers. Juliana of

Norwich: An Introductory
Appreciation
and an Interpretive Anthology.
London:
Victor Gollancz, 1955; Julian of Norwich.
Revelations of Divine Love. Translated
into modern English and with an introduction by Clifton Wolters. Harmondsworth,
England: Penguin Books, 1966; Julian of
Norwich.
Revelations
of Divine Love.
Translated by James Walsh. New York:
Harper & Row, 1961; Julian of Norwich.
Showing of God's Love: The Shorter Version of "Sixteen Revelations
of Divine
Love." Edited and partially modernized by
Sr. Anna Maria Reynolds. London: Longmans, 1958; Julian of Norwich. Showings.
New York: Paulist Press, 1978; Paul Molinari, S.]. Julian of Norwich: The Teaching
of a 14th Century English Mystic. New
York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1958.

Jung, Carl Gustav (1875-1961)

Swiss psychiatrist who founded analytical
psychology. Carl G. Jung's introspection
of humankind's
inner realms was fueled
to a large extent by his own personal experiences
involving
dreams,
visions,
mythological
and religious symbolism,
and, to some extent, paranormal
phenomena. Essentially,
he took Sigmund
Freud's knowledge
of the unconscious
and brought it into spiritual realms.
Jung was born on July 26, 1875, in
Kesswil, Switzerland. Four years later the
Jung family moved to Klein-Huningen
near Basel. Jung's entry into mystical and
mysterious realms began early in childhood in dreams. As a boy he began to feel
he had two personalities; one, a wise old
man, stayed with him and had increasing
influence on his thought throughout
his
entire life. See Archetypes.
He experienced precognition,
clairvoyance,
psychokinesis, and hauntings.
Perhaps his
psychic sensitivity was a hereditary gift:
His mother and maternal grandmother
both were known as "ghost seers." His
grandmother,
Augusta Preiswerk,
once

301

fell into a three-day trance at age twenty,

during which she communicated with
spirits of the dead and gave prophecies.
Jung's mother, Emilie, was as a child ordered by her father, a minister, to sit behind him while he wrote his sermons so
that he would not be disturbed by ghosts.
She kept a personal journal of paranormal occurrences that took place in the
house in which Jung grew up.
In 1898 Jung began to take serious
interest in occult phenomena. He decided
to become a psychiatrist in 1900 and did
his medical training at Basel, Switzerland.
When he discovered that his sixteen-yearold cousin had become a practicing medium, he invited her to perform spiritualistic experiments for study. His notes
later became the basis for his doctoral
thesis and first published paper, "On the
Psychology and Pathology of So-Called
Occult Phenomena" (1902).
He married Emma Rauschenbach,
heiress to a wealthy manufacturing family fortune, in 1903. In 1906 he published
one of his most significant early works,
The Psychology of Dementia Praecox.
Jung became interested in mythology
around 1909, the year he resigned a post
at Burgholzki Mental Clinic, where he
had been practicing for nine years. During that year he traveled to the United
States with Freud and received an honorary degree from Clark University in
Worcester, Massachusetts. (lung also received an honorary doctorate from Harvard in 1936, from Oxford in 1938, and
from the University of Geneva in 1945.)
In 1910 he was appointed permanent president of the International Congress of Psycho-Analysis. Jung resigned
this position in 1914, one year after he
also resigned a professorship at the University of Zurich. After these breaks with
the establishment, Jung experienced what
mythologist Joseph Campbell described
as "intense preoccupation" with images
of the unconscious and with mythology
in relation to dreams.

302

In May 1910 the Society for Psychical Research in London published Jung's
paper "The Psychological Foundations of
Belief in Spirits." In it he identified three
main sources for the belief in spirits: the
seeing of apparitions, mental disease, and
dreams, the most common of the three.
He said spirits of the dead are created
psychologically upon death: Images and
ideas remain attached to relatives and are
activated to form spirits by intensity of
emotion.
From 1907 to 1913, Jung was
greatly influenced by Sigmund Freud.
Jung once appeared to demonstrate psychokinetic powers in the presence of
Freud during a heated discussion. See
Freud, Sigmund. After several years of
close contact, Jung parted company with
Freud. A breaking point came when
Freud asked Jung to interpret a dream he
had, but refused to divulge a key association because it would damage Freud's
authority. Jung had significant disagreements with Freud, chiefly over Freud's
emphasis on sexuality as the basic, driving urge for people; his dismissal of spiritual aspects of the psyche and of the
paranormal; and concerning the meaning
of "symbol."
The break with Freud had a profoundly disturbing effect on Jung, and he
suffered a six-year-Iong breakdown during which he had psychotic fantasies. He
was called a "mystic" -a pejorative label
at the time-and
was shunned by his
peers. Freud had accused Jung of death
wishes against him, after he had
"fainted" twice in Jung's presence; Jung
denied the charge, but after his break
with Freud he developed a "Judas complex" about their relationship. He had
highly symbolic and Wagnerian-like
dreams in which he killed Freud.
During this psychotic phase of Jung's
life, he experienced numerous paranormal phenomena. He became immersed in
the world of the dead, which led to his
Seven Sermons to the Dead, written un-

Jung, Carl Gustav (1875-1961)

der the name of the second-century Gnostic writer, Basilides, and published in
1916. He described the spirits of the dead
as "the voices of the Unanswered, Unresolved and Unredeemed." Also during
this phase, the distinction between his
dreams and visions eventually faded out
for Jung, and he later recorded them in
detail, especially in his autobiographical
account, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
(published posthumously in 1963).
Following his emergence from this
period, Jung pursued work on his own
theories. One of the most important was
his general theory of psychological types,
first published in 1921. He distinguished
two basic psychological types, extroverts
and introverts, who could be grouped according to four basic functions: thinking,
feeling, sensation, and intuition. Other
significant theories include the anima
(feminine principle) and animus (masculine principle), psychic images that exist
in everyone as feminine and masculine aspects; the collective unconscious; and archetypes. See Collective unconscious.
Jung took issue with Freud's definition of symbols as conscious contents
that provide clues to the unconscious
background. Such are signs or symptoms,
Jung said, while symbols are much different and should be understood as an intuitive idea. See Symbol.
He also took issue with Freud on the
topic of dreams. Freud saw dream symbolism as universal and said therapists
could interpret them. Jung maintained
that dreams are the private property of
the dreamer and speak a private language
that only the dreamer can interpret; some
dreams, however, come from the collective unconscious and belong to all humankind. See Dreams.
Mythology became especially important to Jung around the time of his writing one of his major works, Symbols
of Transformation (1911-12). See Mythology.
Jung was intensely interested in

Jung, Carl Gustav (1875-1961)

Gnosticism, particularly its sophia, or

wisdom, the desirable elements once rejected by the church along with its heretical elements. His explorations of Gnosticism, joined with his interest in
alchemy, paved the way for a modern revival of interest in the spiritual dimensions of both subjects. See Alchemy;
Gnosticism.
In 1927 Jung's interest in mandala
symbolism developed. See Mandala. In
1928 Jung collaborated with Sinologist
Richard Wilhelm on studies of the Chinese Taoist alchemical text, The Secret of
the Golden Flower. His commentary on
this text, published in 1929, is another of
his major works.
Jung became president of the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy in
1933, after three years as vice president.
His major writing that year was "A Study
in the Process of Individuation," his paper for the first Eranos Meeting, an annual gathering of great thinkers held at
the lecture hall built at the residence of
Olga Froebe-Kapteyn on the shore of
Lago Maggiore in Switzerland. Jung's papers for each of the following three annual Eranos meetings were likewise major works: "Archetypes of the Collective
Unconscious" (1934), "Dream Symbols
of the Individuation Process" (1935), and
"Religious Ideas in Alchemy" (1936). His
Psychology and Alchemy (1944) was
based on the 1935 and 1936 Eranos papers. His last major work in this period
was The Psychology of the Transference
(1946).
In 1944 Jung had a near-death experience (NDE) following a heart attack.
As he lay in bed, a nurse observed him
surrounded by a bright halo of light, the
same phenomenon she had witnessed
around other patients who were dying.
Jung recovered, and recounted later what
happened to him during that time.
He felt he was floating high over the
Earth and could see from the Himalayas
across the Middle East to a part of the

303

Mediterranean. He became aware that he

was leaving the Earth. Then he saw near
him a huge block of stone, which had
been hollowed out into a temple. To the
right of the temple entrance, a black
Hindu was sitting in a lotus position.
Jung knew he was expected inside the
temple. As he drew closer, he felt his
earthly desires and attitudes fall away
from him, and he became aware that inside he would understand the meaning of
his life. At that moment his earthly doctor appeared in the form of the basileus
of Kos, the healer at the temple of Aesculapius, the Roman god of healing (Aesclepius in Greek), telling him he had to
return to earth. Jung did so but most unhappily and with great resentment
against his doctor. He knew the doctor
was going to die, however, because he
had manifested in what Jung interpreted
as his primal form. The doctor did die
soon after. See Near-death experience
(NDE).
Following the NDE Jung experienced a remarkable transformation in
which he felt he was in the happy state
felt by the unborn. He had a vision in
which he was Adam and a Jew, and his
nurse was his Magna Mater, who proceeded to teach him the mystery of the
hieros gamos, or sacred marriage with the
divine.
After the death of his wife in 1955,
Jung began building a castle of stone on
his newly acquired property in Bollingen,
Switzerland. He carved numerous alchemical and mystical symbols into the
stone. The ongoing building and altering
of his tower signified for him an extension of consciousness achieved in old age.
The tower and its symbolic role in his life
is a leitmotif in Jung's writings. During
his retirement at Bollingen, Jung reworked many earlier papers and developed further his ideas on many topics
that are now of intense interest, including
mandala symbolism, the I Ching, alchemy, synchronicity, and especially the

304

phenomenology of the self, the latter culminating in the major work Aion in
1951. See Alchemy; I Ching; Synchronicity.
In Aion Jung summarized the roles
of the "archetypes of the unconscious"
and commented especially on the Christ
image as symbolized in the fish. While
there may not be a Jungian Christology
per se, Jung's work had a major influence
on Christian scholarship. See Christology. Religious themes are developed by
Jung in another major work of the period, "Answer to Job" (1952) as well as
in Mysterium
Coniunctionis
(19551956), which concerns alchemy. In the
latter, his last masterpiece, he states that
he was satisfied that his psychology was
at last "given its place in reality and established upon its historical foundations."
Jung believed in reincarnation; he
drew many of his beliefs from the Tibetan
Book of the Dead. He believed his own
incarnation was not due to karma, however, but "a passionate drive for understanding in order to piece together mythic
conceptions from the slender hints of the
unknowable"
(Nandor Fodor, Freud,
fung and the Occult, 1971). He feared
greatly for the future of humankind, and
said the only salvation lay in becoming
more conscious. He said he believed his
work proved that the pattern of God exists in every person.
Three days before he died, Jung had
the last of his visionary dreams, and a
portent of his own impending death. In
the dream he had become whole. A significant symbol was tree roots interlaced
with gold, the alchemical symbol of completion. When he died in his room in Zurich on June 6, 1961, a great storm arose
on Lake Geneva and lightning struck his
favorite tree.
Jungian principles have been found
to be applicable to nearly all academic
disciplines from mythology to religion to
quantum physics, and to nearly all as-

fung, Carl Gustav (1875-1961)

pects of modern life. His prolific writings

have been collected into twenty volumes
plus a supplement. See Grail, the; Psychology.
Sources: Joseph Campbell, ed. The Portable fungo New York: Penguin, 1971; Nandor Fodor. Freud, Jung and the Occult. Se-

caucus, NJ: University Books, 1971;

Nandor Fodor. Between Two Worlds.
West Nyack, NY: Parker Publishing, 1964;
Frieda Fordham. An Introduction to Jung's
Psychology. 1953. 3d ed. Harmondsworth,
England: Penguin Books, 1966; Calvin S.
Hall and Vernon J. Nordby. A Primer on
Jungian Psychology.
New York: New

Jung, Carl Gustav

(1875-1961)

American Library, 1973; C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Recorded and

edited by Aniela Jaffe. New York: Random
House, 1961; C. G. Jung, ed. Man and His
Symbols. First published in the United
States 1964. NY: Anchor PresslDoubleday,
1988; Peter O'Connor. Understanding
Jung, Understanding Yourself. New York!
Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1985; Andrew
Samuels, Bani Shorter, and Fred Plaut. A
Critical

Dictionary

of Jungian

Analysis.

London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986;

"c. G. Jung-A Mystic? Conversations
with Aniela Jaffe." Psychological Perspectives 19, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 1988):
80-91.

305

K
Kabbalah (also Cabala,
Kabala, Qabalah)
The mysticism of classical Judaism. Kabbalah is Hebrew for "that which is received," and refers to a secret oral tradition handed down from teacher to pupil.
The term "Kabbalah" was first applied to
secret, mystical teachings in the eleventh
century by Ibn Gabirol, a Spanish philosopher, and has since become applied to
all Jewish mystical practice. Though the
Kabbalah is founded on the Torah (the
Jewish scriptures and other sacred literature), it is not an intellectual discipline,
nor does it instruct the mystic to withdraw from humanity to pursue enlightenment. The Kabbalist seeks union with
God while maintaining a full social, family, and community life within the framework of traditional Judaism.
According to legend God taught
Kabbalah to angels. After the Fall they
taught it to Adam in order to provide humankind with a way back to God. It was
passed to Noah, then to Abraham and
Moses, who in turn initiated seventy Elders.
The theosophical and mystical lore
that grew into the Kabbalah appears to
have been influenced by Gnosticism and
Neoplatonism.
The earliest form of mystical literature is found in the tradition of the Merkabah mystics (c. 100 B.C.-A.D. 1000).
Merkabah
means
"God's
Throne-

306

Chariot" and refers to the chariot of

Ezekiel's vision. The goal of the Merkabah mystic was to enter the throne world,
which was reached after passing through
seven heavenly mansions. Merkabah has
been called a shamanistic mysticism because of its characteristics. It required
fasting and repetitious recitation of
hymns and prayers to achieve a trance
state. The Merkabah-rider then sent his
soul upward (later mystics said downward) to pierce the veil around the Merkabah throne. The soul was assailed along
the way by evil demons and spirits; to
protect it the IDystic prepared in advance
magical talismans and seals and recited
incanta tions.
The historical origin of the true Kabbalah centers on a short book titled Sefer
Yetzirah (Book of Creation). Its exact
date is unknown; it was in use in the
tenth century, but may have been written
as early as the third century. It is attributed to Rabbi Akiba, whom the Romans
martyred. Sefer Yetzirah presents a discussion on cosmology and cosmogony,
and sets forth the central structure of the
Kabbalah. It says that God created the
world by means of thirty-two secret paths
of wisdom, which are ten sephirot and
the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The sephirot apparently originally referred to numbers, and later were
interpreted as emanations by which all reality is structured. The first sephirah emanated from God, and at least the follow-

Kabbalah (also Cabala, Kabala, Qabalah)

I
I
i

Ii

ing three from each other. The rest represent dimensions of space. Together they
constitute a unity. The twenty-two letters
of the alphabet and their sounds comprise
the foundation of all things.
In 917 a form of practical Kabbalism was introduced by Aaron ben Samuel in Italy; it later spread through Germany and became known as German
Kabbalism or Early Hasidism. It drew
upon the Merkabah practices in that it
was ecstatic, had magic rituals, and had
as primary techniques prayer, contemplation, and meditation. The magical power
of words assumed great importance, and
gave rise to the techniques of gematria,
notarikon, and temura. See Gematria.
The German Kabbalists held that
God was too exalted for people to comprehend. However, mystics could perceive God's presence in the form of a divine fire or light, which is the first
creation, Shekinah, the Mother, God's female aspect. The mystic sought to unite
with this glory. The German Kabbalists
also conceived of four worlds: God's
glory, angels, the animal soul, and the intellectual soul.
Classical Kabbalah was born in the
thirteenth century in Provence, France,
and moved into Spain, where it was developed most extensively by medieval
Spanish Jews. The primary work from
which classical Kabbalah developed is
Sefer ha-Zohar (Book of Splendor), attributed to a second-century sage, Rabbi
Simeon bar Yohai, but actually written
between 1280 and 1286 by the Spanish
Kabbalist, Moses de Leon. According to
the story, Rabbi Simeon and his son,
Eleazar, persecuted by the Roman emperor Trajan, hid in a cave for thirteen
years where the Ben-Gurion Airport now
stands in Lod, Israel. After Trajan's death
the two emerged, but Rabbi Simeon was
so distraught at the lack of spirituality
among Jews that he returned to the cave
to meditate. After a year a voice told him
to let the ordinary people go their own

way, but to teach those who were ready.

The Zohar is said to comprise those
teachings, which were recorded by disciples.
The Zohar presents God as Ein-Sof
("without end"), who is unknowable and
beyond representation. God created the
world out of himself. The aim of humankind is to realize union with the Divine.
All things are reflected in a higher world,
and nothing can exist independently of all
else. Thus human beings, by elevating
their souls to unite with God, also elevate
all other entities in the cosmos.
The sephirot are attributes of God
that are described by the names of God;
they are language that substitutes for
God. They form the central image of
Kabbalistic meditation, the Tree of Life.
The Tree shows the descent of the divine
into the material world, and the path by
which people can ascend to the divine
while still in the flesh. Each sephirah is a
level of attainment in knowledge. The
seven lower sephirot-Sovereignty, Foundation, Endurance, Majesty, Beauty,
Loving-kindness and Judgment-correspond to seven energy centers located
along the spine in the human body (compare to Chakras), and the top threeUnderstanding, Wisdom, and Crown
(Humility)-are
mystical steps to unity
with God.
Each sephirah is divided into four
sections in which operate the Four
Worlds, which constitute the cosmos:
Atziluth, the world of archetypes, from
which are derived all forms of manifestation; Briah, the world of creation, in
which archetypal ideas become patterns;
Yetzirah, the world of formation, in
which the patterns are expressed; and Assiah, the world of the material.
The sephirot also comprise the sacred, unknowable, and unspeakable personal name of God: YHVH (Yahweh),
the Tetragrammaton. So sacred is the
Tetragrammaton that other names, such
as Elohim, Adonai, and Jehovah, are sub-

Kabbalah (also Cabala, Kabala, Qabalah)

307

stituted in its place in scripture. The letters YHVH correspond to the Four
Worlds.
Through contemplation and meditation, the Kabbalist ascends the Tree of
Life. Only the most stable and ethical,
who have first purified their bodies,
minds, and spirits, are permitted to approach. The sephirot are contemplated by
visualizing them vibrating with color
(which represents various qualities), together with images of their corresponding
Hebrew letters of the divine names of
God, and the planets, angels, metals,
parts of the body, and energy centers.
Breath and sound also are utilized to raise
consciousness. The techniques are similar
to those of Eastern yoga disciplines. Like
yogis, the early Kabbalists experienced illuminations of light and heat that resemble descriptions of kundalini awakenings.
See Kundalini; Spiritual emergence;
Yoga.
The "short path" to enlightenment
was developed by another thirteenthcentury Spanish Kabbalist, Abraham ben
Samuel Abulafia (b. 1240). At age thirtyone Abulafia received a prophetic call,
and became a pupil of the mystic Baruch
Togarmi. Thus educated, Abulafia set
down his own form of tzeruf, or letter
permutation.
Hebrew letters have corresponding
attributes and numerical values which,
when meditated upon, unify the mind
and body and bring the mystic into contact with higher planes. To meditate on
letters is to meditate on all of Creation,
and to achieve one with the whole. Abulafia's tzeruf enabled mystics to attain
meaning beyond meaning.
The ideal time to begin tzeruf was
midnight. The mystic would begin writing sacred letters, combined with visualizations of the Tree and breathing techniques. A kundalini-type of ecstasy
reportedly would occur quickly. The ecstasy, called shefa ("divine influx"), descended into the mystic (as opposed to

308

the rise of kundalini), warming his heart

and bathing him in sensations of air,
heat, rushing water or oil. (The Merkabah mystics reported the same phenomena.) Like short paths to yoga, tzeruf
posed dangers of destruction to those
who were insufficiently prepared or attempted too much too soon.
Abulafia's school was not followed
by many, yet his teachings did have widespread impact on meditative practices.
He ran afoul of his peers, however, by
revealing the secret pronunciations of the
sacred names of God, including the Tetragrammaton, thus unlocking powerful
sounds with which to obtain enlightenment.
By the sixteenth century, tzeruf instructions were obscured by metaphor in
texts, and by the eighteenth century, the
practice among Kabbalists all but
stopped. Tzeruf is not practiced in modern times.
The Spanish Kabbalah, the teachings
of the Zohar, spread into Europe in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. After
the expulsion of Jews from Spain in
1492, Kabbalah study became more public. The most important post-expulsion
figure to influence what was to become
modern Kabbalah was Isaac Luria Ashkenazi (1534-1572),
called the Ari.
Luria, a student of the great Kabbalist
Moses Cordovero (1522-1570),
conceived of bold new theories that gave the
Kabbalah a new terminology and complex new symbolism. He emphasized letter combinations as a medium for meditation and mystical prayer.
The Hasidic movement emerged
from the Lurianic Kabbalah, and made
Kabbalah accessible to the masses. The
Hasidim are the only major branch of
modern Judaism to follow mystical practices. The principle figure in this emergence was Israel ben Eleazar (16981760), called the Baal Shem Tov ("the
Master of the Holy Name"), whose
teaching centered on devekuth, or cleav-

Kabbalah (also Cabala, Kabala, Qabalah)

ing to God, but in a more personal and

emotional way than before. Devekuth
centers in the here and now; thus concentrated awareness and prayer were reinterpreted in order to be made part of
everyday life. For the Hasidim constant
prayer is the vehicle to mystical awareness.
For about three hundred years, from
1500 to 1800, the Kabbalah was considered to be the true Jewish theology. Interest in the Kabbalah among Jews began
to decline after the eighteenth century.
There has been some renewed interest
since the Zionist revival in modern times.
The Reconstructionist movement, founded in 1922 by Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, has borrowed from Hasidic traditions in espousing a more mystical
Judaism. Reconstructionism has grown
very slowly, and as of 1989 accounted for
only 1 percent of the 5.8 million Jews in
the United States.
Modern historians have acknowledged the Kabbalah's profound impact
on the development of Judaism and in
Jewish life, especially in the areas of
prayer, custom, and ethics. Kabbalistic
motifs penetrated prayer from about the
mid-seventeenth century onward, and
also inspired liturgies and rituals. Jewish
folk belief absorbed Kabbalistic concepts
such as the transmigration of souls (see
Reincarnation), demonology, and the
Messjah. In particular, the Zohar and the
Lurianic tradition provided rich sources
for folk customs.

Kabbalah and Western

Occultism
The Kabbalah has left an indelible
stamp on the Western magical tradition.
Magical applications grew first out of
German Kabbalism and then Lurianic
Kabbalism. Christian occultists were attracted to the magical amulets, incantations, demonology, seals, and letter permutations, and used practical Kabbalah

Kachinas

as the basis for ritual magical texts. The

Tetragrammaton was held in great awe
for its power over all things in the universe, including demons.
Beginning in the late fifteenth century, Kabbalah was harmonized with
Christian doctrines to form a Christian,
or Western, Kabbalah which supposedly
proved the divinity of Christ. Cornelius
Agrippa von Nettesheim included the
Kabbalah in his De Occulta Philosophia
(1531). Also in the sixteenth century, alchemical symbols were integrated into
the Christian Kabbalah.
Interest in the Kabbalah received renewed attention in the nineteenth century
from non-Jewish occultists such as Francis Barrett, Eliphas Levi, and Papus. The
Kabbalah influenced the Hermetic Order
of the Golden Dawn; Dion Fortune called
it the "Yoga of the West." Western occultists have linked the Kabbalah to the
Tarot and astrology, but these relationships are spurious and have no place in
true Kabbalah.
Sources: Harold Bloom. Kabbalah and
Criticism. New York: Continuum, 1984;
Perle Epstein. Kabbalah: The Way of the
Jewish Mystic. Boston: Shambhala, 1988;
Dion Fortune. The Mystical Qabalah.

1935. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser,

1984; Pinchas Giller. "Kabbalah & Jewish
Mysticism." Gnosis no. 3 (Fall/Winter
1986-1987): 10-12; Ari L. Goldman. "Reconstructionist Jews Turn to the Supernatura1." The New York Times (February 19,
1989): 26; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft. New
York: Facts On File, 1989; Charles Ponce.
Kabbalah: An Introduction and Illumination for the World Today. Wheaton, IL:

The Theosophical Publishing House, 1973;

Gershom Scholem. Kabbalah. New York:
New American Library, 1974.

Kachinas
Among the Pueblo supernatural beings or
the spirits of the ancestral dead, who
bring rain and perform other mostly ben-

309

eficial functions. "Kachina" comes from

the Hopi word kachi, which means
"spirit father," "life," or "spirit." Spirit
fathers are associated with the dead.
Scholars have debated whether kachinas
originally were ancestral dead or rain
spirits-the associations between the two
are intertwined. Kachinas are not identified with gods, but are considered the
gods' intermediaries.
Kachinas were known in pre-Spanish
days throughout what is now New Mexico and Arizona, in every village except
Taos. The concept may have been introduced from Mexico. In mythological
times the kachinas left their home in the
sacred San Francisco Mountains and personally visited the villages, where they
danced and interacted with the living.
They quit their personal visits because
they often had to take back with them the
souls of the newly dead. Hence they directed that they should be impersonated,
and kachinas became associated with a
cult of elaborately costumed and masked
male dancers. By donning their masks,
they become imbued with the kachinas'
supernatural powers. The masks must
never be worn outside of ceremony, for
to do so invites death. See Masks.
Kachina cult beliefs vary among
Pueblo tribes. The kachinas' chief function is to bring rain for the crops, but
they also discipline and entertain children. Not all kachinas are benign-some
are said to attack towns and murder the
living.
Among the Zufii kachinas are called
koko. They are the spirits of the dead
who bring rain when they approach villages as ducks, the form assumed by gods
(or emissaries of the gods) when they
travel. Some koko supervise hunts. Most
reside in a great village at the bottom of
the mythical Lake of the Dead, which is
identified with a real lake called Listening
Spring, located at the junction of the
Zufii and Little Colorado rivers. Some
koko live in the mountains. The Zufii of-

310

fer prayers to the koko and throw offerings of food into the river, to be carried
to the Lake of the Dead.
The Zufii distinguish three categories
of koko: (1) people who have recently
died, and who mayor may not make
rain; (2) ancestors who have been dead
for quite a while, and who are petitioned
for health, rain, and good corn crops;
and (3) the original koko, who comprise
children who died by drowning after the
Emergence of people from the Underworld (the Zufii Creation myth) and
those who died and returned to the Underworld.
Not all spirits of the Zufii dead become koko. Those who do were initiated
during life into the koko society; initiates
include most men. Some spirits of the
dead become uwanammi, or water monsters, which also have the power to cause
rain. It is believed that in the koko village
at the lake bottom, the koko live happily
and dress in beautiful garments. They
visit the living by assuming the form of
clouds. It is not clear what happens to the
spirits of women and children. Wives apparently may join their husbands in the
village, but some say the spirits of children are turned into water monsters.
The Hopi dead do not go to a lake,
but to the sacred mountains. The Hopi
have numerous and clearly defined kachinas. Upon burial the Hopi address a
body, saying it is no longer Hopi but
changed into a kachina and has become
"cloud." The body is given a food offering and instructed to eat, and told,
"When you get yonder, you will tell the
chiefs to hasten the rain clouds here."
Kachinas also are represented by
dolls, which are made for educational
purposes for children; among the
Powamu the dolls are given to women
who want children. Kachina dolls are not
idols and are never worshiped. Production of kachina dolls for sale to the public
is an important modern craft among the
Hopi, who have kept alive much of their

Kachinas

rich ceremonial life, which dates to preColumbian times.

Sources: Ake Hultkrantz. Native Religions
of North America. San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1987; Hamilton A. Tyler. Pueblo
Gods and Myths. Norman, OK: University

of Oklahoma Press, 1964; Ruth M. Underhill. Red Man's Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.

Kahuna
See Huna.

Kali Yuga
In Hinduism the present age, lasting
432,000 years and characterized by degeneration, violence, ignorance, sorrow,
materialism, waning religion, chaos, and
evil. A Hindu verse states that the age of
Kali Yuga is so abominable that if a person tells the truth, he will be beaten, but
if he lies, cheats, and bluffs, he will be
liked and accepted. Kali Yuga also is
called the "Dark Age" and "Age of
Iron."
According to the Mahabharata and
other texts of the Puranic period (c. A.D.
400 and later), the material universe has
a finite life. Time is measured by the
kalpa, a day in the life of Brahma, the
creator. One kalpa equals 4,320,000,000
earth years. The day is divided into a
thousand cycles of four ages, or yugas. In
the morning of a kalpa, Brahma creates
the three worlds of Earth, Heaven, and
Hell, which then begin to deteriorate
through the next three yugas. The last is
Kali Yuga, which began about five thousand years ago. By the end of Kali Yuga,
the degeneration is so great that Brahma
destroys the world, appearing as Kalki,
an armed warrior mounted on a white
horse, wielding a sword of destruction. In
some accounts the destruction is wreaked
by Vishnu, the protector of the universe,
who appears as Kalki. The wicked die,

Kali Yuga

the good are saved, and the world is created over again. In still other accounts,
Vishnu must incarnate as an avatar of
Krishna and save the world from Kali,
consort of Shiva and goddess of annihilation and destruction.
This process is repeated until
Brahma lives one hundred years (the
equivalent of 311 trillion, 40 million
earth years) and then dies. His death
marks the end of the material universe in
a giant cataclysm.
In the age of Kali Yuga, people forget their spiritual aim in life and become
captivated by the glitter of material
things. Lifespans shorten. In Satya Yuga,
the golden age, the average lifespan is
100,000 years. In Treta Yuga, the silver
age, it drops to 10,000 years, then to one
thousand years in Dvapara Yuga, the
bronze age. At the beginning of Kali
Yuga, it is one hundred years.
The evil effects of Kali Yuga may be
counteracted with yoga, chanting, and
spiritual devotion. Madame Helena P.
Blavatsky, the cofounder of Theosophy,
said Kali represents the fall of humankind, and must be overcome before nirvana can be attained. She said the symbol
of Kali Yuga is the reversed pentacle, the
sign of human sorcery.
Some Hindus and Buddhists believe
that the seven rishis, mythical guardians
of the human race and keepers of the sacred knowledge, are watching over the
earth through the Dark Age from their
places high in the Himalayas. See Yoga.
Sources: H. P. Blavatsky. Isis Unveiled: A
Master Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and
Modern Science and Theology. London &

Benares: The Theosophical Publishing Society, 1910; H. P. Blavatsky. The Secret

Doctrine. Abridged ed. by Katherine Hillard. New York: Quarterly Book Dept.,
1907; Joseph Campbell. The Masks of
God. Vol. 4, Oriental Mythology.
New
York: Viking Penguin, 1962; W. Y. EvansWentz, ed. Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa: A
Biography from the Tibetan. 2d ed. Lon-

311

don: Oxford University Press, 1951; Joseph

L. Henderson and Maud Oakes. The Wisdom of the Serpent. New York: Collier
Books, 1963; A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
Prabhupada. The Path of Perfection: Yoga
for the Modern Age. Los Angeles: The
Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1979.

Karate
See Martial arts.

Karma
In Hinduism and Buddhism, mental and
physical deeds that determine the consequences of one's life and rebirth.
Karma is Sanskrit for "deed." In
Hinduism karma includes deeds, the consequences of one's life or one's previous
life or lives, and the entire chain of cause
and effect. There are three types of
karma: agami-karma, which concerns
present causes and effects and which provides influence over the future through
the present; prarabdha-karma, which is
already caused and is in the process of
being effected; and sanchita-karma,
which is accumulated but yet to be effected. The playing out of karma can take
place over many lifetimes.
The individual is solely responsible
for his or her karma, reaping joy or sorrow as a result of thoughts and deeds.
The karma arises from one's samskaras,
the thoughts, impressions, and attributes
accumulated over lifetimes that make up
one's character. Karma can be either
good or bad with relative consequences.
All karma, good or bad, creates more
karma. Only the attainment of enlightenment eliminates new karma and the need
to reincarnate.
In Buddhism and Zen Buddhism,
karma (or kamma, as it is called in Pali)
is the universal law of cause and effect
that may be played out over a cycle
of rebirths. Karma is created by the

312

body (acts), mouth (words), and mind

(thoughts), and also arises out of intent,
even if intent is not carried out. Karma is
overcome by adherence to the Three Pure
Precepts: cease evil, do good for others,
and keep a pure mind. Only when one is
free of delusion, hate, and desire is one
free of the cause and effect of karma.
Karma generally is viewed as inescapable, though techniques exist to try to
mitigate it through meditation and mantra chanting.
The closest Christian equivalent of
karma is the biblical tenet that one reaps
what one sows. However, since Christianity rejects rebirth and reincarnation,
the consequences of one's life on earth
are meted out in the eternal afterlife.
Karma is featured in the trance readings of American medium Edgar Cayce,
which include past lives. Cayce said that
the effects of karma can be symbolic instead of literal, and that karma could be
mitigated by "the law of grace." He said
the law of grace was both a state of mind
and a gift from God, and involved forgiveness, a cessation of harming others.
Cayce attributed the physical deformities,
debilities, and illnesses of many of his clients to karma from past lives.
Scientific investigation of cases of alleged spontaneous recall of past lives,
particularly among Hindu and Buddhist
children, show no significant evidence in
support of karma. However, there are
cases of birthmarks corresponding to
death wounds alleged from previous
lives, as well as carry-over phobias and
philias.
People who undergo hypnotic pastlife regression often feel their present lives
are the karma of past lives. This could be
the result of cultural expectation concerning reward and punishment for good and
bad deeds. See Bodhisattva; Dharma; Reincarnation; Soul mate.
Sources: Gina Cerminara. Many Mansions.
1950. New York: Signet/New American Library, 1978; Gina Cerminara. Many Lives,

Kali Yuga

Many Loves. New York: William Sloane

Assoc., 1963; The Encyclopedia of Eastern
Philosophy and Religion. Boston: Shambhala, 1989; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. Tales
of Reincarnation. New York: Pocket
Books, 1989; Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness
the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Kindness, Clarity, and Insight. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion
Publications, 1984; Manly Palmer Hall.
Reincarnation: The Cycle of Necessity. Los
Angeles: The Philosophical Research Society, 1956; His Holiness the Dalai Lama of
Tibet. My Land and My People: Memoirs
of the Dalai Lama of Tibet. 1962. New
York: Potala Corp., 1977; Lynn Elwell
Sparrow. Reincarnation: Claiming Your
Past, Creating Your Future. San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1988; Ian Stevenson. Children Who Remember Previous Lives. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia,
1987; Ian Stevenson. Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. 2d ed. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia,
1974; Mary Ann Woodward. Edgar
Cayce's Story of Karma. New York: Coward, McCann & Geohegan, 1971.

Ki
See Universal life force.

Kilner, Walter
See Aura.

King, Bruce (1897-1976)

Best known in the occult world as "Zolar," King established one of the largest
distribution firms of occult literature in
the world, a business he said he entered
into accidentally.
King was born in Chicago. He
worked as an actor, clothing model and
salesman, stockbroker, and part owner of
radio stations.
When a popular astrologer named
"Kobar" quit at one of his stations, King
took over the daily horoscope program,

Kirlian photography

even though he knew nothing about astrology. At the same time, he became a
partner in a venture to install horoscopedispensing machines in movie theaters.
The machines were so successful that
King left the radio business. He expanded
by distributing
horoscopes
through
stores, using the pseudonym Zolar, based
on the word zodiac and probably influenced by Kobar.
As Zolar King sold hundreds of millions of horoscopes around the world. He
also cast personal astrological charts, and
marketed astrological records and dream
interpretations.
He distributed Tarot
cards, talismans, incense, stones, scarabs,
and other occult merchandise. He wrote
books, such as Zolar's Horoscope &
Lucky Number Dream Book and Zolar's
Encyclopedia of Ancient and Forbidden
Knowledge.
King acknowledged that he did not
have the astrological aspects for becoming an astrologer. He liked to point out,
however, that he was born on the cusp of
Leo and Cancer, an auspicious sign for
business management. King died on January 16, 1976. See Astrology.
Sources: John Godwin. Occult America.
New York: Doubleday, 1972; Leslie A.
Shepard, ed. Encyclopedia of Occultism
and Parapsychology. 2d ed. Detroit: Gale
Research Co., 1984.

Kirlian photography
A technique for photographing objects in
the presence of a high-frequency, highvoltage, low-amperage electrical field, the
photographs of which show glowing,
multicolored emanations said to be auras
or biofields. Kirlian photography is
named after Semyon Kirlian, part-time
inventor and electrician from Krasnodar,
Russia, who pioneered work with the
procedure in the early 1940s. The process
remains highly controversial.
There is no evidence that Kirlian
photography is a paranormal phenome-

313

Kirlian photography of fingertips in lab of Dr. Thelma Moss, University of

California at Los Angeles
non. Some researchers say it reveals a
physical form of psychic energy. Others
believe that it reveals the etheric body,
one of the layers of the aura believed to
permeate all living things, and that an understanding of this energy will lead to
greater insights into medicine, psychology, psychic healing, psi, and dowsing.
Critics say the technique shows nothing
more than a discharge of electricity,
which can be produced under certain
conditions.
Prior to Kirlian's work, the process
of photographing objects in electrical
fields was generally known as "electrography" or "electrographic photography."
Little value was seen in the process,
which received scant attention from researchers. Electrographic photographs
date to as early as 1898, when another
Russian, Yakov Narkevich Yokdo (also
given as Todko), displayed his work
at a photographic exhibition. Research

314

was published by a Czech, B. Navratil, in

the early 1900s. In 1939 two Czech researchers, S. Prat and J. Schlemmer, published photographs of leaves showing
coronas.
Kirlian used his own'~and for his
first experiment, and photographed a
strange glow radiating from the fingertips. He and his wife, Valentina, a biologist, experimented with photographing
both live and inanimate subjects. In the
ensuing years, the couple refined their
equipment and graduated from blackand-white to color photography.
The principle of Kirlian photography-and
all electrography-is
the corona discharge phenomenon, which occurs when an electrically grounded object
discharges sparks between itself and an
electrode generating the electrical field.
The sparks are captured on film, appearing as coronas of light. The discharges
can be affected by temperature, moisture,

Kirlian photography

~-_jmji'Hm

__

.._.

pressure, and other environmental factors. Various Kirlian techniques have

been developed, but the most basic uses a
Tesla coil connected to a metal plate. The
process is similar to one that occurs in
nature, when electrical conditions in the
atmosphere produce lurninescences and
auras, 'such as St. Elmo's fire.
The Kirlians' work was brought to
the attention of the West in the 1960s.
Response in the scientific community was
mixed, but sufficient interest led to a
gathering of interested scientists in Alma
Ata in 1966. Biophysicist Viktor Adamenko theorized that the energy field was
the "cold emission of electrons," and
their patterns might suggest new information about the life processes of animate
objects. Adamenko and other Soviet scientists discerned that biological energies
of humans were brightest at the seven
hundred points on the body that coincide
with Chinese acupuncture points.
Kirlian photos are said to reveal
health and emotion by changes in the
brightness, colors, and patterns of the
light. Experiments in the 1970s, conducted by Thelma Moss and Kendall
Johnson at the University of California's
Center for Health Sciences at Los Angeles, showed changes in a plant's glow
when approached by a human hand and
pricked. When part of a leaf was cut off,
a glowing outline of the amputated portion still appeared on film. Moss, Kendall, and other researchers found that the
glow around humans similarly reflected
changes in emotional state. Psychic healers and the psychokinetic metal-bender
Uri Geller were photographed with flares
of light streaming from their fingertips
when engaged in their respective activities.
Some Kirlian enthusiasts consider
the phantom leaf phenomenon evidence
for the existence of an etheric body.
However, critics say the phenomenon disproves Kirlian photography altogether: If
the method truly photographed a bio-

Kirlian photography

field, then the aura should disappear

when an organism dies. The effect is produced solely by a high-voltage electric
field breakdown of air molecules between
two condenser plates.
Supporters nonetheless foresee applications of Kirlian photography in diagnostic medicine. Experiments using Kirlian photographs to detect cancer have
been sporadically successful. Some researchers envision diagnostic systems that
combine Kirlian photography with computerized tomography (CT) scanners (advanced versions of computerized axial tomography or CAT scanners, which utilize
a thin beam of X-rays to photograph an
object from 360 degrees) and magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI). The latter
technique uses no X-rays, but uses magnetic fields to produce images of body
cells and water in tissues.
The Soviets have applied Kirlian
photography in sports psychology and
training as a means of assessing athletes'
metabolic processes and fitness. See
Bodywork; Healing, faith and psychic;
Plants, psychism of.
Sources: Robert O. Becker, M.D., and Gary
Selden. The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life. NY:

Quill/William Morrow, 1985; Richard

Gerber. Vibrational Medicine. Santa Fe,
NM: Bear & Co., 1988; Stanley Krippner
and Daniel Rubin, eds. The Kirlian Aura:
Photographing the Galaxies of Life. Garden City, NY: Anchor PresslDoubleday,
1974; Edgar D. Mitchell. Psychic Exploration. Edited by John White. New York: G.
P. Putnam's Sons, 1974; Sheila Ostrander
and Lynn Schroeder. Psychic Discoveries
Behind the Iron Curtain. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970; Charles
Panati, ed. The Geller Papers: Scientific
Observations
Uri Geller.

on the Paranormal Powers of

Boston: Houghton Mifflin,

1976; Grigori Raiport. "At the Olympics,
Soviet Mind Games." The New York Times
(September 28, 1988); Peter Tompkins.
The Secret Life of Plants. New York:
Harper & Row, 1973.

315

Knight, JZ (b. 1946)

Channel for "Ramtha, the Enlightened
One," said to be an entity who lived on
earth 35,000 years ago. Ramtha rose to
great popularity in the 1980s with the
help of publicity associated with celebrities, including actress Shirley MacLaine.
JZ Knight was born Judith Darlene
Hampton on March 16, 1946, in Dexter,
New Mexico. One of nine children, she
grew up in poverty in New Mexico and
Texas. According to her own account,
she suffered sexual abuse as a child. She
had no early paranormal gifts.
After attending Lubbock Business
College in Lubbock, Texas, she married
Caris Hensley, a gas station attendant,
with whom she had two sons, Brandy
and Christopher. The marriage ended in
divorce. She then went to work as a cable
television salesperson in Roswell, New
Mexico, and Tacoma, Washington. During this time she adopted the initials
"JZ," J for Judy and Z for her nickname,
"Zebra," a reflection of her affinity for
black-and-white clothing.
A psychic told her she had "the most
awesome power" walking with her, but it
did not manifest until 1977. Following
her marriage that year to Jeremy Wilder,
a dentist, she became interested in the alleged power of pyramids. While she and
Jeremy played with pyramids one day, a
great, glowing man suddenly appeared in
her kitchen and introduced himself as
"Ramtha, the Enlightened One."
Ramtha proved to be oddly egotistical and materialistic for an enlightened
being, unlike other alleged channeled entities such as Seth, Lazaris, and the unnamed beings who worked with Betty
and Stewart Edward White. Ramtha
demonstrated a penchant for appearing
in kingly raiment and said he had been
"the Great Ram" ("the Great God") of
the Hindu people, the first conqueror of
Earth. Knight was one of his daughters,
Ramaya, in his last earthly life. He re-

316

nounced his bloodthirsty ways after becoming so enlightened that he ascended

directly from earth to become one with
the Unknown God.
Ramtha directed Knight to "become
a light unto the world." After a brief
study of occultism and mediumship,
Knight began channeling Ramtha for
family and friends. In November 1978
she gave her first public session, which
greatly increased her demand. Ramtha directed her to start charging money.
The channeling strained her marriage, and in 1981 Knight left Wilder for
her professed soul mate, Jeff Knight, a
trainer of Arabian horses whose picture
she had seen in a magazine, and who became her third husband. See Soul mate.
Shirley MacLaine became a follower
for a while; MacLaine believed that she
had been Ramtha's brother in Atlantis.
Following the publicity from MacLaine's
book Dancing in the Light (1985),
Knight's following grew enormously. Followers seemed not to mind that Ramtha
preached such unoriginal messages as
"you are God (God is within)," love
yourself, take control of your life, and everyone creates his or her own reality. His
messages became increasingly dark. He
spoke of impending cataclysms and directed followers to move to the Pacific
Northwest, where they would be safe.
Knight built a 13,OOO-square-foot
home with an indoor pool in Yelm,
Washington, sixty-five miles south of Seattle. There she established the Messiah
Arabian Stud ranch, where forty horses
were housed in a stable with chandeliers.
Some followers invested in the horses
upon Ramtha's advice, but later became
unhappy with the advice.
In the late 1980s, Knight encountered financial and legal problems, and in
early 1989 she filed for divorce from Jeff.
She continued to channel Ramtha. See
Channeling; New Age.
Sources: Alf Collins. "City Gritty." The Seattle Times (March 2, 1989): D3; George

Knight, JZ (b. 1946)

--1~:

--_.---

--

--

--

Hackett with Pamela Abramson. "Ramtha,

a Voice From Beyond." Newsweek (December 15, 1986): 42; Jon Klima. Channeling: Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal
Sources. Los

Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1987; JZ

Knight. A State of Mind: My Story. New
York: Warner Books, 1987; Katharine
Lowry. "Channelers." Omni (October
1987): 47-50+; Elizabeth Rhodes. "State
of Mind: JZ Knight Preaches Self-love
through a 35,000-year-old Spirit." The Seattle Times (October 25, 1987): K1+;
Ramtha. Edited by Steven Lee Weinberg
with Randall Weischedel, Sue Ann Frazio,
and Carol Wright. Eastsound, WA: Sovereignty, Inc., 1986.

Knights Templar
See Order of the Knights Templar.

Krippner, Stanley
See Dreams; Healing, faith and psychic.

Krishnamurti (1895-1986)
Although he was perhaps one of the most
influential spiritual teachers of the twentieth century, Jiddu Krishnamurti (Jiddu
is the surname) led no school, nor did he
believe in anyone path to truth. Instead
he denounced all occult theories, organizations, and structured methods as impediments to the search for true reality.
Krishnamurti was born on May 12,
1895, in India, the eighth child of nine in
a Brahmin family. His mother sensed his
destiny was one of sacred greatness, and
gave birth in the home's holy puja room,
dedicated to the devotion of household
gods.
Despite expectations Krishnamurti
performed poorly in school, causing
teachers and other adults to label him
mentally retarded. Nonetheless, at age
fourteen he caught the attention of C. W.
Leadbeater, who shared with Annie Bes-

Krishnamurti

(1895-1986)

Jiddu Krishnamurti
ant the leadership of the Theosophical
Society. Besant, and Madame Helena P.
Blavatsky before her, predicted the coming of a bodhisattva, or World Teacher
and Lord, Maitreya (the fifth and final
Buddha). Leadbeater believed that in
Krishnamurti he had found the vehicle.
By early 1909 Krishnamurti and his
younger brother, Nityananda, had become wards of the society and were sent
to England to enroll at Oxford. Leadbeater and Besant called Krishnamurti
"Alcyone" from "Halcyon," the brightest
star in the constellation Pleiades. Leadbeater used his clairvoyance to investigate
Krishnamurti's past lives and determined
that he had been a teacher and healer for
generations, and had served as a disciple
of Buddha. Krishnamurti joined the society's Esoteric Section, its inner group, in
late 1909. In January 1910 he was formally accepted by the Mahatma Master
Koot Hoomi (K.H.) and was initiated
into the Great White Brotherhood. He
was supposedly greeted by the Masters
Jesus, Comte de St. Germain, Serapis, Hi-

317

larion, Morya, Djwal Kul, K.H., and the

Lord Maitreya, who was to incarnate in
Krishnamurti's body. Krishnamurti wrote
that their acceptance of him was like
great sunshine. His notes of the experiences formed the basis of his first book,
At the Feet of the Master, which most
critics ascribe solely to Leadbeater.
Besant and Leadbeater established
the Order of the Star of the East in early
1911 as a separate Theosophical organization, with Krishnamurti as its head. In
1922 Besant bought six acres in OJai,
California, where Krishnamurti eventually made his home and which, with the
acquisition of more property, became the
home of the Krishnamurti Foundation in
America.
In August 1922 Krishnamurti began
experiencing a profound and extremely
painful spiritual awakening. He suffered
excruciating headaches, visions, and convulsions, shuddering and moaning, and
semiconsciousness, much as a person possessed. These seizures and spiritual manifestations lasted for several years and
formed the basis for Krishnamurti's later
orientation. He called the ordeal "an inward cleansing." See Kundalini; Spiritual
emergence.
All this time Nityananda had been
gravely ill. Krishnamurti pleaded with the
Masters for his brother's life and believed
completely in their powers of intercession. When Nityananda died in November 1925, Krishnamurti lost all belief in
the incarnated Masters and rarely referred to them. At the 1927 Order of the
Star conference, he exhorted his followers
to be free of all books, associations,
teachers, and authorities.
By 1928 Krishnamurti spoke openly
of disbanding the Order of the Star and
did so in a public address on August 3,
1929. His speech summed up his philosophy, one that he adhered to throughout
his life: Truth cannot be reached by any
path, religion, or sect. To find truth the
seeker must strive to ascend to it through
his or her own discovery. Krishnamurti

318

did not want followers but sought to set

humankind free, which would bring eternal happiness and the total realization of
self.
Krishnamurti resigned from the
Theosophical Society in 1930. He spent
most of his time in Ojai in meditation
and observation of nature. By the late
1940s, Krishnamurti had honed the five
communications skills that became the
hallmarks of his teaching: public talks,
dialogues and discussions, personal interviews, casual insights made on walks or
at dinner, and silence.
He taught that true understanding
was attained only through complete
awareness of the mind and its images
mirrored in relationships. In order to
reach that state, people must come to
terms with the following psychological
processes in order to free themselves:
1. Awareness: A state of total attention, in which the mind does not
struggle or concentrate, does not organize impressions, analyze, or even
think. At complete attention thought
does not exist, only absorption of
observations. Such a state is true
meditation.
2. Thought: Accumulated memories,
knowledge, and experience, probably arising from conditioning or past
response. It is thought that produces
each "me." For awareness to function, thought must be silent and still.
3. Imagination: The preconceived images, opinions, ideas, and judgments
that distort our perceptions. These
images let one compare oneself to
others and create psychological and
cultural barriers between oneself and
others. As with thought, images end
with unconditional observation.
4. Conditioning: The shaping of each
person by his or her past experiences
and thoughts. The only way to break
through conditioning is through
awareness and acceptance of "what
is" without making choices.

Krishnamurti (1895-1986)

5. Knowledge and Learning: Past

thoughts and images, which are unable to bring anything new into being, are knowledge. Learning is an
active state defined by doing, made
possible through awareness without
assumptions.
6. Fear, Memory, Attachment, and Dependence: The pleasures, pains, and
bonds of past experience. By continually seeking pleasure, the mind is
inviting pain and fear of pleasure's
end. Only when thought does not interfere can fear be understood.
7. Conflict: The divisive nature of
thought, which results in fragmentation and violence. Krishnamurti abhorred all violent response, war, and
interpersonal conflict.
8. Relationship: An understanding of
the self coming from total unification both physically and psychologically. Thought destroys relationship,
salvaged only through awareness.
9. Intelligence: The seeing of what "is."
True intelligence has nothing to do
with knowledge or thought, but exists only through harmony and the
"stillness" of the mind, bringing
freedom from thought without conflict and violence.
Krishnamurti also taught that systems do not transform people: people
transform systems. He believed real
change-revolution-occurred
when people moved from sense perceptions to values unencumbered by outside influences.
Seven schools worldwide offer Krishnamurti's approach to learning and personal self-discovery: one in Ojai, one at
Brockwood Park, Hampshire, England,
and five in India.
Krishnamurti died at Pine Cottage,
Ojai, on February 17, 1986. He left orders forbidding any funerary ceremonies
or deification of his life. Following cremation his ashes were divided into three
parts: one-third for Ojai, one-third for
England, and one-third for India, where

Kundalini

they were poured into the Ganges River

and into the ocean off Adyar. See Theosophy.
Sources: Peter Butcher. "The Phenomenological Psychology of J. Krishnamurti." The
Journal

of Transpersonal

Psychology

18,

no. 1 (1986): 35-50; Bruce F. Campbell.

Ancient Wisdom Revived: A History of the
Theosophical Movement. Berkeley: Univer-

sity of California Press, 1980; Pupul JayA Biography.

San
akar. Krishnamurti:
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986; Jiddu
Krishnamurti. Krishnamurti's Journal. San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982; Krishnamurti Foundation of America, OJai, California.

Kulagina, Nina
See Parapsychology; Psychokinesis (PK).

Kundalini
A psycho-spiritual energy, the very energy of consciousness, said to reside
sleeping within the body, and which is
aroused either through spiritual discipline
or spontaneously to bring new states of
consciousness, including mystical illumination. Kundalini is Sanskrit for "snake"
or "serpent power," so-named because it
is said to lie coiled like a serpent in the
root chakra at the base of the spine. In
Tantra Yoga kundalini is an aspect of
Shakti, divine female energy and consort
of Shiva.
The power of kundalini is enormous,
and individuals who have experienced it
say it is beyond description. The phenomena associated with it vary, and include
bizarre physical sensations and movements, pain, clairaudience, visions, brilliant lights, superlucidity, psychical powers, ecstasy, bliss, and transcendence of
self. Kundalini has been described as liquid fire and liquid light.
Knowledge and cultivation of kundalini has been most developed in Indian
yoga, which seeks to transmute the en-

319

ergy into higher consciousness. Kundalini

was considered a rarity in the West prior
to the 1970s, when increasing scientific
interest was directed to consciousness. In
1932, for example, psychiatrist Carl G.
Jung and others observed that the kundalini experience was seldom seen in the
West.
However, various examinations of
mystical literature and traditions show
that kundalini, known by various names,
apparently has been a universal phenomenon in esoteric teachings for perhaps
three thousand years. Kundalini-type descriptions or experiences are found in the
esoteric teachings of the Egyptians, Tibetans, Chinese, some Native Americans,
and the !Kung bushmen of Africa. Kundalini has been interpreted from the Bible
as "the solar principle in man," and is
referenced in the Koran, the works of
Plato and other Greek philosophers, alchemical tracts (the philosopher's stone),
and in Hermetic, Kabbalistic, Rosicrucian, and Masonic writings.
Since the 1970s kundalini awakenings have been reported with increasing
frequency in the West. There are perhaps
two major reasons: More people have
been undertaking spiritual disciplines
likely to liberate the energy, and more
people are aware of what kundalini is,
and therefore more likely to recognize the
symptoms of it.
Not all kundalini awakenings follow
the classic model set forth in yoga, but
seem to vary in intensity and duration.
The yogi meditates to arouse the kundalini and raise it up through his or her
body. (Not all types of yoga are devoted
to kundalini arousal. See Yoga.) First, the
yogi feels a sensation of heat at the base
of the spine, which may be intensely hot
or pleasantly warm. The energy then
travels up a psychic pathway parallel to
the spinal column. The sushumna is the
central axis, crisscrossed in a helix by the
ida and pingala. As it rises the kundalini
activates the chakras in succession. See

320

Chakras. The body becomes cold and

corpse-like as the kundalini leaves the
lower portions and continues its rise. The
yogi is likely to shudder, tremble, or rock
violently, feel extreme heat and cold, hear
strange but not unpleasant sounds, and
see various kinds of light, including an
inner light. The duration of the kundalini
may be fleeting, or last several minutes.
The goal is to raise the energy to the
crown chakra, where it joins with Shiva,
the male polarity, and brings illumination. The yogi then seeks to lower the energy to another chakra, but not below the
heart chakra; descent to the bottom
chakras invites ego inflation, rampant
sexual desire, and a host of other ills. By
repeatedly raising the energy to the
crown, the yogi can succeed in having the
kundalini rest permanently there.
Kundalini is said to open new pathways in the nervous system; the pain associated with it apparently is due to the
inability of the nervous system to immediately cope with it. Yogis stress that the
body must be properly attuned for kundalini through yoga, and that a premature or explosive awakening can cause insanity or death.
Western psychologists and psychiatrists have determined that individuals
can experience minor kundalini awakenings that may not occur explosively, but
gradually over a period of time, thus creating cycles of kundalini states in which
an individual thinks, acts, and feels markedly different. Symptoms include involuntary, jerky, or spasmodic body movements and postures; pain; unusual
breathing patterns; paralysis; tickling,
itching, vibrating sensations; hot and
cold sensations; inner sounds, such as
roaring, whistling, and chirping; insomnia; hypersensitivity to environment; unusual or extremes of emotion; intensified
sex drive; distortions of thought processes, from inability to think clearly to
superlucidity; detachment; dissociation;
sensations of physical expansion; and

Kundalini

_.ii!J:,

out-of-body experiences. Symptoms generally can be alleviated by introduction of

a heavier diet and temporary cessation of
meditation. These lesser-degree experiences indicate that the definition of a
kundalini awakening may have to be expanded from that of the coiled serpent of
yoga.
One of the most dramatic cases of
classic kundalini awakening occurred to
Gopi Krishna (1903-1984), of India,
who meditated every morning for three
hours for seventeen years. On Christmas
Day in 1937, he had an explosive, roaring kundalini awakening of liquid light
pouring up his spine and into his brain.
According to his own account, he rocked
and went out of his body enveloped in a
halo of light. He felt his consciousness expand in all directions, and a vision of a
silvery luster unfolded before him; he was
like a small cork bobbing on the vast
ocean of consciousness. This extraordinary experience happened once again,
and then Krishna was plunged into
twelve years of misery, during which he
"experienced the indescribable ecstasies
of the mystics ... and the agonies of the
mentally afflicted." After twelve years his
body apparently adapted to the new energy and he stabilized, but was permanently changed. Everything he saw appeared bathed in a silvery glow. He heard
an inner cadence, called the "unstruck
melody" in kundalini literature. Eventually, he was able to reexperience the bliss
just by turning his attention inward. He
became, he said, "a pool of consciousness
always aglow with light." His creativity
soared, and he wrote poetry and nonfiction books.
Krishna devoted much of the remainder of his life to learning everything
he could about kundalini. He considered
it "the most jealously guarded secret in
history" and "the guardian of human ev-

Kundalini

olution." He believed it to be the driving

force behind genius and inspiration. He
also believed that the brain has within it
the blueprint for humankind to evolve
into a higher level of consciousness, one
that will make use of kundalini. In educating others about it, Krishna told how
it regenerates and restores the body, and
thus could be useful in discovering ways
to improve health and lengthen life. He
also suggested it could be useful in eradicating such conditions as mental retardation.
Krishna was keen to see kundalini
awakening cultivated, especially in the
West. Some researchers following in his
footsteps have disagreed with the importance he placed on kundalini.
Scientific research of kundalini remains embryonic, hampered by the nonphysical nature of the energy and its
unpredictability. Another difficulty in
identifying cases is the similarity of many
symptoms to those caused by mental disturbance and stress. See Inspiration;
Meditation; Mystical experiences; Spiritual emergence.
Sources: Atthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe). The Serpent Power: The Secrets of
Tantric and Shaktic Yoga. 1964. 7th ed.

New York: Dover Publications, 1974;

Gene Kieffer, ed. Kundalini for the New
Age: Selected

Writings

of Gopi Krishna.

New York: Bantam Books, 1988; Gopi

Krishna. Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man. Rev. ed. Boston: Shambhala
Publications, 1970; C. W. Leadbeater. The
Chakras. 1927. Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing Co., 1980; Lee Sannella. The Kundalini Experience. Lower
Lake, CA: Integral Publishing, 1987; Claire
Walker. "How Shall We Approach Kundalini?" The Journal of Religion and Psychical Research 12, no. 3 (July 1989): 12934; Vivian Worthington. A History of
Yoga. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1982.

321

L
Lama
In Tibetan Buddhism a senior member of
the Tibetan Order, a holy person of advanced rank and great spiritual achievement. Literally, lama means "superior"
or "none above." Until Communist
China invaded Tibet in 1959, lamas
served as abbots of the monasteries, and
thus had enormous influence over the secular and religious lives of the populace.

Tibetan lama, Kyabje Trijang Lobsang

Yeshe Yenzin Gyatso, holding
scriptures

322

The highest of all lamas is the Dalai

Lama, the titular head of the Tibetan nation, who has lived in exile since the Chinese occupation. See Dalai Lama.
Lamas are not the equivalent of
monks (who are students), but are embodiments of Buddha himself. They are
of particular importance in the Vajrayana
("Diamond Vehicle") school of Buddhism because they both teach and conduct rituals; one cannot master the teachings without them. Traditionally, before
lamas can be called such, they undertake
years of Buddhist meditation and philosophy, culminating in a retreat of more
than three years. However, in modern
times, the term "lama" is often used in
addressing any Tibetan monk.
Some lamas are recognized as tulkus,
that is, the earthly incarnation of a bodhisattva, an emanation of Buddha. See
Bodhisattva. Tulkus (the term refers
roughly to a "phantom body") are entitled to be called rimpoche (also spelled
rinpoche), an honorific that means "Precious One."
Tulkus are identified according to
tests given by other lamas and tulkus.
Prior to death a lama may indicate the
general area where he will reincarnate.
Following his death a search is made for
a child born in the specified area at the
same time. To pass the test, he must identify objects belonging to the deceased
lama. Most lamas are men. See Trungpa,
Chogyam.

Lama

Sources: The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion. Boston: Shambhala,

1989; Barbara and Michael Foster. Forbidden Journey: The Life of Alexandra DavidNee/. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987;
Christmas Humphreys. A Popular Dictionary of Buddhism. London: Curzon Press,
1984; Maurice Percheron. Buddha and
Buddhism.
1956. Woodstock, NY: The

Overlook Press, 1982; Leslie A. Shepard,

ed. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. 2d ed. Detroit: Gale Research

Co., 1984.

Leary, Timothy (b. 1920)

I
I
I
I
I
I

Former college instructor and one of the

leading advocates during the 1960s of
psychedelic drugs as a means to enlightenment. His involvement with LSD at
Harvard University led to his dismissal
from the faculty there, and to trouble
with the law for a period of years. His
signature phrase, "Turn on, tune in, and
drop out," became a rallying cry of the
1960s.
Timothy Leary was born on October
22, 1920, in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Early on he demonstrated a penchant for
challenging authority: He was expelled
from high school and Holy Cross College, was silenced at the US Military
Academy at West Point, New York, and
was expelled from the University of Alabama. He earned his Ph.D in psychology
from the University of California at
Berkeley in 1950, and taught there as an
assistant professor from 1950 to 1955.
On October 22, 1955, his wife, Marianne, whom he had married in 1944 and
with whom he had two children, committed suicide.
In 1959 Leary became interested in
the experimental use of psychedelics in
psychology. The same year he accepted a
position at Harvard University in the
Center for Personality Research. There he
met Richard Alpert, an assistant professor who became his colleague in experimental drug research.

Leary, Timothy

(b. 1920)

In 1960 Leary went to Mexico,

where he had his first psychedelic experience after ingesting magic mushrooms;
it took him on a trip through evolution,
he said. He proposed systematic drug experiments with psilocybin at Harvard, using graduate students and other volunteers.
From its beginning the drug program
was both controversial (among the faculty) and popular (among the students).
Participants included the beat intelligentsia, such as Jack Kerouac, Arthur Koestler, Allen Ginsberg, Aldous Huxley, and
Neal Cassady, as well as Harvard divinity
students and Massachusetts prisoners.
Leary was profoundly influenced by
Ginsberg, who advocated that everyone
should take psychedelics. Leary came to
see drugs as instant enlightenment for the
masses.
In 1962 Leary took LSD for the first
time and described it as "the most shattering experience of my life," and one
which permanently changed him. He and
Alpert then introduced LSD into their
drug research program. Leary envisioned
that society would be transformed and
rid of evils if everyone turned on. He and
Alpert discussed the possibilities of
dumping LSD in public water supplies.
The controversy at Harvard escalated,
and when reports began to surface of bad
trips and parental objections, Leary and
Alpert attempted to find outside funding
to carry on their work. They formed the
International Foundation for Internal
Freedom and planned to move the research to Mexico, but soon were expelled
from there, as well as from the Island of
Dominica.
Leary and Alpert were dismissed
from Harvard in 1963. They established
the Castalia Foundation and carried on a
communal life-style and research effort in
a house in Millbrook, New York. In
1964 Leary married his second wife,
Nanette, but the marriage came apart on
the honeymoon to Japan and India. Back

323

.....-==
at Millbrook Leary met and married his
third wife, Rosemary Woodruff, in 1965.
The Millbrook house was closed down
and Leary and Alpert parted ways. Alpert
pursued spiritual studies in India, and
eventually changed his name to Ram
Dass. See Ram Dass.
In 1965 Leary's troubles with the
law began. In 1970 he was sentenced to a
total of twenty years in prison by judges
in Houston, Texas, and Santa Ana, California, on separate charges of possession
of marijuana. He was incarcerated in the
California Men's Colony west in San Luis
Obispo, California, but after several
months managed to escape with the help
of friends in the Weathermen and Black
Panthers.
Leary fled to Europe, where he hid in
Switzerland and experimented with heroin. He was captured in 1973 and extradited to the United States, where he was
incarcerated for thirty-two months on
drug and escape charges. During his jail
time, he was aided by a friend, Joanna
Harcourt-Smith, who legally changed her
last name to Leary to help his publicity
cause. They parted ways when Leary was
released.
In 1978 he married his fourth wife,
Barbara. He has lectured widely on the
college and New Age conference circuits.
He is the author or coauthor of numerous
books and monographs on the psychedelic experience. See Drugs in mystical
and psychic experiences.
Sources: Timothy Leary. Flashbacks: An
Autobiography.
Los Angeles: Jeremy P.
Tarcher, 1983; Timothy Leary. Changing
My Mind, Among
Others. Englewood

Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1982; Leslie A.

Shepard, ed. Encyclopedia of Occultism
and Parapsychology. 2d ed. Detroit: Gale
Research Co., 1984.

Lemniscate
A powerful occult symbol that looks like
a figure eight lying on its side. The lem-

324

niscate signifies eternity, infinity, regeneration, the Holy Spirit, infinite wisdom,
and higher consciousness. Its serpentine
shape has no beginning and no end, and
represents the endless spiraling and balancing of opposing forces in the universe.
The lemniscate appears in various interpretations of the Tarot, and is used in
meditation as a symbol for focusing concentration. In mathematics it represents
infinity. See Symbol.
Sources: Francis Barrett. The Magus.

Secaucus, NJ: The Citadel Press, 1967; J. E.

Cirlot. A Dictionary of Symbols. New
York: Philosophical Library, 1971; Eileen
Connolly. Tarot: A New Handbook for the
Apprentice.
Van Nuys, CA: Newcastle
Publishing, 1979; Craig Junjulas. Psychic
Tarot. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Morgan & Morgan, 1985; Arthur Edward Waite. The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1959.

Lemuria
Legendary lost continent of the Indian
Ocean said to be the original Garden
of Eden and the cradle of the human
race.
The theory of the existence of Lemuria arose in the nineteenth century,
when scientists sought to explain Darwin's theory of evolution of similar species from a common ancestor. Philip
Sclater, an English zoologist, suggested
that a land bridge once existed during the
Eocene Age from the Malay Archipelago
to the south coast of Asia and Madagascar, thus connecting India to southern Africa. The theory explained why such animals as the lemur are found primarily on
Madagascar and in parts of Africa, but
also in India and the Malay Archipelago.
Sclater coined the name "Lemuria" after
the lemur.
Sclater's hypothesis was supported
by other scientists, including Ernst
Haeckel, T. H. Huxley, and Alfred Rus-

Leary, Timothy

(b. 1920)

sell Wallace. Haeckel, a German biologist, proposed that the lost continent also
had been "the probable cradle of the human race."
Madame Helena P. Blavatsky, cofounder of Theosophy, believed that Lemuria had been inhabited by the Third
Root Race of humankind, whom she described as fifteen-feet-tall, brown-skinned
hermaphrodites with four arms; some
had a third eye in the back of the skull.
Their bizarre feet, with protruding heels,
enabled them to walk either forward or
backward. Their eyes were set far apart
in their flat faces so that they could see
sideways. They had highly developed psychic powers and communicated by telepathy. Their continent, which covered
most of the southern hemisphere, broke
up and was destroyed. The Lemurians
migrated to Atlantis, where they evolved
into the Fourth Root Race. Like the Lemurians, the Atlanteans fled the destruction of their own continent, spreading to
other lands and starting the present Fifth
Root Race.
W. Scott-Elliott, a Theosophist,
claimed to investigate Lemuria with the
help of "astral clairvoyance." He said
that Lemurians originally laid eggs but
evolved to reproduce as do humans. They
intermingled with animals to produce
apes. Beings from Venus, the "Lords of
Flame," came to Lemuria and helped the
race achieve reincarnation. At the height
of their civilization, the Lemurian continent sank into the ocean.
Philosopher Rudolf Steiner, using information he said came from the Akashic
Chronicle (Records), said Lemuria extended from Ceylon to Madagascar, and
had included parts of southern Asia and
Africa. He also described the Lemurians
as the telepathic Third Root Race, who
initially had no memory. The goal of Lemurians was to develop will and clairvoyant power of imagination in order to control the forces of nature. Lemuria was
destroyed by volcanic activity.

Lemuria

Mu
In 1870 Colonel James Churchward,
a former Bengal Lancer and a big game
hunter, announced he had learned of a
lost continent named Mu, once located in
the Pacific Ocean with its center just
south of the equator. The continent was
six thousand miles long from east to west
and three thousand miles wide from
north to south. Churchward said he
learned this from secret, ancient clay and
stone tablets hidden in India, which had
been revealed to him by a Hindu priest.
He said human beings first appeared
on Mu some 200,000 years ago, evolving
into an advanced race of about 60 million
people in ten tribes. About 12,000 years
ago, a massive volcanic eruption, earthquakes, and tidal waves destroyed the entire continent. Survivors escaped to other
lands. Churchward claimed evidence of
the existence of Mu may be found in the
legends and artifacts of the ancient
Greeks, Egyptians, Maya, Cliff Dwellers
of North America, Chinese, Burmese, Tibetans, Cambodians, and Pacific Islanders. All the rocky islands now in the Pacific Ocean are remnants of Mu, he said.
Churchward never produced the tablets
to prove his "discovery." He said his research also included trance visits to previous lives. His four books on Mu generally are regarded as romantic science
fiction.
Churchward was supported by Augustus Le Plongeon, a nineteenth-century
French physician who was the first to excavate Mayan ruins in the Yucatan. Le
Plongeon claimed the Maya and the ancient Egyptians were descendants of the
"Muvians." See Atlantis.
Sources: H. P. Blavatsky. The Secret Doctrine. Abridged ed. by Katherine Hillard.

New York: Quarterly Book Dept., 1907;

James Churchward. The Children of Mu.
New York: rves Washburn, 1931; James
Churchward. The Lost Continent of Mu.
1926. New York: Paperback Library,

325

1968; Rudolf Steiner. Cosmic Memory. San

Francisco: Harper & Row, 1959; Strange
Stories, Amazing Facts. Pleasantville, NY:
Reader's Digest, 1976; Jennifer Westwood,
ed. The Atlas of Mysterious Places. New
York: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1987.

Leonard, Gladys Osborne

(1882-1968)
Called by some "the greatest of all psychics," Gladys Osborne Leonard worked
professionally as a mental medium, passing many tests of leading psychic investigators from Britain and America. Born on
May 28, 1882, in Lytham, Lancashire,
England, Leonard began to exhibit psychic gifts at an early age, following
trauma caused by the unexpected death
of a friend of the family. She began to
have frequent visions of "Happy Valleys," beautiful places populated by radiantly happy people dressed in flowing,
draped clothing. Her family attempted to
discourage her and succeeded superficially; Leonard learned to quit talking
about them, but her interest in the world
of spirit continued.
Although her childhood visions disappeared, in her twenties she became interested in Spiritualism. At the age of
twenty-four, when her mother was extremely ill, Leonard awoke to see a shining vision of her in good health, at the
apparent moment the woman died.
Leonard pursued her psychic ability,
experimenting with table-tipping at seances. At one seance she went into a
trance and a spirit control named Feda
emerged. Feda claimed to be her greatgreat-grandmother, a Hindu girl raised
by a Scottish family. At age thirteen,
around 1800, Feda married Leonard's
great-great-grandfather, William Hamilton, and died a year later in childbirth.
There was no proof of Feda's existence,
though stories of such a girl had been
passed down through the generations.
Feda remained Leonard's control for
more-than forty years.

326

With the advent of World War I,

Leonard turned professional. She became
famous with her communications with
the spirits of the war dead. Sir Oliver
Lodge of the British Society for Psychical
Research investigated her, and catapulted
her into an international spotlight with
Raymond or Life and Death (1916), an
account of her alleged communications
with his deceased son, who was killed in
World War I in 1915.
Psychical investigators attempted to
uncover fraud by having Leonard followed by private detectives; no trickery
was ever found. Nor could investigators
find conclusive evidence that Leonard
used telepathy to obtain personal information from her sitters. Leonard had
spectacular successes with proxy sittings,
in which a third party, unannounced beforehand, would substitute for a sitter
who was requesting information from a
deceased person. She also was very successful with "book tests," in which information from books unknown to the medium and sitter would be relayed through
spirits. See Book test.
In her later years, Leonard's sittings
were often characterized by direct voices.
Feda, the control, obtained information
from other spirits and relayed them
through Leonard, using Leonard's vocal
chords. But sitters began to hear the direct voices of the other spirits themselves,
whispering from a point in empty space
in front of Leonard as Feda spoke
through her. See Direct-voice mediumship.
Like her American counterpart, Leonora E. Piper, Leonard's psychic talents
defied explanation by investigators. See
Mediumship; Super-ESP. Compare to
Piper, Leonora E.
Sources: Alan Gauld. MediumshiP and Survival. London: William Heinemann Ltd.,
1982; Rosalind Heywood. The Sixth Sense.
London: Chatto & Windus, 1959; Into the
Unknown. Pleasantville, NY: Reader's Digest, 1981; Sir Oliver Lodge. Raymond or

Lemuria

Life and Death. 12th ed. London: Methuen

& Co. Ltd., 1919; Edgar D. Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science.
Edited by John White. New York: Paragon
Books, 1974; Susy Smith. The Mediumship
of Mrs. Leonard. New Hyde Park, NY:
University Books, 1964; Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook of Parapsychology.
New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977.

Levitation
A phenomenon of psychokinesis (PK) in
which objects, people, animals, and so on
lift up into the air without known physical means and float or fly about. Levitations are said to occur in mediumship,
shamanistic trance, mystical rapture and
trance, magic, bewitchment, hauntings,
and possession. Many cases of levitation
appear to be spontaneous; some spiritual
or magical adepts are said to be able to
levitate consciously.
Christianity and Islam record numerous cases of levitation. In the first century, Simon Magus is said to have levitated himself from the top of the Roman
Forum in a challenge to St. Peter, as
proof of his magical powers. According
to legend Peter prayed to God that Simon's deception be stopped, and Simon
fell to earth and was killed. Roman Catholic hagiography includes many cases of
levitations among saints, the most famous of which is Joseph of Cupertino
(1603-1663), who reportedly levitated
often and flew through the air, according
to eyewitness accounts. He had the peculiar habit of giving a little shriek just before levitating.
St. Teresa of Avila said she levitated
spontaneously during states of rapture.
According to one eyewitness account by
sister Anne of the Incarnation, Teresa levitated a foot and a half off the ground for
about half an hour. Teresa wrote of one
expenence:
"It seemed to me, when I tried to
make some resistance, as if a great force
beneath my feet lifted me up. I know of

Levitation

nothing with which to compare it; but it

was much more violent than the other
spiritual visitations, and I was therefore
as one ground to pieces" (Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism, 1955). The levitation
frightened Teresa, but she observed that
she could do nothing to stop it, and she
did not lose her senses, but saw herself
lifted up. See Teresa of Avila, St.
At the turn of the twentieth century,
Gemma Galgani, a Passionist nun, reportedly levitated during rapture.
Levitation also is recorded in Hinduism and Buddhism. Milarepa, the great
yogi of Tibet of the thirteenth century, is
said to have possessed numerous occult
powers, including the ability to walk,
rest, and sleep while levitating-a feat
said to be duplicated by Brahmins and
fakirs in India. The Ninja of Japan also
reportedly have this ability. In Eastern
traditions levitation is said to be accomplished through use of secret breathing
and visualization techniques involving the
universal life force or energy, called by
various names, including prana, ch'i, and
ki. Louis Jacolliot, a nineteenth-century
French judge who traveled about the East
and wrote of his occult experiences, describes the levitation of a fakir in Occult
Science in India and Among the Ancients
(1884, 1971):
Taking an ironwood cane which I
had brought from Ceylon, he leaned
heavily upon it, resting his right hand
upon the handle, with his eyes fixed upon
the ground. He then proceeded to utter
the appropriate incantations ... [and]
rose gradually about two feet from the
ground. His legs were crossed beneath
him, and he made no change in his position, which was very like that of those
bronze statues of Buddha ... For more
than twenty minutes I tried to see how
[he] could thus fly in the face and eyes of
all known laws of gravity ... the stick
gave him no visible support, and there
was no apparent contact between that

327


and his body, except through his right
hand.
Jacolliot was told by Brahmins that
the "supreme cause" of all phenomena
was the agasa (akasha), the vital fluid,
"the moving thought of the universal
soul, directing all souls," the force of
which the adepts had learned to control.
See Universal life force.
Levitation also is said to occur in rituals and ceremonies in shamanism and
other tribal or non-Western traditions.
African witch doctors have been filmed
apparently levitating off the ground.
In the Western secular world, levitation sometimes has been viewed as a
manifestation of evil. During the Middle
Ages and Renaissance, it was common to
blame any unusual phenomena upon
witchcraft, fairies, ghosts, or demons.
Levitation was, and still is, commonly reported in demonic possession cases. Beds,
objects, and the possessed are witnessed
floating up into the air. In 1906 Clara
Germana Cele, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl from South Africa, suffered demonic
possession and was said to rise up to five
feet into the air, sometimes vertically and
sometimes horizontally. She fell if sprinkled with holy water, which witnesses
took as proof of demonic possession.
Similarly, poltergeist cases and hauntings
are sometimes characterized by levitating
objects.
Some physical mediums have been
known for their alleged levitations. The
most famous was Daniel Dunglas Home,
who reportedly did so many times over
forty years. In 1868 he was seen levitating out of a third-story window; he
floated back indoors through another
window. Home was not always in trance
during levitations and was aware of what
was happening and how he felt. He once
described "an electrical fulness (sic)" sensation in his feet. His arms became rigid
and were drawn over his head, as though
he were grasping the unseen power which

328

lifted him. Home also levitated furniture

and objects. The Catholic church expelled him as a sorcerer. Though Home
was never exposed as a fraud, many other
mediums were discovered to "levitate"
objects with hidden wires and contraptions. See Home, Daniel Dunglas.
Italian medium Amedee Zuccarini
was photographed levitating with his feet
about twenty inches over a table top.
Levitation in controlled experiments
is rare. In the 1960s and 1970s, researchers reported some success in levitating tables under controlled circumstances. Soviet PK medium Nina Kulagina was
photographed levitating a small object
between her hands.
According to skeptics levitations
may be explained by hallucination, hypnosis, or fraud. Not all cases may be so
dismissed, however. The most likely explanation is the one known by Eastern
adepts for thousands of years, of the
existence of a force which belongs
to another, nonmaterial reality, and
which manifests in the material world.
See Psi.
Advanced practitioners of Transcendental Meditation have received worldwide publicity for achieving "yogic flying," a levitation that consists of low
hops while seated in a lotus meditation
position. It is said to be accomplished by
maximizing coherence (orderliness) in
brain-wave activity, which enables the
brain to tap into the "unified field" of
cosmic energy. Skeptics say yogic flying is
accomplished through muscular action.
See Transcendental Meditation (TM).
Most reported levitations are short,
lasting a few seconds or minutes; Joseph
of Cupertino once hung in the air for two
hours, according to eyewitness accounts.
Levitation at will seems to require intense
concentration or a trance state; physical
mediums who were disturbed during levitation by touch or light suddenly fell
back. Saintly levitations often are accompanied by luminosities around the body.

Levitation

See Poltergeist; Psychokinesis (PK); Siddhis; Shamanism.

Sources: Hoyt L. Edge, Robert L. Morris,
John Palmer, and Joseph H. Rush. Foundations of Parapsychology. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986; Mircea Eliade.
Shamanism. 1951. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1964; John Ferguson. An
Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mysticism and
the Mystery Religions. New York: Seabury
Press, 1976; Nandor Fodor. An Encyclopedia of Psychic Science. 1933. Secaucus, NJ:

Citadel Press, 1966; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The Encyclopedia of Witches and
Witchcraft. New York: Facts On File,
1989; Louis Jacolliot. 1884. Occult Science
in India and Among the Ancients. New
Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1971;
Maharishi's Programme to Create World
Peace: Global Inauguration. Vlodrop, Hol-

land: Maharishi Research University, and

Washington, D.C.: Age of Enlightenment
Press, 1987; Ormond McGill. The Mysticism and Magic of India. Cranbury, NJ: A.
S. Barnes & Co., 1977; Evelyn Underhill.
Mysticism. 1955. New York: New American Library, 1974; Benjamin B. Wolman,
ed. Handbook of Parapsychology. New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977.

Leys
Alignments and patterns of powerful, invisible earth energy said to connect various sacred sites, such as churches, temples, stone circles, megaliths, holy wells,
burial sites, and other locations of spiritual or magical importance. The existence
of leys is controversial. Their study is part
of the so-called "earth mysteries, " an
area of holistic research into ancient sites
and their landscapes.
If leys do exist, their true age and
purpose remain a mystery. Controversy
over them has existed since 1925, when
Alfred Watkins, an English beer salesman
and amateur antiquarian, published his
research and theory in his book, The Old
Straight Track. Watkins suggested that
all holy sites and places of antiquity were

Leys

connected by a pattern of lines he called

"leys" (also called "ley lines," a term
some say is inaccurate). Mounds, barrows, tumuli, stones, stone circles,
crosses, churches built on pagan sites, legendary trees, castles, mottes and baileys,
moats, hillforts, earthworks, and holy
wells were all thought to stand in alignment. Using the Ordnance Survey, Watkins claimed that the leys were the "old
straight tracks," which crossed the landscape of prehistoric Britain and represented all types of early human activities.
Watkins said that ancient men of the
leys, called Dodman surveyors, mapped
out the tracks and alignments for trade
routes, astronomical sites, and holy sites.
Watkins said that the alignments followed natural horizon features such as
peaks, or led to other sacred sites. To
support his thesis, Watkins noted the inclusion of the word "ley" in many of the
villages and farms through which the
alignments passed.
After Watkins's theory was published, public fascination with leys remained high until the 1940s, when it began to decline. Interest revived in the
1960s and 1970s, as part of the New Age
movement. In the 1960s a magazine, The
Ley Hunter, was established in Brecon,
Wales, to chronicle theories and research.
While Britain has been the chief site of
investigation, there also is interest in
France and the United States. Systems of
straight paths also exist in Peru and Bolivia. From the Sun Temple in the center
of the city of Cuzco, Peru, forty-one lines
called ceques spread out into the country,
marked by various shrines, hills, bridges,
battlefields, graves, springs, and other
sites, some of them astronomical sight
lines. In Bolivia holy tracks have been
shown to converge on Indian shrines at
the tops of holy hills.
Many archaeologists and other scientists dispute the existence of leys and
say the theory originated by Watkins was
contrived because Watkins aligned secu-

329

l!!!ffi;H~i

lar and sacred sites from different periods

of history.
Even ley enthusiasts are divided into
differing camps. Some hold that the prehistoric alignments can be statistically
validated. Others, such as Nigel Pennick
of the Institute of Geomantic Research in
Cambridge, England, agree but say that
alignments continued in historical periods. Still others contend that leys mark
paths of some sort of earth energy that
can be detected by dowsing, and perhaps
was sensed by early humans. The energy
is compared to the flow of ch'i, the universallife force, found in the art of feng
shui in China. See Feng shui. Points
where the ley energy paths intersect are
said to be prone to anomalies such as
earth lights and poltergeist phenomena
and reported sightings of UFOs (one theory suggests that the paths are navigational aids to extraterrestrial spacecraft).
These energy leys, however, do not necessarily coincide with physical alignments
of sites. See Dowsing; Earth lights.
Central to the controversy over leys
is the question of what evidence-how
many alignments over what distancevalidates a ley. Among the most persuasive evidence has been documented in
Cornwall, England, where researcher
John Michell identified twenty-two alignments between fifty-three megalithic sites
over distances up to seven miles. Despite
the controversy ley researchers hope to at
least come to a better understanding of
ancient sacred sites, and of the people
who built them. See Megaliths; Power
point.
Sources: Janet and Colin Bord. Ancient
Mysteries of Britain. Manchester, NH: Sa-

lem House, 1986; Janet and Colin Bard.

Mysterious Britain. Garden City, NY: Dou-

bleday, 1978; Peter Lancaster Brown.

Myths and Men. New York:
Taplinger Publishing Company, 1976; Aubrey Burl. Rings of Stone. New York:
Ticknor & Fields, 1979; Paul Devereux
and John Steele, David Kubrin. Earthmind:

Megaliths,

330

A Modern Adventure

in Ancient

Wisdom.

New York: Harper & Row, 1989; Havelock Fidler. Earth Energy: A Dowser's Investigation of Ley Lines. 2d ed. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England: The
Aquarian Press, 1988; Francis Hitching.
Earth Magic. New York: William Morrow, 1977; Patrick F. Sheeran. "Place and
Power." ReVision 13, no. 1 (Summer
1990): 28-32.

Lilly, John
See Drugs in mystical and psychic experiences; Flotation.

Lindbergh, Charles (1902-1974)

On his historic solo, nonstop flight across
the Atlantic from New Yark to Paris in
1927, aviator Charles Lindbergh had
mystical experiences so profound he was
unable to share them with the public for
more than twenty years.
The flight was long, thirty-three-anda-half hours; and at a point over the vast
ocean, fatigue and tension began to alter
Lindbergh's perception of reality. By the
ninth hour, he felt both very detached
from and very near to the world below,
and it made him think of "the nearness of
death" and "the longness of life."
Gradually, as he stared at his instruments, listened to the drone of his engines, and struggled to stay awake, he
slipped into an altered state of consciousness that to him seemed to be both wakefulness and sleep. He was conscious of
being three elements: body, which was fatigued; mind, which made decisions; and
spirit, a driving force, which told him
sleep was not needed and that his body
would be sustained with relaxation.
He became aware that the fuselage
behind him was filled with ghostly presences: vaguely outlined, transparent,
weightless forms. Their appearance did
not seem sudden; yet one moment they
simply were there. Lindbergh, who felt

Leys

that he was caught in some "unearthly

age of time," was neither surprised nor
afraid. He could see them without turning his head, as though his skull was "one
great eye" with unlimited vision, seeing
everything at once in all directions.
The beings spoke with friendly, familiar human voices, discussing the flight
and navigation, reassuring Lindbergh,
and giving him indescribable "messages
of importance unattainable in ordinary
life." They moved about freely, passing
through the walls of the fuselage, diminishing and increasing in number.
Lindbergh began to lose his sense of
his own physical body. He felt weightless
and could no longer feel the press of his
flesh against the hard stick:
I become independent of physical
laws-of food, of shelter, of life. I'm almost one with these vaporlike forms behind me, less tangible than air, universal
as aether. I'm still attached to life; they,
not at all; but at any moment some thin
band may snap and there'll be no differ- .
ence between us ...
I'm on the border line of life and a
greater realm beyond, as though caught
in the field of gravitation between two
planets, acted on by forces I can't control, forces too weak to be measured by
any means at my command, yet representing powers incomparably stronger
than I've ever known ...
Death no longer seems the final end
it used to be, but rather the entrance to a
new and free existence which includes all
space, all time. (Lindbergh, The Spirit of
St. Louis, 1953)
In his reference to "some thin band,"
Lindbergh may have been aware of the
silvery astral cord said to connect the soul
to the body, and may have sensed that
the severance of the cord meant the transition from earthly life to spirit. His attitude toward death also changed, from
that of an end to a beginning.

Lotus

Lindbergh did not mention his experience in his book about the flight, We,
Pilot and Plane, published later in 1927.
It was not until he wrote The Spirit of St.
Louis, published twenty-six years later in
1953, that he could bring himself to reveal the experiences. He discussed it more
in Autobiography of Values, published
posthumously in 1977. The reluctance to
acknowledge mystical experiences is common; some people spend years coming to
terms with them, convincing themselves
the experiences were not just dreams or
hallucinations. See Altered states of consciousness; Mystical experiences.
Sources: Charles Lindbergh. The Spirit of
St. Louis. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1953; Michael Murphy and Rhea A.
White. The Psychic Side of Sports. Reading,
MA: Addison-Wesley, 1978.

Lodge, Sir Oliver

See Piper, Leonora E.; Society for Psychical Research (SPR).

Lotus
Member of the water lily family, and a
sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism,
and to ancient Egyptians.
In Hinduism the lotus is a symbol of
non attachment. Just as the lotus floats on
water but remains dry, the spiritual
seeker should live in the world but not be
affected by it. The pink lotus represents
yoni, the female reproductive organs. The
lingam, or sacred phallus, usually is depicted with the lotus. The fertility goddesses Padma (Lotus), Lakshmi, and Kali
are portrayed with lotuses; one myth
about Padma holds that she is born from
a lotus that springs from the forehead of
Vishnu, god of the phallus. The lotus also
serves as an important symbol in the
Hindu view of creation. The "lotusnaveled" Vishnu puts forth a giant,

331

--

Elf

golden, lotus of a thousand petals, upon

which is seated Brahma. The petals expand, and from them grow the mountains
and flow the waters of the world. The
lotus also is the motif to describe the vital
chakras, energy points aligned with the
body. See Chakras.
In Buddhism the lotus symbolizes the
true nature of beings. Buddhists associate
it with the birth of Buddha, and it is depicted as his throne or seat.
The seven-petaled lotus appears in
Buddhist and Hindu myths, and is sometimes symbolic of the cosmos, with each
petal representing a division of the heavens. The Buddhist meditational mantra
"Om mani padme hum" means, "0,
Jewel of the Lotus, Hum." See Om.
In the Pure Land school of Chinese
and Japanese Buddhism the lotus symbolizes purity and the Buddha's doctrine.
Tibetan Buddhists also associate the
lotus with purity. An exalted lama, or
rimpoche
("The Precious Guru"), or
"Lotus-Born," is believed to be born under pure, holy conditions, and is regarded as an incarnation of the essence of
Buddha.
In Egypt the blue lotus is associated
with the Nile, and thus with fertility. As
an emblem of rebirth and immortality,
the ancients used it in funeral rites, especially for women and children. Osiris,
god of the underworld, was often portrayed wearing lotus headdresses; Horus,
the sun god, sat upon a lotus. In Egyptian
myth the lotus floating on water represented the newly created Earth.
Sources: The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion. Boston: Shambhala,
1980; W. Y. Evans-Wentz, ed. The Tibetan
Book of the Dead. London: Oxford Uni-

versity Press, 1960; Maria Leach, ed., and

Jerome Fried, assoc. ed. Funk & Wagnalls
Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend. San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1979; Ormond McGill. The Mysticism and Magic of India. Cranbury, NJ: A.

S. Barnes & Co., 1977; Barbara G. Walker.

332

The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and

Secrets. San Francisco: Harper & Row,

1983.

Lotus seat
The most common sitting posture used in
yoga and other forms of meditation.
Called padmasana in Sanskrit ("perfect
posture"), the position requires sitting on
the floor or a cushion with legs crossed so
that each foot is pressed back into the
stomach or is placed on top of the opposite thigh. The hands rest on the knees
with palms up, thumbs and forefingers
touching. The tongue is placed against
the roof of the mouth. The spine and
neck are kept straight. In this position the
body is in repose, balance, and symmetry,
like the lotus blossom. The position facilitates the flow of the universal life force
through the top of the head and into the
chakras. The organs are unobstructed,
and breathing may be controlled easily.
In a half lotus posture, one foot rests
against the opposite calf rather on top of
the thigh or pressed into the stomach.
Both full and half lotus seats are
among postures used in zazen, the sitting
meditation of Zen. The hands, however,
shape the "cosmic mudra," an oval
formed with left hand overlapping right
and thumbs lightly touching, held against
the navel.
References to the lotus seat and
other asanas (postures and exercises) appear in yoga literature dating back to the
Upanishads, c. 900 B.C. The yogic lotus
seat probably evolved from the most
common, comfortable sitting posture of
the day. Like other sitting, squatting, and
kneeling positions used in prayer, it is
considered ideal for relaxation and meditation without the hazard of falling
asleep. The full lotus position is natural
to Easterners, who practice it from early
childhood; but most Westerners, used to
sitting in chairs, find it difficult and pain-

Lotus

ful to master. See Meditation;

ation; Yoga.

Relax-

Sources: Robert Aitken. Taking the Path of

Zen. San Francisco: North Point Press,
1982; Alain. Yoga for Perfect Health. New

New York & Tokyo: John Weatherhill,

1970; Vivian Worthington. A History of
Yoga. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1982.

LSD

York: Pyramid Books, 1957; Herbert Benson, M.D. The Relaxation Response. New
York: Avon Books, 1976; Bernard
Gunther. Energy Ecstasy and Your Seven
Vital Chakras. North Hollywood, CA:
Newcastle Publishing Co., 1983; Willard
Johnson. Riding the Ox Home: A History

See Drugs in mystical and psychic experiences; Leary, Timothy; Psychology;

Ram Dass.

of Meditation

Lucid dreaming

from Shamanism

to Science.

1982. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986; Shunryu Suzuki. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

Lucid dreaming

See Dreams.

333

M
MacLaine, Shirley
See New Age.

Maclean, Dorothy

cession had snared a lover, saved a marriage, healed a sick baby, or eliminated a
wicked enemy. Today members of all
classes and races of Brazilians privately
believe in some sort of ancient spiritual
communion with the gods, while publicly
professing Catholicism.

See Findhorn.

Candomble
Macumba
Common term for the Brazilian form of
Vodoun and SanterIa, or the worship of
African deities through magic and possession of the spirit. Strictly speaking, there
is no "Macumba" religion; the word refers to the two principal forms of African
spiritual worship in Brazil: Candomble
and Umbanda. Macumba sometimes refers to black magic, but that cult is actually called Quimbanda.
African slaves brought to Brazil by
the Portuguese in the 1550s never relinquished their religion, but syncretized it
with Catholicism, keeping its gods and
rituals alive in stories and secret ceremonies. The Africans also found much in
common with the religious practices of
the native Brazilian Indians. By the time
the slaves won their independence in
1888, over fifteen generations
of
Brazilians - black, white, and Indianhad heard the legends of the orishas
(gods) and how the gods' magical inter-

334

Candomble most closely resembles

the ancient Yoruban religions also worshiped in Santerfa, and retains the
Yoruban names of the orishas. Spellings
are Portuguese, not Spanish, however, so
Chango becomes Xango, Yemaya is Yemanja or Iemanja, Oggun becomes Ogun,
and Olorun is Olorum. Figures of Catholic saints represent the orishas, although
Jesus Christ, also called Oxala, is venerated as a god on his own.
The first Candomble center was organized in 1830 in the old capital city of
Salvador, the current capital of the state
of Bahia, by three former female slaves.
The women took over the formerly allmale priestly duties when the men had to
work in the fields. The women's role as
mistresses to white Portuguese masters
also elevated their status and solidified
their position as spiritual leaders, since
the women claimed that the freedom to
worship their gods helped maintain their
sexual skill and prowess. These three first
high priestesses, called the "Mothers of

MacLaine, Shirley

'I

the Saints," trained other women, called

"Daughters of the Saints," to follow
them, completely cutting men out of the
picture. Even today men in Candomble
perform political rather than spiritual duties.
Candomble ceremonies follow much
the same pattern as those for Santeria and
Vodoun, with invocations to the gods,
prayers, offerings, and possession of the
faithful by the orishas. Afro-Brazilian traditions stress the importance of healing
the spirit, and devotees of Candomble believe the moment of greatest spiritual
healing occurs when a person becomes
one with his or her orisha during initiation into the cult. The stronger the
orisha-gods like Xang6 or Ogun-the
more violent and intense the possession.
Often the priest will ask the god to go
gently on a new initiate, offering the orisha a sacrificed pigeon or other animal in
return for mercy.
Instead of praying to Legba or
Eleggua to let the spirits enter, followers
of Candomble call on the Exus, primal
forces of all nature who act as divine
tricksters and messengers to the gods.
Connections exist between ElegguaJLegba
and the Exus, however. Some of EleggWl's manifestations in Santeria are called
Eshus: gods of mischief, the unexpected,
life and death.
One of the biggest celebrations to the
Yemanj:i, "goddess of the waters," takes
place every January 1 live on Brazilian
television. Over a million celebrants,
dressed in white, wade into the ocean at
dusk. A priestess, or mao de santo
(Mother of the Saint), lights candles and
then purifies and ordains new priestesses.
As the sun sets, worshipers decorate a
small wooden boat with candles, flowers,
and figurines of the saints. At midnight
the boat is launched into the bobbing
waves. If the boat sinks, Yemanj:i,
thought to be the Virgin Mary, accepts
her children's offering and promises to
help and guide them for another year.

Macumba

Umbanda
Umbanda was not founded until
1904 and has its origins in Hinduism and
Buddhism in addition to African faiths.
The teachings of Allan Kardec's Spiritism-that
communication with discarnate spirits is not only possible but necessary for spiritual healing and acceptance of one's earlier incarnations-play
a large part in the practices of Umbanda.
Umbanda probably derives from the
Sanskrit term aum-gandha, meaning "divine principle." Umbandistas fear direct
contact with the orishas, believing that
such interaction is too intense for mortals. Instead spirits of divine ancestors act
as mediums for communications with the
gods, much like the services of a trance
channeler or a Native American shaman.
The gods go by their Catholic saint
names in Umbanda and incorporate
many features of their Indian brethren.
Ceremonies start by calling on the
Exus for protection against evil. Then the
Mothers or Fathers of the Saints become
possessed, inviting all who are there to let
themselves receive the spirits. The guide
mediums are usually Native American or
African ancestors, or perhaps a child who
died quite young. The most popular Brazilian guides are the Old Black Man
(Preto Velho) and Old Black Woman
(Preta Velha), who represent the wise old
slaves full of wisdom and healing. As
with possession in Vodoun and Santeria,
those receiving the spirits assume the
characteristics of their possessors, performing medicine dances, whirling to
drumbeats and chants, smoking cigars
and pipes (tobacco is sacred to the Indians), or bending over from advanced age
and labor.
Umbandistas believe that healing of
the physical body cannot be achieved
without healing the spirit; opening the
mind to the entrance of a spirit guide via
ecstatic trance is key to spiritual growth.
Spirits enter the body through the head-

335

this is also true in Candomble, Santeria,

and Vodoun - and are perceived by the
physical body through the "third eye,"
located in the center of the forehead.
Spirits never die but travel on an eternal
journey through other worlds, sometimes
reincarnating in another physical body.
Umbandistas believe the most enlightened
spirits teach and heal through the mediums of Umbanda, and mediumship forges
a link with these highly evolved minds.
Each time a medium receives a spirit
guide, the medium's mind and spirit are
raised to another plane of consciousness.

Quimbanda
Umbandistas
generally refer to
"lower" or "mischievous" spirits rather
than evil ones in the faith that, with education, all spirits eventually evolve to
higher consciousness. But for the practitioners of Quimbanda or Cuimbanda, the
spirits' evil natures are necessary for their
black magic.
Like the followers of Candomble
and Umbanda, Quimbandistas call upon
the Exus, but appeal to their identities as
tricksters and specialists in witchcraft and
sorcery. "King Exu," often identified
with Lucifer, works with Beelzebub and
Ashtaroth, called Exu Mor and Exu of
the Crossroads. Exu of the Closed Paths
inspires the most dread in Brazilians, for
if prayers to this dark lord succeed, victims could lose job, lover, and family, become ill and eventually die, finding "all
paths closed" unless treated by the white
magic of the orishas. See Santeria; Spiritism; Vodoun.
Sources: Peter Haining. The Anatomy of
Witchcraft. New York: Taplinger, 1972;
Francis X. King. Witchcraft and Demonology. New York: Exeter Books, 1987; A. J.
Laugguth. Macumba: White and Black
Magic in Brazil. New York: Harper &

Row, 1975; H. John Maier, Jr. "Brazil's

Black Magic." Travel Holiday (March
1987); Guy Lyon Playfair. The Unknown

336

Power. New York: Pocket Books, 1975; D.

Scott Raga. The Infinite Boundary. New

York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1987; Alberto

Villoldo and Stanley Krippner. Healing
States. New York: Fireside/Simon &
Schuster, 1987.

Magic
The ability to effect change in accordance
with one's will and by invoking the supernatural. The change is accomplished
through ritual, in which cosmic powers,
supernatural forces, deities or other nonphysical beings, or the forces of nature
are invoked and made subservient to the
will of the magician. Magic has existed
universally since ancient times. The forms
of magic range from low sorcery, or spell
casting, to high or ceremonial magic,
which is a Western mystical path to God.
All forms of magic traditionally are secret
arts taught only to initiates.
The term "magic" derives from the
Greek megus, meaning "great." Magic is
often called "white," "black," or "gray,"
for good, evil, or neutral; yet magic itself
is amoral-it is the magician's intent that
is good or evil. Some Western practitioners of magic debate the morality of good
versus evil magic; but most cultures regard magic that destroys as an acceptable
means of self-defense or revenge. See Psychic attack.
According to anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942), magic has
three functions and three elements. The
functions are to produce, protect, and destroy. The elements are spells or incantations; rites or procedures; and the
consciousness of the practitioner, who
undergoes a purification process that alters his or her state of consciousness. This
is accomplished through various means,
such as fasting, meditating, chanting, visualizing symbols, sleep deprivation,
dancing, staring into flames, inhaling
fumes, and taking drugs.
The simplest (and earliest) form of
magic is mechanical sorcery, in which an

Macumba

t.
Sorcery consultation in the New World

act is performed to achieve a result. Paleolithic cave paintings at Trois Freres,

France, for example, depict images suggesting magical rituals for successful
hunts. Other sorceries include tying or
untying knots, blood sacrifices, sticking
pins in or melting waxen images or poppets, and the like. Sorcery is also called
sympathetic magic or imitative magic: By
properly imitating the desired result, it
will come to pass in reality. Personal
items of the victim are usually essential
for this type of magic, such as bits of
clothing, excrement, urine, or hair or nail
clippings. Another key factor is knowledge of the spell by the victim; expectation can contribute to achieving the desired result. However, some sorcerers do
not disclose curses to the victims because
the victims would likely hire another sorcerer to break the curse.
Every society has different strata of
practitioners of magical arts, known by
various names, such as witch doctor, wiz-

Magic

ard, diviner, wise woman, witch, and so

on, as well as sorcerer and magician.
Magic also may be the province of a
priest or religious leader. Some specialize,
such as in healing, divining, prophesying,
and cursing. The aptitude or ability to
practice such magic is usually considered
to be innate and hereditary, passed down
through family lines. Such individuals are
likely to possess psychic skills.
In the West systems of low magic
and high magic were developed by the
ancient Greeks. Low magic, the sorcery
of spells and potions provided for a fee,
acquired an unsavory reputation for
fraud by the fifth century B.C. High
magic, which involved working with spirits, was akin to religion. The Neoplatonists practiced high magic.
In the ensuing centuries, as Christianity made its way throughout Europe,
low magic became the sorceries, witchcraft, and folk magic of rural populations, while high magic became an intel-

337

lIIiIIII~n.~~.~

I"\:'~cc.'~

._

rWlf\ ~K i"<I(U~j K 'p2.(8)'t>11 -

h-ecv,,-4."''--'V.v.-d

\v.A,..e.R...O~D~'\ rcl1a\oLrc<1})l',\yz.(<l)rYi~ -

lectual and spiritual pursuit of elaborate

ceremony, High magic flourished in the
late Middle Ages and Renaissance as a
reaction to the growing power of the
church-state, which proscribed or denied
all magic outside the bounds of religious
miracles. It was drawn from the Hermetica, Neoplatonism, the Kabbalah, and
from Oriental lore brought back to Europe by the Crusaders, and was nurtured
by various secret societies, temples, and
lodges. See Freemasonry; Hermetica; Order of the Knights Templar; RosicruClans.
Magic was discredited by the scientific revolution of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, but interest was revived in the nineteenth century by occultists such as Francis Barrett and Eliphas
Levi, whose respective works, The Magus
(1801) and Dogma and Ritual of High
Magic (1856), were influential. Magical
fraternities reached a peak with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the
late nineteenth century. See Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Golden Dawn
rituals and derivative rituals continue to
be practiced.
In ceremonial magic the purpose of
all rituals is to unite the microcosm with
the macrocosm-to
call forth God or a
god and join the human consciousness
with its essence. The supreme purpose of
ceremonial magic is union wirh God, in
which object and subject cease to exist. It
is a path of self-realization, conducted

:l~under the aegis of the Higher

Self.
The initiate first learns to achieve saW"'i'* N'" madhi, a state of one-pointed concentra'Ow.rJtlCJl,oJ.
tion, with lower forces personified as el~~S~ti.),,~
ementals and astral beings. These are
lJ .-:'~ts}~) akin to the primal archetypal forces repo-.-\Yc~,"
siding within the magician's own collective unconscious; and through these the
magician begins to understand his or her
own nature. Gods and goddesses are then
invoked as the magician refines the consciousness and comes to terms with the
aspects of the Self that are the weakest. In
fb:\'L.,"l
(1.

'?'<"~~

338

v\e<-'Jed

O<-?~

e\,\~

Q(

tkz

t,t~iI

"..t",,;\V~

Jungian terms these would comprise the

Shadow. A male magician, for example,
would seek to develop his anima, his female essence, by invoking a goddess.
The foundation of ceremonial magic
is the Hermetic Qabalah (the spelling favored by magicians), an amalgam of the
Hermetica and Jewish Kabbalah, as used
by the Golden Dawn. The Tree of Life,
which contains the essence of the Qabalah, provides the symbols by which a spiritual language can be communicated between beings in different states of existence, that is, God, angels, and humankind.
Ceremonial magic rituals have three
basic elements: (1) love and devotion; (2)
invocation; and (3) drama. While all rituals must be dramatic to be effective,
drama in particular involves enactment of
a deity's story, in which the magician
identifies with and becomes the deity.
Ritual clothing, magical tools, symbols,
and colors are of utmost importance, for
they attract desired magical forces to the
magician. See Ritual.
Aleister Crowley, one of the greatest
and most controversial magicians to
emerge from the Golden Dawn, said that
every intentional act is essentially a magical act. He believed that if more people
became magicians, they would learn their
true selves and purposes in life, and there
would be less conflict and confusion in
humanity.
Magic in the modern religion of neoPagan Witchcraft includes both ceremonial and low magic. Officially, there are
proscriptions against using magic for
anything other than benefit, and against
blood sacrifice. Some traditions of modern Witchcraft have incorporated elements of other magical systems into their
rites and beliefs, such as Tantra, Vodoun,
Santerfa, and various tribal societies. See
Alchemy; Crowley, Aleister; Fortune,
Dion; Grail, the; Kabbalah; Mysticism;
Witchcraft.
Sources: Isaac Bonewits. Real Magic. Rev.
ed. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1989;

Magic

Richard Cavendish. The Black Arts. New

York: Perigee Books, 1967; Aleister Crowley. Magick in Theory and Practice. 1929.
New York: Dover Publications, 1976;
Dion Fortune. The Mystical Qabalah.
1935. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser,
1984; William G. Gray. Inner Traditions of
Magic. 1970. York Beach, ME: Samuel
Weiser, 1978; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The
Encyclopedia

of Witches

and Witchcraft.

New York: Facts On File, 1989; Israel Regardie. Ceremonial Magic: A Guide to the
Mechanisms
of Ritual. Wellingborough,
England: The Aquarian Press, 1980; Jeffrey
B. Russell. A History of Witchcraft. London: Thames and Hudson, 1980; Charles
T. Tart, ed. Transpersonal Psychologies.
San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1975; Robert Wang. The Qabalistic Tarot: A Textbook of Mystical Philosophy. York Beach,
ME: Samuel Weiser, 1983.

Maharaj Ji
See Alternative religious movements.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

See Transcendental Meditation (TM).

Mahatmas
See Theosophy.

Maimonides

Dream Laboratory

See Dreams.

Mana
See Universal life force.

Mandala
A design, usually circular, which appears
in religion and art. The term mandala is
Sanskrit for "circle." In Hinduism and

Mandala

Buddhism, the mandala has religious ritual purposes and serves as a yantra, a
geometric-design emblem or instrument
of contemplation. The mandala form also
appears in Christianity, Gnosticism, and
other religions, as well as in mythology,
alchemy, healing practices, art, and architecture. It is used in modem psychotherapies as a therapeutic tool. In essence the
mandala represents the point at which
macrocosm and microcosm meet; it symbolizes the mystic's journey through various layers of consciousness to the center,
which is the ultimate, supreme union
with the Divine.
Mandalas may be drawn, painted,
constructed in three-dimensional figures,
and danced. They may also be images
constructed in the mind, especially
among the lamas of Tibet.
The circular shape of a mandala represents a natural and ultimate wholeness,
and appears in symbols dating back to
the Paleolithic Age, notably as spirals and
sun wheels. Plato described the psyche in
terms of a sphere. In Zen the circle signifies enlightenment.
Mandalas have three basic properties
of construction: (1) a center, which signifies the Godhead, the Beginning, and
the Eternal Now, or, in psychotherapy,
the Self, which is the total psyche; (2)
symmetry; and (3) cardinal points. The
center is universal to all mandalas, while
symmetry and cardinal points vary according to purposes and designs. Symmetry is comprised of concentric and
counterbalanced geometric figures. The
polarities often are expressed in terms of
sexual tension. It is the mandala's purpose to harmonize polarities, to make order out of chaos.
Typically, the circle is oriented to
four points. Sometimes this is done by
squaring, in which a square is drawn
around the outside of the circle; other
times it is done by geometric designs,
such as interpenetrating triangles, or
other designs drawn within the circle.

339

__

II-.::~~:::_,,-:_'
:_,_,

This orientation hearkens back to Hindu

and Buddhist creation myths. Before the
Hindu god Brahma began creation, he
stood on a thousand-petaled lotus (a
mandala in itself) and looked to the four
points of the compass. Similarly, Buddha,
after being born, stepped onto an eightrayed lotus flower that rose up from the
earth, and looked into ten directions of
space, one for each ray of the lotus, plus
up and down. See Lotus. In Jungian psychology the cardinal points of the mandala are associated with thought, feeling,
intuition, and sensation, which people
need for psychic orientation.
Virtually anything round can be
viewed as a mandala: the sun, the moon,
the Earth, a clock, an equilateral cross,
the zodiac, the wheel, a rotunda, a halo,
a flower, a maze, a labyrinth, a rose window of a cathedral. King Arthur's Round
Table is a mandala, completed by the legendary vision of the Holy Grail, which
appeared in its center before a gathering
of the king and his knights. Octagons
also are mandala shapes. Squares and triangles suggest mandalas, since circles
may be drawn within squares and vice
versa. Triangles appear often in circular
mandalas.
The fullest development of the mandala in ritual has occurred in Tibet,
where it is believed that the mandala was
introduced in the eighth century by the
Tantric guru Padma Sambhava, who left
a profound impact upon Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan mandalas are elaborate,
intricate, and full of concepts; the smallest details have precise symbolic meanings. The design is built up around a core
structure of four circles grouped at cardinal points around a fifth circle in the
center.
While the mandala is itself a symbol
with form and meaning, what it symbolizes is formless: It expresses and communicates with the ineffable, a consciousness
deeper than conceptual thought. It also
prepares minds at ordinary levels of con-

340

sciousness for what will be perceived at

deeper levels in meditation. In a mandala
reside innumerable deities, who are the
approximate equivalents of the archetypes of the collective unconscious in Jungian thought, and the beings that are
sometimes encountered on hallucinogenic
mystical trips. See Drugs in mystical and
psychic experiences; Flotation. The deities exist simultaneously in the mind and
body of the devotee, and are related to
forces existing throughout the mentally
created universe. They may occasionally
take on an external life force of their
own. See Thought-form.
Western interest in the mandala is
largely due to psychiatrist Carl G. Jung,
who observed it in the works of alchemy
and in medieval Christian art, notably depictions of Christ (the center) surrounded
by his four evangelists at the cardinal
points. (The depiction of Christ has long
been associated with similar ancient
Egyptian portrayals of Horus and his
four sons.) Jung also studied Eastern
mandalas. He found that the integrative
properties of the mandala had benefit in
psychotherapy; by drawing mandalas patients could begin to make order out of
their inner chaos.
Mandalas are part of Navajo sand
painting, a drawing made upon the Earth
for the purpose of healing, and in which
the patient sits at the center. See Medicine
wheels; Meditation; Music; Symbol.
Sources: Jose and Miriam Arguelles. Mandala. Boston: Shambhala Publications,
1985; John Blofeld. The Tantric Mysticism
of Tibet. Boston: Shambhala Publications,
1987; J. E. Cidor. A Dictionary of Symbols. New York: Philosophical Library,
1971; C. G. Jung. Mandala Symbolism.

1959. Princeton: BollingenlPrinceton University Press, 1972; Carl G. Jung, ed. Man
and His Symbols. 1964. New York: Anchor PresslDoubleday, 1988; C. G. Jung.
"Commentary." The Secret of the Golden
Flower. Translated and explained by Richard Wilhelm. Rev. ed. San Diego: Harcourt

Mandala

Brace Jovanovich, 1962; Ajit Mookerjee

and Madhu Khanna. The Tantric Way:
Art, Science, Ritual. Boston: New York
Graphic Society, 1977.

Mantra (also Mantram)

Certain sacred names and syllables used
in Hindu and Buddhist spiritual practices.
"Mantra" is derived from the Sanskrit
man, "mind," and tra, "to deliver."
In Hinduism a mantra is a name for
God or of an avatar of the deity chosen
for devotion by a chela, or pupil. The
chela is initiated into a spiritual path with
the mantra, which holds the essence of
the guru's teachings. The mantra is kept
secret. Meditating upon it clarifies the
mind and leads to enlightenment.
In Buddhism a mantra is a syllable or
syllables that represent cosmic forces, aspects of buddhas, or the name of Buddha.
the mantra is repeated in meditation,
which in Vajrayana Buddhism is accomplished by visualizations and body postures.
While most common in Hinduism
and Buddhism, mantras are used in other
religions, including Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam. The names of God or gods are
powerful mantras, and any formalized
prayer (such as "Hail Mary" or "Our Father who art in heaven") is in essence a
mantra. The Old Testament gives the
most powerful personal name of God as
Yahweh, called the Tetragrammaton (represented by the Hebrew letters YHVH),
so awesome that it was spoken in ancient
times only by high priests on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the most sacred Jewish religious holiday. "Adonai"
and "Elohim" were substitutions for
Yahweh.
Mantras are charged with vibrational power. Chanting a mantra or meditating silently upon it helps one attain an
altered state of consciousness in which
the true nature of the mind may be perceived; the unity of mind with Mind.

Mantra (also Mantram)

Lama Anagarika Govinda defined a mantra as a "tool for thinking," a "thing

which creates a mental picture" (Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1969). The
mantra, Govinda said, is knowledge, the
truth of being beyond right and wrong,
real being beyond thinking and reflecting.
What the mantra expresses in sound exists and comes to pass.
There are three ways to use mantras:
verbal, semiverbal, and silent. The verbal,
in which anyone can hear the mantra, is
considered by some as the lowest form,
while the silent repetition is the highest.
Others, such as the Krishna sect, feel verbal chants are more powerful. In the
semiverbal form, the vocal chords vibrate
but no sound is heard.
The correct pronunciation and intonement of the mantra is of utmost importance, creating powerful vibrations,
which in turn affect the vibrations of all
things in the universe, including deities
and lower spirit beings. The mantra is
considered a manifestation of shabda, or
sacred sound, which can be harnessed to
create or destroy. This concept also is
found in the ancient Greek theory of music, in which the keynote of a particular
organism, body, or substance can be used
to cause it to disintegrate. Mantric power
reputedly is used by yogis and fakirs for
such psychokinetic feats as weather control, teleportation, apports, and levitation. The Tibetan yogi Milarepa was said
to have used mantras to create a hailstorm that destroyed enemies of his family. For using sacred power for evil purpose, Milarepa served years of penance.
Some Buddhist sects consider pronunciation less important than intent and
proper mantric training. This may be because many Buddhist mantras are unintelligible, being comprised of old, rough
translations of Sanskrit sounds.
The most sacred Hindu mantra is
Om, the Supreme Reality, the sound from
which the universe was created. Among
the variations of Om mantras are the

341

!IIIIIIlIIII!!fIII!IIlllllilllilii[~ij:i"':'~i

-'--"~~~~~~~_~

~~,~.

Hindu "Om, Tat, Sat Om," meaning "0

Thou Self-existent One," and the Buddhist "Om mani padme hum," meaning
"0, Jewel of the Lotus, Hum," or "The
Supreme Reality (is the) lotus jewel of
Oneness." "am mani padme hum," also
called the "Mani" mantra, is used by
many Buddhists daily for a variety of purposes: as an amulet against evil and bad
luck; to facilitate ablutions and bodily
eliminations; to heal; and, in the Pure
Land sect, to seek entry to the Pure Land
upon death. The repetition of am in
meditation creates spiritual light and
power, which cleanses the subtle body
and helps eliminate disharmony.
In Tibetan Buddhism the six syllables of "am mani padme hum" mean
that one may transform one's impure
body, mind, and speech into the exalted
body, mind, and speech of a Buddha by
following a path of an indivisible union
of method and wisdom. Om signifies
body, speech, and mind (see am); mani
means jewel and symbolizes a method for
enlightenment; padme means "lotus" and
symbolizes wisdom (see Lotus); and hum
symbolizes indivisibility. The mantra
"Hum" also is comparable to "am," and
plays an important role in Tantric rituals.
It is associated with the chakras of the
lower body, particularly the root chakra
where the kundalini resides, ready to be
awakened with the correct mantra. See
Kundalini.

The most sacred mantra to Krishna

devotees is the sixteen-word "Hare
Krishna Hare Krishna/Krishna Krishna!
Hare Hare/Hare Rama Hare Rama/Rama
Rama/Hare Hare."

Magical

Uses of Mantras

Since the time of the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians, magicians have used
mantras for conjuring and casting spells.
The mantras are "names of power,"
which have been passed down from the
Egyptians, Gnostics, and Hebrews. Many

342

=~=====~~_====
names of power are the true and secret
names of God, such as Yahweh or
Adonai, or nonsensical syllables drawn
from the first letters of various biblical
passages. These are used to summon spirits and to serve as amulets against misfortune.
The general Hindu and Buddhist
populations use mantras as amulets for
protection against illness, evil, and bad
luck. In Sri Lanka exorcists use secret
mantras, along with songs, drumming,
dance, and curative oils, to expel demons
and ghosts responsible for possession,
sickness, and misfortune.
The twentieth-century English magician Aleister Crowley created the mantra
AUMGN, an expansion of am which he
said was the magical formula of the universe. Crowley believed the sound vibrations of AUMGN were so powerful that
a magician using them would be able to
control the forces of the universe.
See Meditation;
Transcendental
Meditation (TM).
Sources: John Blofeld. Mantras: Sacred
Words of Power. New York: E. P. Dutton,
1977; Richard Cavendish. The Black Arts.
New York: Perigee Books, 1967. Chant
and Be Happy: The Power of Mantra Meditation. Based on the teachings of A. C.

Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Los Angeles: The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust,

1983; The Encyclopedia of Eastern Religion and Philosophy. Boston: Shambhala,
1989; W. Y. Evans-Wentz, ed. The Tibetan
Book of the Dead. 3d ed. London: Oxford

University Press, 1960; W. Y. EvansWentz, ed. The Tibetan Book of the Great
Liberation.
London: Oxford University
Press, 1954; W. Y. Evans-Wentz. Tibet's
Great Yogi Milarepa: A Biography from
the Tibetan. 2d ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1951; Jack Forem. Transcendental Meditation. New York: E. P. Dut-

ton,

1973; Lama Anagarika

Govinda.
First
American ed. York Beach, ME: Samuel
Weiser, 1969; Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness
the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Kindness, Clar-

Foundations

of Tibetan

Mantra

Mysticism.

(also Mantram)

~_

ity and Insight. Translated and edited by

Jeffrey Hopkins, coedited by Elizabeth
Napper. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1984; Bruce Kapferer. A Celebration
of Demons. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1983; Maria Leach, ed. and
Jerome Fried, assoc. ed. Funk & Wagnalls
Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend. San Francisco: Harper &

Row, 1979; Robert R. Leichtman and Carl

Japikse. Active Meditation: The Western
Tradition. Columbus, OH: Ariel Press,
1982; Ormond McGill. The Mysticism and
Magic of India. Cranbury, NJ: A. S. Barnes
& Co., 1977; Evelyn Underhill. Mysticism.
New York: New American Library, 1974.

Margery
See American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR).

Marian apparitions
The appearance or manifestation of the
Blessed Virgin Mary. Countless Marian
apparitions have been reported over the
centuries, but the Catholic church, which
investigates the most promising in
lengthy procedures that can take years to
complete, has decreed only a few of them
to be genuine.
Most Marian apparitions consist of
the appearance of a luminous woman
who is identified as Mary. She mayor
may not speak. If she does she identifies
herself and delivers a message urging people to pray more and lead a more devout
life. She also asks for churches and
shrines to be built to her. Miraculous
healings often are reported in the wake of
sightings. Other paranormal phenomena
associated with the apparitions are brilliant lights, spinning and unusual lights,
burning bushes, spinning crosses, celestial
music, sweet, incense-like smells, apports,
and so on. Some witnesses experience ecstatic trances.
Catholic dogma states that religious
apparitions are not ghosts, but are mys-

Marian apparitions

tical phenomena permitted by God. The

Marian apparitions that have been
deemed authentic occurred in Guadalupe,
Mexico, in 1531; in Paris in 1830; at La
Salette, France, on September 19, 1846;
at Lourdes, France, between February 11
and July 16, 1858; at Knock, Ireland, on
August 21,1879; at Fatima, Portugal, between May 13 and October 13, 1917; at
Beauraing, Belgium, between November
29, 1932 and January 3, 1933; and Banneaux, Belgium, in 1933. The apparitions
at Guadalupe, Lourdes, and Fatima are
the most celebrated. All sites of authenticated apparitions are visited each by pilgrimages in hopes of miraculous cures.
Unauthenticated
apparitions
also
draw the faithful. Two of the most famous sites are Zeitoun, Egypt, and Medjugorje, Yugoslavia.
At Zeitoun, a suburb of Cairo, more
than seventy Marian apparitions and
other unusual phenomena were reported
in the vicinity of the St. Mary's Coptic
church over a fourteen-month period beginning on April 2, 1968. The longest apparition, on June 8, 1968, lasted for more
than seven hours. The phenomena were
witnessed by hundreds of thousands of
people and were captured on film. Miraculous cures were reported ..
At the remote village of Medjugorje,
Marian apparitions began appearing to
six adolescent villagers on June 24, 1981.
For the next eighteen months, apparitions
appeared daily to at least one of the six,
totalling nearly two thousand by 1985.
Miraculous healings and other phenomena have been reported. The six "seers,"
as they are called, say Mary has appeared
to bring a message from Christ: Atheists
must convert and return to the ways of
God, and change their lives to peace with
God and with their fellow man. Returning to God can be achieved through
peace, conversion, fasting, penance, and
prayer.
Pilgrims who visit the church and
rectory say Mary appears to them during

343

prayer. Photographs taken appear to

show images of Jesus and Mary.
Marian apparitions have been reported elsewhere, such as at Lubbock,
Texas, in 1988 to parishioners of the St.
John Neumann Roman Catholic church.
Marian apparitions might be explained in terms of the "encounter phenomenon," in that they are archetypal
projections from the human unconscious
to answer a need, such as spiritual hunger. Mary's authority cannot be denied,
and she brings about transformations in
those who profess to see her. See Archetypes; Encounter phenomenon; Mythology.
Sources: Juan Arintero. Mystical Evolution
in the Development
and Vitality of the
Church. Vol. 1. St. Louis: B. Herder, 1949;
Donald Attwater. A Dictionary of Mary.

New York: P. J. Kennedy, 1960; Robert

Broderick, ed. The Catholic Encyclopedia.
Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1976; Victor
DeVincenzo. "The Apparitions at Zeitoun,
Egypt: An Historical Overview." The Journal of Religion and Psychical Research 11,

no. 1 (January 1988): 3-13; Ann Marie

Hancock. "Signs and Wonders of Her
Love."
Venture
Inward
(September/
October 1988): 12-15; Louis Kronenberger, ed. Atlantic Brief Lives. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971; Coley Taylor. Our Lady
of Guadelupe: Marian Library Studies No.
85. Dayton, OH: University of Dayton,
1961; Paul Weingarten. "Weeping Pilgrims
Claim to See Faces of Jesus, Mary in
Clouds." The Seattle Times (August 16,
1988).

Martial arts
Various styles of Oriental combat, either
empty hand or with weapons. Thousands
of styles of martial arts exist.
Martial arts originally were developed to achieve victory in battle. Over
the centuries, however, they became philosophical and spiritual disciplines for cul-

344

tivating a deeper meaning in life, and became steeped in Buddhism, Taoism,

Shintoism, and Zen. They remained
shrouded in secrecy until the Korean
War, and since then have been exported
increasingly to the West. Empty hand
martial arts are the most popular in the
West.
Regardless of style the key to all
martial arts is skillful use of the universal
life force (ch'i in Chinese and ki in Japanese), which permeates all things and
can be directed throughout the body. The
universal life force exists in the opposites
of yang and yin, active/masculine and
passive/feminine, which are in constant
interplay. The force is controlled by uniting it with mind and body in physical
movement, breathing techniques, and
meditation. See Universal life force.
The grandfather of martial arts in
China is Kung Fu, Chinese boxing, which
dates to about A.D. 520 in northern
China. Its development is credited to a
wandering Indian monk named Bodhidharma, also called Ta-Mo. According to
legend Bodhidharma was the son of King
Sugandha of India and was skilled in
martial arts. In mid-life he became a
monk and crossed the Himalayas on foot.
At the Shaolin monastery in China, he
found monks in terrible physical condition, and taught them a set of exercises
for conditioning body and mind. He also
taught them Buddhism, and it is believed
rhat the Zen philosophy was born there.
Over time the Shaolin exercises were
expanded and adapted to animal movements. Stressing power strikes, kicking,
and use of muscle, they became the
"hard" school of Kung Fu. Various styles
have evolved since.
Kung Fu practitioners widely believe
in a traditional death touch called dim
mak. If a body is struck at a certain point
in a certain manner at a certain time of
day, a delayed death inevitably follows.
At first the victim feels unharmed, then
later becomes ill and dies. It is said that

Marian apparitions

the art of dim mak is possessed by only a

handful of old masters.
A "soft," or internal form of Kung
Fu was developed in the thirteenth century by a Taoist monk, Chang Sang-fen.
Instead of meeting force with equal force
as in the hard school, the soft school
stresses a maximization of internal energy
through tranquility. Yielding becomes
strength and strength becomes yieldingthe interplay of yin and yang, which the
artist works to his advantage. Selfdefense rests more on avoidance of blows
rather than strikes and counterstrikes. See
Tai Ji Chuan.
Karate, which means "empty hand,"
originated on Okinawa and was used
against the Japanese when they invaded
the island in 1609. It was introduced formally to Japan in the early twentieth century, and combines the indigenous methods with Kung Fu. It is based on blows
delivered with the hand, head, feet, and
knees.
In Japan the grandfather of martial
arts is Jiu Jitsu ("gentle or soft skill").
According to legend Jiu Jitsu is about
two thousand years old, but scholars
date it to the ancient sumo fighting c. 23
B.C. Jiu Jitsu was
formalized during
the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868),
when the samurai were idled by nearly
three hundred years of relative peace, and
the need for empty hand fighting grew.
Swords were outlawed in 1876. A theoretical basis for the art of swordsmanship
was developed in order to keep the art
from degenerating. Jiu Jitsu was heavily
influenced by Zen, which had a great appeal to the samurai. It emphasized the
striking of vital points, kicking, strangling, and joint locking. It has evolved
into Judo, a sports version, which emphasizes joint dislocation. It also was the precursor of Aikido ("the way of harmony
with the spirit of the universe"), a modern Japanese martial art founded in 1922
by Morihei Ueshiba, a Jiu Jitsu instructor.
The main objective of Aikido is the uni-

Martial arts

Aikido
fication of mind, body, and ki-selfrealization through discipline - and the
manifestation of love and harmony in all
actions. Techniques stress harmonization
with the moves of one's opponent.
Ueshiba early in his life embarked on
a spiritual quest for budo, the inner essence of martial arts. He had a mystical
experience in mid-life one day while sitting under a persimmon tree. The universe quaked and a golden spirit sprang
up from the ground and veiled his body
and changed it into one of gold. His mind
and body became light. He understood
the birds and became aware of "the mind
of God." At that moment he understood
that the source of budo is God's love for
all beings, and the training of budo is to
assimilate and utilize that love in the
mind and body.
Ninjitsu is a stealth art, and was
originated in the fourth century by the
Chinese General Sun Tsu. The ninja are
skilled at silent killing. They learn how to
dislocate their own joints, and how to use
breathing and meditation to stay underwater for prolonged periods and control
their heartbeats to avoid detection.
Most martial arts have feats of incredible power, such as powerbreaking,
which is the breaking of thick pieces of
wood, layers of tile or bricks, and so on
with the hand, foot, elbow, head, or even
fingertips. In Kung Fu the "iron palm" is
a single blow with the hand that kills.

345

Other amazing feats are immunity to fire,

cuts, severe blows, and the like. The purpose of these feats is to make the student
aware of the power within. The feats are
accomplished by directing the ch'i or ki
to various parts of the body. When the
body is full of ch'i, it is exceptionally
strong. See Psychokinesis (PK).
Ueshiba often demonstrated his command of ki. He was five feet tall and
weighed only 120 pounds, yet by directing his ki down to the ground could remain rooted to the spot and resist the efforts of several men to pick him up.
Likewise, he used ki to send several assailants flying, while barely moving himself. He used ki to make himself lighter,
so that he could walk on top of teacups
without breaking them.
Ch'i cannot be accumulated in the
body quickly, but must be built slowly
through regular and unhurried practice of
form. Humor and joyfulness are part of
the discipline. Westerners, who are always in a hurry for instant results, often
make the mistake of undertaking martial
arts training too rapidly and too seriously.
Ch'i is regulated through breathing,
which is used to center it in the solar
plexus area, the seat of vital energy. Various martial arts movements call for specific techniques of inhaling or exhaling.
Exhaling is accompanied by sound, often
a scream or shriek, which helps to release
the ch'i at the opponent and throw him
or her off balance. Sound also is used to
dissipate the force of ch'i contained in a
punch or kick.
By harmonizing with his or her opponent, the martial artist learns to anticipate hostile moves and avoid or preempt
them. This requires a state of "no mind"
or "not fighting," in which the mind is
disengaged and the body reacts instinctively, going with the flow of ch'i energy.
In Japanese this state is called nen, which
connotes a concentration
or onepointedness. Nen is not concerned with

346

winning or losing or with strategy. With

the proper connection to ki, it becomes a
supernatural power that sees all things
clearly; one absorbs the opponent's
moves into one's own. One must not
think with the mind, for to do so makes
one vulnerable by freezing or interfering
with nen.
Ueshiba said this supernatural power
enabled him literally to dodge bullets. In
1924, while on a trip to Inner Mongolia,
Ueshiba and his party were attacked several times by bandits and soldiers of the
Chinese Nationalist Army. His martial
arts training enabled him to intuitively
sense from which direction the bullets
would come. He could see small pebbles
of white light flashing just before the bullets, and said he dodged them by twisting
and turning. On another occasion, in
1925, he was challenged by a swordwielding opponent. Ueshiba had no
weapon, and again anticipated the sword
thrusts by seeing little pebbles of white
light that flashed first. His opponent exhausted himself and gave up.
Other, lesser-known Oriental martial
arts have gained a following in the West.
Tae Kwon-Do is a thirteen-hundred-yearold style from Korea. Tae means "to kick
or smash with the feet"; kwon means "to
punch or destroy with the hand or fist";
and do means "method." Hwarang-Do,
also from Korea, was exported to the
United States in 1972. It stresses external
power, internal power, weapon power,
and mental power. The latter includes
training in controlling the mind and developing psychic powers, especially clairvoyance and telepathy. It also teaches
meditation and healing.
Zen is a major influence in two Japanese martial arts with weapons: Kyudo,
"the way of the bow," and Kendo, "the
way of the sword." In Kyudo the importance is placed not on hitting the bull's
eye, but on how the shooting is done and
one's state of mind when the arrow is released. In modern Kendo the emphasis is

Martial arts

II

'1;.

d~l'I"'Ji"";i

,"

on improving one's spiritual development

and moral conduct.
See Buddhism;
Meditation;
Qi
Gong; Taoism; Zen. Compare to Sports,
mystical and psychic phenomena in.
Sources: Bob Klein. Movements of Magic:
The Spirit of T'ai-Chi-Ch'uan. North Hol-

lywood, CA: Newcastle Publishing, 1984;

Peter Lewis. Martial Arts of the Orient.
New York: Gallery Books, 1985; Dai Liu.
T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Meditation.
New
York: Schocken Books, 1986; Charles T.
Tart. Open Mind, Discriminating Mind.
San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989; Kisshomam Ueshiba. The Spirit of Aikido. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1984.

Mary
The mother of Jesus referred to in the
Christian Gospels, also called "Blessed
Virgin," "Virgin Mary," or in some contexts by Christians simply "Our Lady."
Early church councils, including those at
Ephesus in 431 and at Chalcedon in 451,
gave her the title Theotokos
("Godbearer"); thus the title "Mother of God"
is widely used, especially among Catholics.
According to Catholic doctrine,
Mary is the single exception to the state
of Original Sin due to her Immaculate
Conception. Original Sin, a teaching of
most Christian theologians, holds that
the condition of Adam and Eve after their
fall from grace is the spiritual state in
which all humankind is conceived. Mary,
however, was destined to be the mother
of Christ; thus God infused her soul with
grace at the moment of her conception in
the womb of her mother, St. Anne, which
freed her from lust, slavery to the Devil,
depraved nature, darkness of intellect,
and other consequences of Original Sin.
The idea of the Immaculate Conception
was rejected by Thomas Aquinas in the
thirteenth century.
Mary and her proper place in Chris-

Mary

__

n_'

tian theology have been a subject of much

controversy over the centuries. It is evident that she absorbed characteristics of
previous pagan goddesses, thus fulfilling
the need for worship of a Mother-figure.
Early church fathers attempted to discourage worship of her by saying that
God would never be born of a woman.
For the first five centuries after Christ,
she was depicted as lower in status than
even the Magi, who were graced by halos
in sacred art; the Marianite sect, which
considered her divine, was persecuted for
heresy. In the early fourth century, Constantine I ordered all goddess temples destroyed and forbade the worship of
Mary, so that she would not overshadow
her Son. The people, however, refused to
accept Christianity without worship of
Mary; they substituted her for the Great
Goddess. She was prayed to as a Mother
who intercedes for her children. By the
sixth century she was shown in art with a
halo, and by the ninth century she was
named Queen of Heaven. By the eleventh
century, she had eclipsed Jesus in popularity and as the savior of humankind.
The great Gothic cathedrals were built to
her, not to her Son.
In accepting Mary the church had to
grapple with her sexuality. Though the
Bible refers to Jesus' brothers and sisters,
Mary became "the Virgin," who never
defiled her body with sexual intercourse
during her entire life. Furthermore, she
had not died as a mere mortal, but had
been raised from the dead by Jesus, and
assumed into heaven as a live woman.
The Assumption became an article of
faith in 1950.
Devotion to Mary is a vital part of
the Catholic liturgical life, especially in
the Eastern Orthodox churches. However, the latter churches are averse to abstract theologizing about Mary. The
theological, philosophical, and other academic studies of Mary are collectively
called "Mariology," a distinct discipline
that includes biblical references to her,

347

doctrines and devotions associated with

her, and her role in religious history and
thought. There is a Mariological Society
of America and several centers of Mariological research, including the Marianum, the theological faculty directed in
Rome by the Servite Fathers. There is also
the Marian Library at the University of
Dayton, Ohio, one of several schools
owned and operated by the Society of
Mary (Marianists), a Roman Catholic religious order devoted especially to "filial
piety," a devotion to Mary similar to that
which they believe is accorded Christ.
Catholics observe several feast days
in Mary's honor, including the Immaculate Conception, her Nativity, Purification, Annunciation, and Assumption.
Several popular religious practices focus
on devotion to Mary, most notably the
rosary, which is the saying of fifty "Hail
Marys," five "Our Fathers," and five
doxologies ("Glory be to the Father ... ")
while meditating on specific traditional
mysteries. This association with the rosary stems from apparitions of Mary seen
at Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. The apparition identified herself as the Lady of the
Rosary, and asked that believers say the
rosary every day. See Marian apparitions.
Several Marian devotional prayers
(such as "little offices") and traditions
(such as various novenas, which are nine
days' devotions) have their origins in medieval times, when Marian devotion was
especially intense throughout Europe, as
evidenced by the number of artifacts and
cathedrals built for Mary. The religious
order Servants of Mary, or Servites, dates
from these times. While most Catholic religious orders include Marian devotions
in their tradition,
several religious
orders-particularly
of nuns-are
devoted specifically to Mary.
Many mystical experiences and miraculous healings throughout history
have centered on devotion to Mary, in
particular her alleged appearances in apparitions. See Goddess; Jesus.

348

Sources: Juan Arintero. Mystical Evolution

in the Development
and Vitality of the
Church. Vol. 1. St. Louis: B. Herder, 1949;
Donald Attwater. A Dictionary of Mary.

New York: P. J. Kennedy, 1960; Robert

Broderick, ed. The Catholic Encyclopedia.
Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1976; Elizabeth
Gould Davis. The First Sex. New York: G.
P. Putnam's Sons, 1971; Robert Graves.
The White Goddess. Amended and enlarged ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 1966; Barbara G. Walker. The
Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983.

Masks
Coverings for the face that are used in
ritual, liturgies, theater, and folk art, the
purpose of which is to transform the
wearer-and
possibly the viewer by
association-into
something other than
what he or she is, such as an animal, an
ancestor, or a presumed image of a supernatura.l-being.
The mask is a sacred object of
power. It does not conceal, but liberates.
By donning it wearers allow themselves
to become possessed by the spirit in the
mask or represented by the mask, which
enables them to invoke the powers of that
spirit. It is a lightning rod of spiritual and
psychic energy. In Jungian terms a mask
connects its wearer to archetypal powers
residing within the collective unconscious. The mask is a mediator between
the ego and archetype, the mundane and
the supernatural, the comic and the sacred. It connects the present to the past.
In prehistoric societies masks succeeded disguises that covered all or part
of the body and magically transformed
the wearer. Perhaps the first prehistoric
masked dancer is the "Sorcerer," a
Neolithic-Age cave painting at Trois
Freres in France. The masked figure is
half human and half animal, wearing stag
antlers, and poised in dance-step.
Although the symbolisms of masks
vary from culture to culture, commonal-

Mary

Bali master mask maker

ltles between mask symbols and myths
have been found in different societies,
such as African, Native North American,
and Oceanic tribes. A standard motif to
explain the origin of masked dance concerns a wandering tribesman who comes
upon masked, dancing animals, steals
their masks, and takes them back to his
own village, where he teaches others
what he saw. Masks and their dances also
are bestowed by culture heroes.
Masks play an important role in religious, healing, exorcism, and funerary
rituals. Sri Lankan exorcism masks, for
example, are hideous, in order to frighten
possessing demons out of bodies. Among
Native North Americans, bear masks invoke the healing powers of the bear, considered the great doctor of all ills. Masks
in shamanism, however, are uncommon,
except among the Inuit; the shaman's
costume itself may be considered a mask.
In funerary rites masks incarnate the
souls of the dead, protect wearers from
recognition by the souls of the dead, or
trap the souls of the dead.
In most cultures masks symbolize beneficent spirits, of nature, deities, the
dead, and the animal kingdom. Native

Masks

Mask maker wearing the Mask of

Rangda
North Americans have used masks to represent evil spirits, over which the medicine men are believed to have power.
Similar attribution is made in Ceylon.
The making of a mask is a sacred
ritual in itself; there are many rules and
taboos. It may be done in secret or to
chanting. Masks must be made of certain
materials and only at certain times of the
year by certain people. The Awa mask
society of the Dogon of Mali feed their
masks ritual blood sacrifices, an appeasement to the spirits within the masks.
Mask-making is part of initiation into
many ancestor cults and male secret societies; in the latter, according to one theory, the object of the masks is to frighten
women by portraying demons and ancestral spirits.
Prior to donning masks, it is universally customary for wearers to prepare by
contemplating the mask features and the
supernatural energy bound up within
them. After use masks are carefully stored
or ritually burned or buried. Vestiges of
such rituals may be seen in various liturgical vesting ceremonies, though not in
the Christian liturgical tradition.

349

In the West masks have lost much of

their sacred and deep symbolic meaning.
They were integral to Greek drama, both
secular and liturgical medieval ceremonies, the Renaissance court masque, and
nineteenth-century mime and pantomime.
However, in the modern day, the West
has nothing comparable to the use of
masks in Japanese No drama, for example. Westerners tend to focus on the superficiality of masks rather than on the
essence of what masks represent.
In transpersonal psychology masks
are used to help people identify with archetypes and liberate suppressed parts of
the Self, thus seeing themselves in new
ways. See Archetypes.
Sources: Joseph Campbell. The Masks of
God. Vol. 1, Primitive Mythology. New
York: Viking, 1959; Joseph Campbell. The
Way of the Animal Powers: Historical Atlas of World Mythology. Parts 1 and 2.

London: Times Books, 1983, 1988; Mircea

Eliade. Rites and Symbols of Initiation.
New York: Harper & Row, 1958; Mircea
Eliade. Shamanism. 1951. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1964; Ron Jenkins. "Two Way Mirrors." Parabola 6, no.
3 (August 1981): 17-21; Carl G. Jung.
Man and His Symbols. First published in
the United States 1964. New York: Anchor
PresslDoubleday, 1988; Stephen and Robin
Larsen. "The Healing Mask." Parabola 6,
no. 3 (August 1981): 78-84; Claude LeviStrauss. The Way of the Masks. Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1988;
Steven Lonsdale. Animals and the Origins
of Dance. New York: Thames and Hudson,
1982; Meredith B. McGuire. "Healing Rituals in the Suburbs." Psychology Today 23,
no. 1/2 (JanuarylFebruary 1989): 57-64.

Masonry
See Freemasonry.

Materialization
The appearance of seemingly solid objects and spirit forms out of thin air. Eastern adepts who have mastered the siddhis

350

("miraculous powers") are said to be able

to materialize objects. Sai Baba of India is
renowned for materializations of food,
precious gems, jewelry, vibuti (holy ash),
religious objects, and so on. See Milarepa; Sai Baba; Siddhis; Yoga.
A phenomenon of physical mediumship, materializations were particularly
popular during the peak of Spiritualist seances during the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, then became less
common as other forms of mediumship
came into prominence.
Objects, or apports, commonly materialized at Spiritualist seances included
vases, coins, flowers, and musical instruments. Luminous and phantom-like objects, animals, and human spirits also appeared. Often, human hands were the
only body parts to materialize at a seance; they were called "pseudopods." D.
D. Home and Eusapia Palladino were
among numerous mediums famous for
causing ghostly forms to appear, which
felt solid and cold to the touch. More
sensational was the materialization of the
entire form of a spirit. Florence Cook, a
British medium who became famous
while in her teens, was the first medium
to materialize full spirit forms in good
light. She allegedly produced her control
spirit, Katie King, who resembled Cook
in appearance and was garbed in flowing
white clothing. However, she was exposed for fraud.
Some mediums exhibited a skill in
dematerialization, making themselves, or
parts of themselves, disappear. On December 11, 1895, Mademoiselle d'Esperance, a medium, dematerialized her lower
body at a seance in Helsinki, Finland. For
about fifteen minutes, d'Esperance's skirt
lay flat on the chair. She was fully conscious, but felt as though she were dreammg.

It was not uncommon for mediums

to fake materializations with the help of
stage magic trickery. Seances usually took
place in a darkened room, which made it

Masks

easy to conceal wires, trap doors, and

other apparatus, as well as provide a
cover for surreptitious movement. The
dark also stimulates the imagination; if
one expects to see spirits, one undoubtedly will. Furthermore, Victorian etiquette
usually prevented
thorough
searches of a medium's personage, and
required observance of the medium's
rules. TypicaHy, the medium retired behind a curtain and requested no peeking
until several minutes after the spirit had
disappeared.
Materializations of spirits usually
proved to be the medium in disguise.
Cook was exposed more than once. See
Cook, Florence. In 1875 Frank Herne, a
young, professional English medium, was
exposed at a seance in Liverpool. Herne,
who specialized in materializing spirit
faces and bodies, was seized by an impolite sitter, who had the nerve to grab him
and turn up the gaslight to take a closer
look at the "spirit head." Herne had
about two yards of stiff muslin wrapped
around his head and hanging down to his
thighs. Another British medium of the
same period, Mary Showers, also was
caught red-handed. After Showers retired
behind a curtain, the spirit face of her
control, Florence Maples, appeared to the
sitters. When the spirit bid good-bye and
disappeared behind the curtain, a sitter
leaped up and yanked the curtain open
prematurely. The "spirit" struggled to
close the curtain, but her headgear fell
off, revealing Showers beneath.
Home exposed a letter written from
one medium to another, which he had
obtained, and which explained how the
materialization trick could be done. The
medium was to take a very thin, muslin
"spirit robe," fold it into a small piece,
and secret it in her drawers, where no polite sitter would dare inspect. Once she
was behind curtains or in a cabinet, she
undressed down to a double layer of
shifts, donned the robe, and emerged as
the "spirit."

Medicine

bundle

Some materializations, however, remain unexplained. Home, for example,

was never exposed as a fraud. See Apport; Ectoplasm.
Sources: Alfred Douglas. Extrasensory
Powers: A Century of Psychical Research.

London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1976; Alan

Gauld. Mediumship and Survival. London:
William Heinemann Ltd., 1982; Into the
Unknown. Pleasantville, NY: Reader's Digest, 1981; Janet Oppenheim. The Other
World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research
in England, 1850-1914.
Cambridge, En-

gland: Cambridge University Press, 1985;

Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook of
Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold, 1977.

Mathers, Samuel Liddell

MacGregor
See Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

Medicine bundle
A bag made of leather or an animal pelt
in which Native Americans keep an assortment of objects with healing, magical,
and supernatural powers. Medicine bundles are known to almost all tribes. They
are the equivalent of a church reliquary
and held with the same reverence. Some
are small and simple, while others contain more than one hundred items. Such
objects include fetishes and charms, ritual
items, herbs and healing paraphernalia,
magical objects, scalps, hooves, feathers,
claws, stones, arrow points, remains of
ancestors, symbolic miniatures, and the
like. The importance of medicine bundles
in the religions of Native North Americans varies considerably.
The instructions for composing medicine bundles are given to clans, societies,
and individuals by the Supernaturals, or
guardian spirits, in dreams or visions.
The bundles are concrete tokens of medicine power that the spirits have bestowed

351

Christian mISSIOnariescaused many

medicine bundles to be buried or destroyed, turning them into a rarity. Their
use has revived with the renewal of interest in native culture.
Medicine bundles are not limited to
North American tribes; the Aztecs, for
example, carried medicine bundles that
contained images of various gods. See Fetish; Medicine societies.

Contemporary pouches fashioned after

medicine bags

upon the recipients, such as for healingwhich may be general or limited to one
illness-or hunting. Entire medicine societies have sprung up around bundles,
such as the Midewiwin of the Ojibwa.
The Buffalo Medicine Society had a medicine bundle containing deer hooves,
feathers, bells (for keeping time to chants
and songs), wands of buff tails, sweet
grass incense, and medicinal herbs and
roots. It was carried into battle, where its
contents were used to treat the injured.
On special occasions, such as prior
to war, communal hunts, long trips, and
the moving of village sites, the bundles
are opened according to rituals of song,
dance, and recitation. Thus the bundle's
supernatural power is invoked to ensure
success of the venture. Not all items are
necessarily removed for a specific purpose. To dream of a medicine bundlesuch as before a hunt-is considered propitious.
Individual medicine bundles are either buried \vith their owners or passed
to relatives. Collective bundles are kept
and passed down by medicine men, designated custodians, or descendants of the
original visionary. Some collective bundles of earlier days reputedly had great
power, which was rimally renewed as required.

352

Sources: Ake Hultkrantz. Native Religions

of North America. San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1987; Ake Hultkranrz. The Religions of the American Indians. 1967.

Berkeley: University of California Press,

1979; Elisabeth Tooker, ed. Native North
American Spirituality of the Eastern Woodlands. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1979;
Ruth M. Underhill. Red Man's Religion.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1965.

Medicine societies
In the traditions of Native North Americans, closed cults of people who have
been endowed with supernatural powers,
especially curative. Medicine societies
predominate among hunter-gatherers, especially around the Great Lakes region,
and among some planters, such as the
Pueblo of the Southwest. They are shamanic in structure.
The name "medicine society" was
given to these groups by the French; the
French term medecin means "doctor,"
and also is the basis of the Western terms
"medicine man" and "medicine woman"
for individual practitioners. (It is argued
that such terms as "medicine man" are
obsolete, yet they continue to be used by
many Native Americans. "Shaman" is often substituted.)
Perhaps the greatest and most organized medicine society is the Midewiwin,
also called the Grand Medicine Society,
of the Ojibwa, Menomini, and Winnebago. More recently, it has been called

Medicine

bundle

the Mide Society. The term Midewiwin is

derived from mide, meaning "sound of
the drum," and wiwin, meaning "doings."
The Mide Society has the structure
and practice of a mystery school. According to myth the society has ancient origins and was founded by Nanabozho, the
Great Hare culture hero, on instructions
from the Great Spirit. Moved by the sickness and weakness of humanity, Nanabozho revealed sacred secrets to the otter and inserted white clam shells in its
body to make it immortal. Historical evidence suggests the Mide Society originated in the late seventeenth century. The
first white reports of it date to the 1880s.
It is still active in present times.
Membership is not limited to shamans, but is open to others who are interested in spiritual pursuits and who
have experienced a vision in which supernaturals directed them to join the society.
See Vision quest. Members are required
to pay initiation fees.
The novice undertakes a lengthy and
rigorous training under the guidance of
an older society member. Training includes instruction in the sacred primordial myth, the traditions of the society,
magical songs, and various occult and
healing practices. The novice advances
through four degrees: The first is associated with aquatic animals in the creation
myths, including the mink, otter, muskrat
and beaver; the second is associated with
creatures of the air (owl or hawk); the
third is associated with the more powerfulland creatures, such as wildcat or serpent; and the fourth is associated with
the bear, the most powerful land animal
(the bear has widespread associations
with healing in Native American traditions).
Each degree confers greater power
and requires an initiation. The candidate
is "shot" in the chest with the society's
fetish, the white clam shell; the shells are
kept in a medicine bundle made of a

Medicine societies

whole otter skin. Upon being "shot," the

candidate falls "dead" and is "resurrected" with a touch of the shell or medicine bundle. The higher he progresses,
the more shells-and
the greater the
power-is acquired by the candidate.
The hierarchy inc1udes four levels
each of earth and sky, which teach the
initiate the powers of magical flight, metamorphosis, divination, prophecy, love
charms, handling fire without harm,
sucking out disease, and prescribing
herbal remedies. The Mide Society includes the ancient shamanic vocations of
tcisaki, male diviners who communicate
with the manitou (manifestations of supernatural powers) in a shaking tent;
nanandawi, the tribal doctor who uses
shamanic healing techniques; wabeno, or
"men of the sky," who handle fire and
hot coals in order to interpret dreams,
heal, and assist in novice spirit contacts;
and meda, family healers who also use
shamanic techniques.
One of the Mide Society's most significant functions is its Dzibai, or "Ghost
midewiwin," a ceremony to help the
ghosts of the newly dead journey to the
ghost world as quickly as possible.
The Omaha have a shell society that
resembles the Mide Society.
The Zuni have twelve medicine societies, which specialize in various diseases
and illnesses. Membership requires no vision, but sickness-men and women who
have become ill and been treated by a
member of a medicine society are required to join, lest they put themselves at
risk again. Some societies also require individuals to belong to certain clans.
Though women may join, they do not
hold office.
Tutelage in the secret traditions and
rituals is given by the one who performed
the cure. Healing is usually done by sucking, but is not performed in trance, as is
characteristic of shamanistic healing.
Each society has its own fetish and beast
god patrons. Rituals involve fetishes,

353

both society and personal, which are

placed on altars.
Some Zuiii medicine SOCletIeSare
part medicine and part hunting; in addition to taking part in communal hunts,
the members specialize in illnesses believed to be caused by certain animals.
See False Face Society; Fetish; Shamamsm.
Sources: Joseph Epes Brown. The Spiritual
Legacy of the American Indian. New York:
Crossroad, 1987; Mircea Eliade. Shamanism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1964; John A. Grim. The Shaman:
Patterns of Religious Healing Among the
Ojibway Indians. Norman, OK: University

of Oklahoma Press, 1983; Ake Hultkrantz.

Native

Religions

of North

America.

San

Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987; Ruth M.

Underhill. Red Man's Religion. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1965.

Medicine wheels
Large circles of stone laid out in the
North American Plains by historic Native
North American tribes. The appellation
of "medicine wheel" is modern, due to
the association of the circles with supernarural forces. Little archaeological or
culrurallore exists to shed light on medicine wheels' uses, although recent evidence suggests they were astronomical
and calendrical.
Little is known about the early Plains
tribes, who led a nomadic life and built
no lasting habitats or structures. They
lived only a few seasons in anyone spot.
When they moved to new locations, they
left behind small stone circles, which apparently were used for anchoring tipis,
and mysterious large circles now called
medicine wheels. The remains of approximately fifty known medicine wheels are
scattered across the Plains, mostly in
Canada and some in the United States.
Sizes and patterns of medicine
wheels vary, ranging from a few feet to

354

sixty yards in diameter. They are comprised of loaf-sized stones laid out in circles, with a central cairn of rocks. Some
cairns measure three to four yards high
by ten yards wide, requiring tons of
rocks. Some medicine wheels have additional cairns built along the perimeter, or
smaller rock circles built outside the main
circle. Some wheels have spokes connecting the rim to the central cairn.
The most spectacular is the Bighorn
Medicine Wheel, located at the 10,000foot summit of Medicine Mountain in the
Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. The
central cairn itself is ten feet wide and is
attached to the perimeter by twenty-eight
spokes of stones. The wheel has six peripheral cairns, five outside the perimeter
and one inside. The estimated age of the
wheel is between one hundred and two
hundred years old, based on an analysis
of a tree limb found placed in one of the
cairns. At the turn of the twentieth century, local Native Americans interviewed
professed to know nothing of the wheel's
builders, except that it was "made by
people who had no iron," meaning that it
was very old. The wheel was recognized
as a holy site, however, and it is possible
that Native Americans did not want to
reveal information related to sacred activities. The circle is a shape considered to
have great power. In the 1920s anthropologist George Grinnell was told by
Cheyenne that the wheel was the ground
plan of a medicine lodge. See Sun Dance.
In 1972 astronomer John Eddy began an investigation of medicine wheels,
beginning with Bighorn. He determined
that the wheel had been laid out on lines
related to the summer solstice (at winter
solstice, the wheel is buried under snow
and is useless). It may have been used to
sight the rise of stars such as Sirius, Aldebaran, and Rigel. It had no apparent
uses for lunar or planetary alignments.
The twenty-eight spokes, however, may
have served as day counters in a lunar
cycle.

Medicine

societies

Eddy investigated other medicine

wheels and found only a few that seemed
to have astronomical alignments. Many
were too disturbed for measurements;
ones that were intact seemed to have been
built for other, unknown purposes. The
Moose Mountain Medicine Wheel in
southern Saskatchewan, Canada, displays
dramatic summer solstice alignments like
Bighorn. Eddy calculated that it may have
been in use at about the time of Christ.
An archaeological investigation of the
central cairn yielded small chunks of
charcoal which were radiocarbon-dated
to c. 440 B.C. These findings indicate that
early Native North Americans may have
had a far more advanced culture than
previously thought.
In modern usage the medicine wheel
has been adopted by some as a vehicle for
medicine power, protection, and spiritual
growth. The wheel is constructed according to ritual, marked with the cardinal
points, and consecrated to the spirits. It is
used for ceremonial purposes. Some medicine wheels are constructed around ceremonial tipis, sweat lodges, and even
homes. Compare to Circle; Mandala.
Sources: Joseph Epes Brown, ed. The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven
Rites of the Oglala Sioux. 1953. New

York: Penguin Books, 1971; John Redtail

Freesoul. Breath of the Invisible: The Way
of the Pipe. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical
Publishing House, 1986; Ray A. Williamson. Living the Sky: The Cosmos of the
American Indian. Norman, OK: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1984.

Meditation
Any of various disciplines of mind and
body that enable one to achieve high~r
states of consciousness. Meditation has
no intrinsic goal, but the goal toward
which it is applied is the transformation
of consciousness; it is a tool for selfimprovement or spiritual growth.

Meditation

Alan Watts meditating

at Hammond
Museum,
early 19505

in Zen garden
New York,

The ultimate goal of mystical meditation is union with the Absolute. Mystical meditation is practiced usually by the
nonsecular world in concert with withdrawal, asceticism, strict diet, and other
regimens. Secular meditators use meditation as part of daily life in order to improve health, creativity, self-esteem, success, and relationships; cultivate psychic
powers; and gain self-knowledge. Meditation in itself will not accomplish these
goals, but may help people develop their
own powers and abilities to do so. Scientific research of meditation has shown
that regular practice has health benefits.
Meditation is practiced universally,
but has become more formalized as a
spiritual discipline in the East. There are
numerous techniques of meditation,
which may be grouped under general
types. Contemplation, found more in the
Western tradition, includes all practices
of thinking about meaning, such as
prayer, concepts, and questions. Contemplation does not quiet the mind or effect
bodily rest. Concentration is found more
in the Eastern tradition, especially in
yoga, and involves attempts to transform
consciousness by mental control, to go
beyond thought to absence of thought.

355

The goal of concentration meditation is

to achieve mystical states of consciousness. Posture is important. The mind is
concentrated on a single object, such as
breath control, a mantra (sounds, words,
or phrases), a yantra (geometric shape),
candle flames, a koan (Zen puzzle), and
so on. Detached awareness meditation
also is more characteristic of Eastern
methods, especially in the many schools
of Buddhism. The best-known of these
methods in the West is the zazen, or sitting meditation, of Zen. See Zen.
The priesthoods, adepts, and other
practitioners
of mystical meditation
spend long periods in meditative states.
Secular meditators, especially in the
West, generally meditate once or twice a
day for twenty minutes or so. Popular
Western interest in meditation arose in
the 1960s, and most meditation techniques that have been adopted are derived from Hinduism and Buddhism. Despite the greater sophistication
of
meditation in the East, few modern Easterners meditate.
The earliest meditators probably
were the shamans of the Stone Age hunting and gathering societies, who used ecstatic states to heal, divine, and prophesy.
The Rig Veda, the earliest recorded literature of northern India, composed c.
1000 B.C., mentions meditative ecstasy
(apart from the soma cult, which was
practiced until about 700 B.C.),but offers
no formal techniques. Siddhartha Gautauma (c. 566 B.c.-486 B.C.),the founder
of Buddhism, awakened to enlightenment
while meditating under a bodhi tree.
Thus in Buddhism salvation, or awakening, is achieved through the meditation of
self-transformation. The supreme goal is
nirvana, or release from the limitations of
existence. See Buddhism.
The first extant written evidence of
formalized meditation in India or China
did not appear until about the fourth or
fifth century B.C.in the Taoist work the
Tao Teh Ching. The Taoists placed great

356

emphasis on breath control and considered meditation to be a skill acquired in

stages. In the most advanced stages, one
achieved "fetal breathing," in which one
breathed without inhaling or exhaling. At
this point the pulse ceased, and the meditator transcended conscious thought to a
state of Great Quiescence, the highest
form of enlightenment and the final goal
of Taoist meditation. See Taoism. In India the Upanishads discuss the psychology of meditation, as a way to control the
senses and actions and free one from the
bondage of the external world (nirvana).
Formal meditation techniques developed
during a highly creative period from
about 200 B.C.to A.D. 200 or 400, most
likely as a response to Buddhism. See
Yoga.
The most detailed classical Buddhist
treatise on meditation is the Visuddhimagga ("Path of Purification"), part
of the Abhidhamma.
The Visuddhimagga, summarized in the fifth century by the monk Buddhaghosa, sets
forth advice on the preparations and surroundings for meditation, and describes
various meditative states and the consequences of attaining nirvana.
Buddhist meditation is approached
through purification (sila), concentration
(samadhi), and insight (punna), all of
which work together. The student begins
with purification, following a strict ascetic and moral code, and learning mindfulness (sati), a minimal awareness of sensory perceptions without allowing them
to stimulate thoughts. Mindfulness then
leads to "seeing things as they are" (vipassana).
The path of concentration involves
fixing the mind upon a single object. The
Visuddhimagga recommends forty such
objects, such as colored wheels, corpses,
reflections (as on the attributes of Buddha), sublime states, formless contemplations, and the four elements of nature.
Each object has its own distinct results,
but all are on the route to nirvana.

Meditation

With practice the concentration

leads to states of full absorption (jhanas).
There are eight jhanas, the lowest of
which produces a cessation of bodily
awareness, and rapture or bliss. At the
highest level, there is neither perception
nor nonperception.
Once the jhanas have been mastered,
the student embarks on the path of insight, which begins with four kinds of
mindfulness, of the body, feelings, mind,
and mind objects. The mindfulness then
leads to higher and higher states of insight. Part way up is a state of pseudonirvana, characterized by luminosities,
rapturous feelings, happiness, lucidity,
and so on, which fool the meditator into
thinking he or she has achieved nirvana.
If this state is successfully passed, the
meditator becomes increasingly aware of
each moment as it arises and passes, and
of the unsatisfactory nature of all phenomena. The meditator experiences tremendous physical pain as he or she seeks
a cessation of all mental processes. The
pain ceases in a state of effortless insight,
and nirvana is attained when consciousness ceases to have an object.
The first experience of nirvana lasts
less than a second, but it permanently
transforms the meditator by burning
away aspects of his or her ego and desires. The master meditator learns to attain nirvana at will for longer and longer
periods. Each experience brings additional transformations, which result in
significant changes in personality: the
meditator loses attachments to the material world, and loses undesirable traits
such as selfishness, hatred, anger, and so
on. Ultimately, the meditator seeks to become an awakened being (arahant), who
is completely freed from the wheel of becoming, and cannot accumulate any more
karma that will necessitate a rebirth to
the physical world.
Beyond nirvana is nirodh (cessation),
which is the absolute cessation of consciousness and the quiescence of bodily

Meditation

processes. It is extremely difficult to obtain. The body's metabolism drops to the

minimal level necessary to maintain physicallife, a state that can be maintained no
longer than seven days. The meditator
must decide beforehand exactly how long
he or she will stay in nirodh.
Tibetan Buddhist meditation draws
on classical Buddhist methods, as well as
elements from the native Bon religion and
from Vajrayana, the "Diamond Vehicle"
School of Buddhism. Meditation comprises one of three parts of the Tibetan
approach to spiritual training. The other
two are hearing, which includes reading,
study, and listening to lectures; and contemplation. Meditation is the third successive step. After study one contemplates
what has been learned, then absorbs it
through meditation. The mind meditates
in two ways: one, through observation
and investigation; and two, through focus and absorption. Furthermore, one
can approach the objective of meditation
in two ways. In one way the objective
shares a quality with the mind, and
through meditation exerts a profound effect upon one and how one lives. For example, meditating upon love or compassion makes one more loving or more
compassionate. In the second way, the
objective creates an opposite effect: Meditating upon death or emptiness makes
one more alive and full.
In the Western tradition, the first
Christian monks of the fourth century,
hermits who lived on the Egyptian desert,
practiced a discipline of purification and
meditation as a way to unite with God.
Their techniques either were borrowed
from the East or were spontaneous rediscoveries of the same. The Desert Fathers
had the Christian equivalent of mantras,
phrases from the Scriptures repeated either silently or verbally. In the Catholic
tradition, the path to God is characterized by purification, asceticism, prayer,
and contemplation. Contemplation includes recollection, which is concentra-

357

I
tion and the elimination of all thoughts
and sensory phenomena; and introversion, which is concentrating the mind on
its deepest part, the prelude to union with
God. See Ecstasy; Prayer.
Meditation also is part of the mystical practices of Judaism and Islam, the
Kabbalah and Sufism, respectively. See
Kabbalah; Sufism.
In the 1950s scientists in India and
Japan began studying yogis and Zen
monks in meditation. In the 1960s Western scientists began to study Transcendental Meditation (TM) practitioners, at
the invitation of TM founder Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi. Studies have been uneven,
but generally show that meditation lowers the body's metabolism, slows brain
waves, and induces relaxation. Individuals who meditate regularly show greater
resistance to stress and illness, and say
they feel better psychologically. Meditation has been shown to be effective in
treating addiction. See Altered states of
consciousness; Biofeedback; Drugs in
mystical and psychic experiences; Mystical experiences; Mysticism; Relaxation;
Transcendental Meditation (TM).
Sources: Daniel Goleman. The Meditative
Mind: The Varieties of Meditative Experience. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher,
1988; Willard Johnson. Riding the Ox
Home: A History of Meditation from Shamanism to Science. 1982. Boston: Beacon
Press, 1986; Da Liu. T'ai Chi Ch'uan and
Meditation. New York: Schocken Books,
1986; Charles T. Tart, ed. Transpersonal
Psychologies. San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1975; John White, ed. Frontiers of
1974. New York: Avon,
Consciousness.

1975.

Mediumship
Entranced communication with alleged
nonphysical entities, sometimes accompanied by paranormal physical phenomena.
Mediumship is an ancient and universal
practice, undertaken to commune with

358

the divine, prophesy, communicate with

spirits of the dead, perform paranormal
feats, and channel the universal life force
for healing. Mediums have been known
by various names, such as oracle, soothsayer, wizard, cunning woman, wise
woman, witch, medicine man, sorcerer,
shaman, fortune-teller, witch doctor,
mystic, priest, prophet, and channeler.
Mediumship falls into two main categories: mental and physical. In mental
mediumship the medium communicates
through inner vision, clair audience, automatic writing, and automatic speech.
Physical mediumship is characterized by
rappings, apports, levitation, or movement of objects and other paranormal
phenomena. Mediums of both types communicate with spirits through one or
more entities called "controls" (or spirit
guides), which usually remain permanently with the medium. Prevailing theory among parapsychologists holds that
controls are not external spirits but secondary aspects of the medium's own personality that become externalized. Believers, however, accept the spirits at face
value. See Control.
The gift of mediumship manifests
early, when a child is witness to an unseen world. This ability may be repressed
by disapproving adults, especially in the
West. Mediumship also can begin at any
later age as the result of a trauma, such as
a blow to the head, a near-death experience, extreme emotional shock, or profound grief.
In the modern West, mediumship is a
hallmark of Spiritualism and concerns
communication with the dead. Prior to
the development of Spiritualism around
the middle of the nineteenth century,
mesmerists discovered that some subjects
who were "magnetized," or hypnotized,
seemed to fall under the control of spirits
and deliver messages from the "other
side."
As Spiritualism spread it attracted
primarily housebound women into me-

Meditation

diumship-not because women necessarily are predisposed to it, but because it

provided relief from a narrow existence.
Mediumship gave these women attention
and, most important, freedom: freedom
of movement and travel and freedom for
outrageous behavior "caused" by the
spirits.
From the 1850s through the 1870s,
the period of greatest growth for Spiritualism, housewives began holding tea parlor seances for their friends. Those who
attended in turn discovered their own alleged mediumistic talent. In fact mediumship seemed to run along bloodlines, with
all the women in a family sharing the gift.
Because the press criticized female mediums for being corrupted of their femininity, many avoided publicity and were
content with small-scale social diversions.
Others became professional, advertised,
and charged money for their performances.
Women comprised most of the mediums who took to the lecture circuit and
delighted in shocking their audiences
with deep trance voices and theatrics.
Cora Richmond, famous on both sides of
the Atlantic, gave "trance lectures." The
audience selected a jury (usually all male),
which chose a topic of discourse that was
usually science or some "masculine" subject. Richmond entered a trance and gave
an instant "spirit" lecture on it. Her
audiences invariably were impressed,
though skeptics contended that the talks
were bland, monotonous, and predictable.
Other female mediums were more
dramatic. Some reveled in being possessed by male spirits, who "forced"
them to swear and drink whiskey from a
bottle. In America two female mediums
engaged in a fist fight on stage because
their spirit controls hated each other.
Such theatrics both shocked and fascinated onlookers of both sexes.
A sexual liberation side existed to
Spiritualism mediumship as well. Both

Mediumship

mediums and their clients enjoyed the

physical contact of holding the hands,
knees, legs, and feet of a medium, and
caressing and kissing "spirit" materializations. Some mediums engaged in affairs
under the direction of their spirits. Those
who bore illegitimate babies sometimes
claimed the infants were "spirit babies"
produced by consorting with their controls. Others said their controls ordered
them to leave their husbands and to
counsel other women to divorce their
spouses as well.
Despite fame, notoriety, and freedom, mediumship seldom led to riches.
The lucky mediums, such as Daniel Dunglas Home, attracted wealthy benefactors. In America the average medium
earned five dollars for a night's performance away from home, and one dollar
per hour at home. Female mediums complained bitterly about their low incomes.
Another hazard was ostracization. Despite the adulation of clients, many
women-turned-mediums
found themselves spurned by family and friends who
disapproved of their behavior.
Mediumship, and in particular physical mediumship, suffered from exposes
of fraud during early Spiritualism. Competition drove some mediums to stage
magic to create their special effects. Many
mediums who claimed to materialize spirits were caught impersonating the spirits
themselves by walking around in the
darkened seance rooms dressed in gauze.
See Materialization. William Crookes,
British physicist and chemist who investigated mediums, said of more than one
hundred mediums he knew, all resorted
to tricks at times. Mediums who were
caught, such as Eusapia Palladino, complained that public expectations for a performance pressured her into cheating.
Most Spiritualist mediumship today is
mental rather than physical. Fraud, however, does not explain all phenomena associated with mediumship. It is possible,
for example, that genuine psychokinesis

359

(PK) occurs in mediumship-but whether

it is caused by the medium or alleged
spirits is a matter of controversy.
Theories have been put forward that
mediumship is a form of mental disorder,
for similar phenomena occur in schizophrenia: altered states of consciousness,
visions, disembodied voices, and the temporary possession of a medium by a spirit
entity or personality. Many prominent
mediums have been extensively interviewed and observed by psychiatrists and
psychologists. However, mediums carry
on normal lives and learn to control their
trance states, while schizophrenics have
no control over the voices, visions, and
personalities that assault them without
warmng.
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, psychical researchers investigated
mediums for evidence of survival after
death. While some mediums produced
impressive results, such research remains
inconclusive. Scientific interest in mediums declined in the second half of the
twentieth century as researchers turned to
other areas. See Channeling; Oracle;
Spiritualism.
Sources: Alfred Douglas. Extrasensory
Powers: A Century of Psychical Research.

London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1976; Alan

Gauld. MediumshiP and Survival. London:
William Heinemann Ltd., 1982; Jon Klimo.
"The Psychology of Channeling." New Age
Journal 3, no. 6 (NovemberlDecember
1987): 32-40+; R. Laurence Moore. In
Search of White Crows. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1977; Janet Oppenheim.
The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914. Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985;

Alberto Villoldo and Stanley Krippner.
Healing States. New York: Fireside/Simon
& Schuster, 1986; Benjamin B. Wolman,
ed. Handbook of Parapsychology. New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977.

Medjugorje
See Marian apparitions.

360

Megaliths
Groups of standing stones or large stone
structures dating to the Neolithic or
Bronze Age. Megalith ruins exist around
the world. They are believed to have had
sacred, astronomical, or burial purposes.
Many are said to possess healing and
magical powers, or to be repositories of
great electromagnetic energy that causes
or contributes to paranormal phenomena
in proximity to the stones.
"Megalith," meaning "great stones,"
comes from the Greek megas, "great,"
and lithos, "stone." Generally, any large
structure of stone may be termed a
"megalith," but the term usually is applied to ancient stone circles and tombs.
Megaliths are divided into two classifications: dolmens and menhirs. Dolmens are tombs of one or more chambers. Some are long in shape, while others
are round with passages connecting the
chambers. Long tombs are common in
parts of Wales, Scotland, and England,
while round dolmens with passages are
most common to Ireland and western
parts of Britain. Some dolmens are covered with earth, forming mounds or tumuli.
Human remains have not been found
in all dolmens, indicating that some may
have served simply as temples for rites of
the dead. Bone shards found at some sites
suggest that sacrificial rites, perhaps even
cannibalism, may have occurred.
Menhirs are single standing stones or
groups of standing stones that are arranged in circles, also called either cromlechs or henges. Of the two, henges are
more complex, containing one or more
entrances and being surrounded by a
ditch or earthwork bank; England's
Stonehenge is perhaps the best known of
these. Thousands of stone circles exist
around the world; there are some three
thousand of them throughout the British
Isles alone.
Many menhirs, especially holed

Mediumship

ones, are <.ttributed with healing and fertility powers. A holed stone is a female
symbol, associated with the Great Goddess, bringer of fertility, healer and protector. See Goddess. Typically, rites involved hugging the stone or passing
through the hole in order to benefit from
its magical powers.
Menhirs usually are associated with
local supernatural lore. They are the
gathering places of fairies and other spirits, and witches and those who practice
the occult arts. Some are said to move
and dance at night, or on certain holy
nights. Others are reputed to be the petrified remains of people who were punished. The Rollright Stones in the
Cotswolds of England, for example, are
said to be an invading king and his
knights, petrified by a witch to prevent
their invasion of England.
Photographs of some menhirs show
radiations of light emanating from them,
leading some researchers to theorize that
the creators of the stones imbued them
with "earth energy" for sacred or psychic
purposes. Individuals have reported discomfort near some menhirs at night, saying the stones radiate disturbing energy
forces, which produce electric shock sensations when touched. See Dowsing;
Leys.
Carnac, in Brittany, is the site of the
greatest and oldest of all megalithic remains, comprising approximately three
thousand standing stones arranged into
avenues, dolmens, mounds, and cromlechs. The original number of stones is
estimated at 11,000 or more. One
mound-covered dolmen dates to c. 4700
B.C., older than Stonehenge or the Pyramids of Egypt.
The Dragon Project Trust (DPT), established in Britain in 1977, has conducted research of the energies and paranormal phenomena
associated with
megalithic sites throughout Britain. As of
1990 no site had been fully checked,
though many had been dowsed and mea-

Men in Black

sured for one or more of the following:

radioactivity, ultrasound and audible
sound anomalies, magnetism, radio propagation, and light phenomena. The DPT
also initiated a dreams project, in which
volunteers sleep at certain megalithic
sites. Early results showed the emergence
of curious dream patterns. See Avebury;
Earth lights; Glastonbury; Power point;
Stonehenge.
Sources: Janet and Colin Bord. Mysterious
Britain. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1978; Peter Lancaster Brown. Megaliths
and Men. New York: Taplinger, 1976;
Paul Devereux. Places of Power. London:

Blandford, 1990; Rosemary Ellen Guiley.

The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft. New York: Facts On File, 1989;
Francis Hitching. Earth Magic. New York:

William Morrow, 1977; Jennifer Westwood, ed. The Atlas of Mysterious Places.
New York: Weidenfeld & Nicholson,
1987.

Meister Eckhart
See Eckhart, Johannes.

Men in Black
Mysterious phenomenon associated with
unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings
and encounters. Various individuals who
claim to have sighted UFOs, been abducted by extraterrestrials, or experienced unaccounted-for "missing time"
are sometimes later visited by Men in
Black (MIB)-men literally dressed all in
black-who
discourage the individuals
from persisting in their claims. MIB also
allegedly have threatened and harassed
individuals and their families; one person's death has been attributed to MIB.
MIB apparently have been active in
America since 1947, when the first "flying saucer" reports were made. They
have been especially active during periods

361

of great UFO activity. MIB seem predominaIlt in America, but have been reported
elsewhere, including Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand, and South
Africa.
One of the earliest reports of an MIB
visit, a classic case, occurred in 1953 to
Albert K. Bender, a Bridgeport, Connecticut, factory clerk and enthusiast of
UFOs, the occult, black magic, monsters,
and science fiction and horror films.
Bender organized an international flying
saucer bureau, and through his research
believed he discovered where extraterrestrials come from and why they visit
Earth. He wrote a letter about this to a
friend. After he mailed the letter, three
men dressed in black suits visited him;
one had his letter. After the visit Bender
became ill. He acted "lobotomized," in
the words of one friend, and suffered severe headaches, which he said were controlled by "them." If he thought about
revealing his information, he was hit with
a debilitating headache. He dropped all
of his UFO-related pursuits.
Reports of MIB show some common
characteristics. The facial features and
complexions of MIB lead others to think
they are of Oriental or Italian extraction.
They have a penchant for dressing in
dark or black clothing, which is either
amazingly wrinkle-free or very wrinkled.
They drive about in large, dark or black
cars. Some have unusual hair growth, as
though their head has been shaved and
the hair has grown back unevenly. MIB
sometimes have odd ways of walking, either as though intoxicated, or with a gliding or rocking motion as though their
hips were on swivel joints. Some have
been seen wearing the Great Seal of the
United States in their lapels. The voices of
MIB also are unusual in extremes: monotones, singsongs, and whines, and sometimes eloquent in timbre.
MIB visit UFO witnesses unannounced at home or work, usually coming in threes. Sometimes they appear after

362

a sighting, but before the individual has

contacted authorities or a UFO-related
organization. They often pass themselves
off as representatives of the federal government or military intelligence. Curiously, they seem to know quite a bit of
personal data concerning those they visit.
Some people report that MIB have resorted to intimidation, threats, and harassment to stop their interest in UFOs or
their UFO research. Witnesses of UFOs
have been told by MIB that they did not
see what they thought they did. At least
one UFO researcher has been threatened
with death by a Man in Black; the MIB
claimed that a UFO abductee who died
had done so because he "knew too
much."
While most MIB incidents concern
UFOs, they also have been reported in
connection with sightings of monsters
and other nonhuman entities.
Folklorists link the MIB to legends of
the Devil, who in earlier times was often
said to appear in the form of a tall black
man or a man in black. One theory holds
that the Devil, MIB, Trickster, and other
similar supernatural beings are part of the
same phenomenon, a projection of the
unconscious in order to meet a psychological need on the part of the percipient.
It also has been suggested that the MIB
are thought-forms created by collective
fear residing in the unconscious. In Eastern mysticism the MIB have a parallel in
the "Brothers of the Shadow," evil beings
who try to prevent occult students from
learning the great truth. See Collective
unconscious; Encounter phenomenon;
Extraterrestrial encounters; Fortean phenomena; Thought-form.
Sources: John A. Keel. The Mothman
Prophecies. New York: Saturday Review

Press/E. P. Dutton, 1975; Peter M. Rojcewicz. "The 'Men in Black' Experience

and Tradition: Analogues with the Traditional Devil Hypothesis." Journal of American Folklore 100 (396) (April-June 1987):
148-60; Brad Steiger. Mysteries of Time

Men in Black

and Space. New York: DelVConfucian

Books, 1976.

Menhir
See Megaliths.

Merlin
Legendary Arthurian wizard who has
been interpreted in modern times as a
Celtic mystic and shaman, and as an archetype of the Trickster and the Magician. In the Western mystery tradition, he
and his consort, Viviane, the Lady of the
Lake, represent Jachin and Boaz, the male
and female principles of the cosmos, force
and form.
Merlin, whose name is a Latinized
version of the Welsh "Myrddin," may be
a composite of real and mythical characters. He may be in part a deity, perhaps
derived from Mabon, or Maponos, the
British Apollo who served as the divine
ruler of Britain. He may have been a real
prophet or bard, or several bards.
The first written references to Merlin
are in the Latin works of Geoffrey of
Monmouth,
a twelfth-century Welsh
cleric. In the early 1130s, Monmouth
wrote The Prophecies of Merlin, verses of
prophecies going beyond the twelfth century, attributed to a Merlin who lived in
the fifth century. It is likely that Monmouth made up much of the book himself. Monmouth mentioned Merlin again
in the History of the Kings of Britain,
completed around 1135 to 1136, which
provided the basis for the Arthurian legends. Monmouth described Merlin as a
magical boy whose parents were a mortal
woman and a daimon, a Greek-derivative
term that means "spirit," but which later
Christians interpreted as a Devil's demon.
According to Christianized legend, Merlin's father was the Devil himself, sent to
earth to obstruct the works of Jesus. The
Devil assumed the shape of a dragon or

Merlin

serpent (the symbol of wisdom and, in

Christianity, of evil) and seduced Merlin's mother. However, the boy decided
to devote himself to the light, and discarded all of the Devil's powers that he
inherited save two: prophecy and
miracle-making.
Merlin possessed great powers of
prophecy and magic because of his halfsupernatural nature. He arranged for the
birth of Arthur through the seduction of
Ygerna (Igraine) by King Uther Pendragon. After Arthur was born, Merlin
dropped from Monmouth's story. Monmouth also confused matters by placing
Merlin in both the fifth and sixth centunes.
Monmouth wrote of Merlin the
prophet in a third poetic work, The Life
of Merlin, and composed Merlin's adult
biography in Vita Merlini, written c.
1150. Vita Merlini has been interpreted
as much more than a biography, but as a
text of Celtic mysticism. R. J. Stewart,
British authority on Merlin, calls the Vita
Merlini "one of our oldest and most profound texts of western magical and spiritual enlightenment." The Vita presents a
series of questions, such as why is there
suffering, death, love, and so on, which
are answered in the form of cosmic visions that lead to greater questions, and
reveal the small part humans play in a
much greater cosmic landscape.
Merlin appears in other medieval
works, and in later chivalric tales and romantic poems. A French poetical version
of History of the Kings of Britain, written
around 1150, tells of Merlin directing
Arthur on the establishment of his Round
Table. Sir Thomas Malory's Le Marte
d'Arthur, published in 1485, tells how
Merlin raised Arthur, secured him the
throne by having him pull the sword of
Branstock from the stone, and served as
his magical adviser. Merlin appeared and
disappeared at will, possessed omniscient
awareness, and cast the most powerful of
spells. Malory's work provides the mod-

363

w- ~~

TI1'~;;";..'

ern popular conception of Merlin, despite

the fact that Merlin disappeared from the
story early in Arthur's reign, after the
Round Table was formed. According to
one legend, Merlin allowed himself to be
tricked by Viviane (also called Nimue),
for whom he had great passion. Viviane
persuaded Merlin to teach her all his
magical arts, which she then used to trap
him in a tower of hawthorn, a spiny
shrub or tree associated with fairies and
witches, which she weaved around him
nine times while he slept in the Forest of
Broceliande, a magical place where no
one who entered came out quite the
same. When Arthur missed Merlin from
his court, he dispatched Sir Gawain to
find him. In the Forest of Broceliande,
Merlin spoke to the knight from a cloud
of smoke and told him he will never more
be seen, and instructed him to tell Arthur
to undertake without delay the quest of
the Holy Grail.
In other versions (1) Viviane trapped
Merlin in a tower of air; (2) Merlin simply disappeared into thin air, where he
continued to exist as a shadow who had
the power to communicate with humans;
(3) he retired to a stone vault and sealed
himself inside; (4) he was buried alive under a stone in the Forest of Broceliande.
Merlin usually is portrayed as a wise,
old man, tall and gaunt with a long white
beard. He has in fact three aspects:
youth, mature prophet, and elder. As an
archetype of the magician, one who uses
the powers of both earth and sky (the microcosm and macrocosm) to transform,
he serves as the model for many fictional
characters, including Mr. Spack of "Star
Trek" and Obi Wan Kenobe of Star
Wars.

The deeper meanings of Merlin are

the subject of ongoing research by Arthurian experts. See Archetypes; Grail, the;
Magic.
Bulfinch's 1Y1ythology. Reprint.
New York: Avenel Books, 1984; Henry
Gilbert. King Arthur's Knights. 1911. Lon-

Sources:

364

don: Bracken Books, 1986; Manly P. Hall.

The Secret Teachings

of All Ages. 1928.

Los Angeles: The Philosophic Research Society, 1977; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The
Encyclopedia

of Witches

and Witchcraft.

New York: Facts On File, 1989; John Matthews, ed. At the Table of the Grail: Magic
and the Uses of Imagination. 1984. London: Arkana, 1987; R. J. Stewart, ed. The
Book of Merlin. Poole, Dorset, England:
Blanford Press, 1987; R. J. Stewart. The
Mystic Life of Merlin. London: Arkana,
1986; R. J. Stewart. Living Magical Arts.
Poole, Dorset, England: Blanford Press,
1987.

Merton, Thomas (1915-1968)

Trappist monk, peace activist, and one of
the most important Catholic writers of
the twentieth century. Thomas Merton
was influenced by mysticism, Asian religions (Zen Buddhism in particular), monastic life, and the social concerns of his
times.
Merton was born on January 31,
1915, in Prades, France, of an American
Quaker mother. His father was a New
Zealand landscape artist. He was orphaned at fifteen. He studied briefly at
Cambridge University, but later received
his bachelor's and master's degrees from
Columbia University in New York City.
After graduation he worked in Harlem at
a Catholic center for the poor and taught
English at Columbia (1938 to 1939).
While at Columbia Merton became
briefly interested in communism. A much
greater influence on him was Daniel
Clark Walsh, one of Merton's mentors at
Columbia. Walsh's teachings influenced
Merton's distinctions between person,
nature, and individual, which he developed in his writing.
In 1941 Merton entered the Order of
Cistercians of the Strict Observance
(Trappists) at their monastery in Gethsemani, Kentucky. He was ordained a
priest in 1949, taking the religious name
Father M. Louis, and later served as mas-

Merlin

ter of novices. (Gethsemani has since become one of the country's acclaimed personal renewal centers.)
Merton wrote several novels during
his youth, one of which, My Agreement
with the Gestapo, was published posthumously in 1969. Three books of poetry
were published between 1941 and 1947
with little notice. Then his autobiography, The Seven Story Mountain (1948),
became a best-seller and catapulted him
to fame. In the book Merton tells of his
gradual conversion from agnosticism to
Catholicism in 1938, and his reasons for
becoming a Trappist.
The autobiography
and subsequent
works of spiritual meditations and reflections, which contain much autobiographical material, have been compared to the
spiritual journals of St. Augustine and
John Bunyan, and in terms of social reflection have been compared
to other
modern
religious
journals,
including
those by Black Elk, Richard Rubenstein,
Albert Schweitzer, and Harvey Cox.
Merton's books can be grouped by
subject matter into three stages. Those
published between 1948 and 1960 deal
mainly with ascetic practices for relating
to the materialist world. Those between
1960 and 1965 are mainly concerned
with social issues and social criticism,
while those from 1965 to 1968 show his
interest in Eastern mysticism.
Merton
scandalized
many Catholics
with his
study of the parallels between Eastern (especially Zen Buddhism) and Western religious traditions.
With exceptional
insights comparable
to his contemporary,
Alan Watts, Merton produced The Way
of Chuang Tzu (1965), Zen and the Birds
of Appetite (1968), and Mystics and Zen

ing with humankind. He believed that being a mystic was to some extent necessary
for a poet.
In his later years, he became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War.
He wrote the words for several freedom
songs for the Civil Rights movement, and
edited Gandhi on Non-Violence (1965).
Merton and his writings have influenced
peace activists of many faiths. He and
Dorothy Day were among the writers for
The Catholic Worker who greatly influenced the brothers Daniel and Philip
Berrigan and other charismatic
leaders
of the antiwar
resistance
in the late
1960s and early 1970s, and later such notable social reform activists as actor Martin Sheen.
In 1965 he was allowed to live as a
hermit at Gethsemani, and spent most of
the last three years of his life in solitude.
On December
10, 1968, Merton
died while attending an ecumenical conference of monks in Bangkok. The cause
of death was electrocution
from contact
with an electrical fan that had faulty wiring. His body was returned to the United
States in an airplane that, ironically, also
brought back bodies of American soldiers
who fought in the Vietnam War.

Sources: Monica Furlong. Merton: A Biography. San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1980; Michael Matt. The Seven Mountains
of Thomas Merton. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin,

1984;

M.

Basil

Pennington.

Thomas Merton, Brother Monk. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987; Paul Wilkes,
ed. Merton by Those Who Knew Him Best.
San Francisco: Harper & Row, '1984;
George Woodcock.
Thomas MertonMonk and Poet: A Critical Study. New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978.

Masters (1967).
Merton

viewed conversion

as a con-

tinuing process, and his mystical journey

has been compared to those of the great
Spanish mystics and other contemplatives. The integrating principle of his art
and life was his concept of God incarnat-

Mescaline

Mescaline
See Drugs in mystical and psychic experiences; Huxley, Aldous.

365

Mesmer, Franz (or Friedrich)

Anton (1734-1815)
Flamboyant
German healer, whose
method of laying on of hands and giving
suggestions to patients led to the development of therapeutic hypnotism.
Born at Iznang on Lake Constance,
Germany, around 1734, Mesmer initially
intended to enter the church. He discovered a gift for mathematics and science,
and decided to study medicine at the University of Vienna. There he interpreted
the prevaiiing theory of the times that a
magnetic fluid permeates and links all
things and beings, including human beings, on earth and in the heavens.
The idea of such a fluid or force was
not new, but dated from ancient times in
both East and West. It is the approximate
equivalent of the Hindu prana, the Chinese ch'i, and the Japanese ki. Paracelsus
believed in such a force. J. B. van Helmont, a late-sixteenth-century scientist,
put forth the theory that all humans radiate a magnetic fluid, which can be used
to influence the minds and bodies of others through will. In particular Mesmer
borrowed from the ideas of Richard
Mead, an English physician, who in 1704
published a treatise on the power of the
sun and moon on the human body.
Mesmer's thesis, De Planetarum Inf/uxu ("On the Influence of the Planets"),
caught the attention of Father Maximilian Hehl, a Jesuit priest, court astrologer
to Empress Maria Theresa, and a professor of astronomy at Vienna University.
Hehl also believed in a planetary magnetism that influenced physical health, and
used magnets made in the shape of body
organs to correct magnetic imbalances.
He gave magnets to Mesmer, who qualified as a physician in 1765 and used the
magnets in some spectacular healings. He
would lay the magnets on patients and
pain would cease. Mesmer surmised his
own body was a magnet, for he noticed
that, when once bleeding a patient, the

366

flow of blood increased when he approached and decreased when he left. He

published his theory in 1775; the public
reacted enthusiastically and patients began to seek him out.
A few years later, Mesmer observed
the work of an exorcist, Father Johann
Gassner, who maintained that all illness
was caused by demonic possession and
could be cured only by exorcism. This led
Mesmer to the discovery that he could
cure without the help of Hehl's magnets.
The vital force or healing energy could be
transmitted directly from healer to patient through touch or with the help of
iron rods or wands. He called this force
"animal magnetism."
Mesmer fell out of favor with Hehl
and the Viennese medical profession, but
his esteem increased with patients, who
flocked to him for cures. In 1778 he
moved to Paris to set up a fashionable
hospital that was more like a seance parlor than a medical facility. The rooms
were lit with low light, perfumed, and
decorated with mirrors, crystal objects,
beautiful
paintings,
and handsome
clocks. Mesmer himself seemed more like
a wizard than a physician, dressed in purple robes and carrying an iron wand.
While a chamber orchestra played soft
music, he and his assistants would move
among the patients, waving hands and
wands, stroking them and magnetizing
them. Many phenomenal cures were effected, made all the more mysterious and
awesome by the hysterics and convulsions of his patients as they were cured.
Rich and poor alike descended upon the
clinic. Mesmer entertained well, hosting
coffee socials and carrying on lively conversations with his clients.
So many patients came to his clinic
that Mesmer began treating them en
masse. He created a device called the baquet, a round wooden bathtub that he
filled with "magnetized water" and iron
filings. Up to thirty iron rods protruded
from the lid of the tub, which were

Mesmer, Franz (or Friedrich) Anton (1734-1815)

placed on as many patients on whatever

part of the body required healing. The
patients were then tied to each other with
moistened rope, forming a magnetic
chain.
Mesmer's success resulted in the inevitable animosity of the Medical Academy. Louis XVI was a supporter of Mesmer, but agreed under pressure to
establish two commissions to investigate
Mesmer and animal magnetism. The first,
which published its findings in 1784,
found no evidence to support the existence of animal magnetism and recommended that members of the Faculty of
Medicine who practiced it be expelled.
The second commission supported the
first.
Mesmer's fortunes soon declined. A
doctor consulted him with a phony illness, allowed Mesmer to heal him, then
accused him of fraud.
Mesmer fell into further discredit
when one of his staunchest supporters,
Antoine Court de Gebelin, an Egyptologist known for his writings on the Tarot,
died while sitting at a baquet. But the
populace continued to patronize him, and
Mesmer maintained his clinic until 1789,
when the French Revolution forced him
to flee the country. He went to Karlsruhe,
then to Vienna in 1793. He was accused
of being a French spy and thrown in jail
for two months. Upon his release Mesmer
returned to Lake Constance, where he
died in 1815. See Hypnosis.
Sources: Slater Brown. The Heyday of Spiritualism. New York: Hawthorn Books,
1970; Eric Cuddon. The Meaning and
Practice of Hypnosis. New York: Citadel
Press, 1965; Alfred Douglas. Extrasensory
Powers: A Century of Psychical Research.

London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1976; Janet

Oppenheim. The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England,
1850-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985; Kurt Seligmann. The
History of Magic and the Occult. New

York: Pantheon Books, 1948; Colin Wil-

Messing,

Wolf Grigorievich

(1899-1972)

son. The Occult.

Books, 1973.

New York: Vintage

Messing, Wolf Grigorievich

(1899-1972)
One of Russia's most famous psychics.
Wolf Messing dazzled Josef Stalin, accurately predicted the end of World War II,
and impressed audiences all over the Soviet Union with his clairvoyant powers.
He was a small, trim man with piercing
eyes and a mane of wiry hair, which he
combed straight back. He never married,
and spent much of his life in isolation and
loneliness.
Messing was born on September 10,
1899, in Gora Kalwaria, near Warsaw,
Poland. His psychic abilities manifested
early, and he was performing for the public by his teens. In Vienna in 1915, Albert
Einstein invited him to his apartment,
where Messing met Sigmund Freud.
Freud tested his psychic ability, with impressive results. Messing toured the
world as a celebrity.
In 1937 he incurred Adolph Hitler's
wrath by publicly predicting that Hitler
would die if he "turned toward the East,"
to Russia. Hitler put a 200,000-mark
price on his head. In 1939 Messing fled
to Russia, only to land under the terrifying repression of Josef Stalin. Russian
psychics were forced to go underground
or risk being shot, but Messing managed
to impress Stalin.
Stalin assigned Messing to psychically rob a bank. Messing took an empty
attache into a Moscow bank, handed the
clerk a blank piece of paper, and mentally
ordered him to fill it with 100,000 rubles.
The clerk did so. When the test was concluded, Messing handed back the money;
the clerk suffered a heart attack when he
realized what he'd done. Messing said he
used telepathic hypnosis to influence others in this fashion. He claimed to have
eluded the Gestapo and Stalin's police.

367

I
Sources: Henry Gris and William Dick. The
New Soviet Psychic Discoveries. Engle-

Stalin allowed Messing to perform

around the country. In Novosibirsk, on
March 7, 1944, he forecast the death of
Hitler and the exact date that the Nazis
would surrender.
After the war Messing worked as an
entertainer under the direction of Goskonsert, which lumped him with thousands of musicians, dancers, and circus
performers. He was officially billed as a
"concert artist." In reward for his popularity and success, he was given a threeroom apartment with no telephone in
Moscow, where he liked to retreat and
read books. He was often recognized on
the streets.
In explaining his secrets of clairvoyance, Messing said that others' thoughts
became colorful images in his mind; he
saw pictures rather than heard words. He
always attempted to touch his subjects by
the hand, which he said helped clear his
own mind of distractions. He denied
reading facial muscles, and said it was
easier for him to read blindfolded. The
thoughts of the deaf and dumb were
clearer than those of others, he said.
Messing was not a faith healer, but
could diagnose illnesses, and could relieve
headaches by placing his fingertips lightly
on the temples of the sufferer.
Russian scientists sought to find a
physiological reason for his clairvoyance,
but Messing rarely let himself be examined. A neurologist discovered that portions of his head and chest generated
more heat than other parts of his body,
but never discovered why. Some scientists
believed that when Messing took a subject by the hand, he subconsciously received muscle movements that aided him
in his reading.
In his later years, Messing's psychic
talents declined, but Goskonsert refused
to let him retire because of his enormous
popularity. He ,vas never allowed outside
to the West, perhaps out of fear that he
would defect. Following a period of illness, Messing died on November 8,1972.

Great yogi of Tibet, revered as a national

hero and venerated as a Fully Enlightened
One in other Asian countries. Once a sorcerer of formidable power who worked
the Left-Hand Path of magic, Milarepa
repented and devoted himself to the pursuit of dharma. His name means "cottonclad Mila" (Mila is given as "0 man!"),
and he was renowned for his power to
generate tumo, or psychic heat, in order
to stay warm in Tibet's harsh environment wearing nothing more than a
cotton robe. More than any other Buddhist yogi, Milarepa experimented with
the elements of consciousness. His biography, written in the fifteenth century, is
a source of inspiration to modern Buddhists.
Milarepa was born in 1052 (or, by
some accounts, in 1038 or 1025) in Tibet, near the edge of Nepal. His father
was a merchant who was away at the
time of his birth. When the news reached
him, he named the infant Thopaga, "Delightful to Hear." Interestingly, Milarepa
possessed a beautiful voice, and throughout his life would spontaneously burst
into song.
Milarepa's father died when he was
seven, and his family fell victim to his rapacious paternal aunt and uncle, who
took the inheritance and turned them out.
For years Milarepa, his mother, and sister

368

Messing,

wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978; Tatiana Lungin. Wolf Messing: The True Story
of Russia's Greatest Psychic. New York:
Paragon House, 1989; Sheila Ostrander
and Lynn Schroeder. The ESP Papers: Scientists Speak Out from Behind the Iron
Curtain. New York: Bantam Books, 1976;
Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970.

Milarepa

(C.

1052-1135)

Wolf Grigorievich

(1899-1972)

endured great hardship, which gave birth

to festering resentment on the part of Milarepa and his mother. One day when he
was seventeen, he came home drunk, and
apologized to his mother by promising to
do whatever she wanted. She ordered him
to find a magician who would teach him
the sorcery necessary to take revenge on
the cousins.
Milarepa found a black magician
named Lama Yungtun-Trogyal, "Wrathful and Victorious Teacher of Evil," who
reputedly could kill at a distance and
send tempests to ruin crops. When he had
learned the black arts, Milarepa destroyed a house in which one of his cousins was celebrating a wedding feast. A
witness saw it filled with vermin, and a
giant scorpion the size of a yak pulling
down its central pillar. Thirty-five people
were killed, but Milarepa spared the lives
of his aunt and uncle in order that they
should endure more pain and misery. The
destruction of the house was not enough
to satisfy his mother, who asked him to
rain hailstorms on the crops. This Milarepa did, conjuring a fierce storm of
hail, heavy rain, and strong wind.
Milarepa regretted these actions, but
remained in the service of the sorcerer
and gained a formidable reputation himself. At age thirty-eight he at last repented, and with his teacher's blessings,
devoted himself to pursuing dharma. He
became a pupil of Marpa, founder of the
Kargyut-pa school of Tibetan Buddhism,
who introduced the Short Path of enlightenment, including intense yoga and development of the siddhis, or psychic powers. See Siddhis.
Milarepa remained with Marpa for
six years. During that time he underwent
intense spiritual disciplines, beginning
with the breaking of the will, which is the
total surrender of oneself, body and soul,
to an ideal. Marpa relentlessly eradicated
Milarepa's self-will and subjected his pupil to frequent beatings. He had Milarepa
build a house of stone, only to order him

Milarepa (c. 1052-1135)

several times to tear it down and start

over again. The house, in Lhobrag, southern Tibet, still stood at the time of Alexandra David-Neel's explorations of Tibet
in the early twentieth century. Marpa and
Milarepa painstakingly saved numerous
Buddhist scriptures from the sacking and
burning of Moslems who invaded northern India. As a result Tibetan Buddhist
literature is the most extensive in all Buddhism.
By the age of forty-four, Milarepa
had atoned for his sorcery and was then
initiated by Marpa. One night Milarepa
dreamed his home was in ruins and his
mother was dead. He returned home and
found conditions as in his dream. He
gathered her bones and, by one account,
placed them in a sack, which he used for
a pillow for the rest of his life. By another
account he followed tradition and had
them fashioned into tsha-tshas, miniature
reliquaries, which he placed in a stupa, a
burial mound. Milarepa then vowed to
live the life of an ascetic and devote himself to meditation. However, he vowed
not to enter nirvana, the final liberation
from physical existence, until all other
sentient beings had obtained salvation.
His own sanctity would redeem both his
parents.
He retired to a cave, the "White
Cave of the Horse's Tooth," so high up
in the hills and difficult to reach that few
bothered to seek him out. This was just
as well, for Milarepa did not want to be
distracted from his meditation. He was
visited by his chief disciple, RechungDorje-Tagpa, and by Dzze-se, a girl to
whom he had been betrothed in childhood but had never married.
Milarepa ate only nettle broth, and
became extremely thin. His body and hair
took on the green color of the nettles. He
endured the bitter cold in his thin cotton
robe with the help of tumo. He eventually
attained a state of pure intellectual light,
and was then able to subsist on amritsa,
the ambrosia of the gods.

369

.1111!!!

"i~:-lli.t'

l...-

During his hermit years, he allegedly

developed even more incredible psychic
powers: He was witnessed flying, and he
traveled out-of-body at will not only anywhere on earth, but also to other planes
and worlds, where he would hold discussions with spiritual masters; he could
transform himself into a flame, bird, or
running stream. These powers gained him
unfavorable attention from others, who
were interested in using them for material
gain, so Milarepa left his cave and traveled to the area near Mount Everest,
where he stopped at a place called Between the Rivers at Lap-chi.
A jealous lama, Tsaphuwa, sent a
concubine to Milarepa to offer him poisoned curds. By clairvoyance Milarepa
knew the plot, but ate the poisoned curds
anyway. He explained to the concubine
that the poison could not hurt him, but
he was ready to depart his life. He summoned his disciples and for many days
preached on the law of karma and the
Real Truth. The earth and the skies filled
with gods who gathered to listen, and a
most heavenly music played. Milarepa
sang numerous hymns.
He at last fell ill and sank into samadhi, a prelude to nirvana. He was
eighty-four. On his funeral pyre, he reanimated his corpse, and then was resurrected in the Indestructible Body, which is
both the spiritual body and the phenomenal body. Flames rose up around the funeral pyre. He sang a final hymn and
then sank in a trance into the Clear Light,
part of the first stage of the Bardo Thodal
("Between Two"), the after-death state.
The cremation was accompanied by all
manner of unearthly and glorious sights
and sounds. The sky reportedly became a
mandala. Comets blazed across it, and
flowers fell.
When the fire was spent, the disciples were keenly disappointed to find that
dakinis ("sky-walkers," female embodiments of the complete wisdom of Buddha) had raken away all the bones and

370

ashes. To mollify them the dakinis gave

them one last grand vision of a great
chaitya (reliquary), projecting the image
of Milarepa, before bearing it away to the
east, to the accompaniment of celestial
music and sights.
Milarepa's songs and hymns, composed through his life, continue to be
sung in modern Tibet. Places where he is
said to have walked are venerated. See
Yoga.
Sources: Bernard Bromage. Tibetan

Yoga.

1952. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire,

England: The Aquarian Press, 1979; Alexandra David-Nee!. Magic and Mystery in
Tibet. 1929. New York: Dover Books,
1979; W. Y. Evans-Wentz. Tibet's Great
Yogi Milarepa: A Biography from the Tibetan. 2d ed. London: Oxford University
Press, 1951; Christmas Humphreys. A Popular Dictionary
of Buddhism.
London:

Curzon Press, 1984; Vivian Worthington.

A History of Yoga. London: Routledge

&

Kegan Paul, 1982.

Miracle
An occurrence that is perceptible to the
senses, transcends the natural course of
events, and takes place within a religious
context. More precise definitions, and
criteria for distinguishing miracles from
other paranormal events, depend on the
various definitions of "nature" and "religious." Nineteenth-century cultural anthropologists tended to classify all claims
of miraculous events under the heading of
magic; more modern schools tend to classify any extraordinary way of interacting
with the cosmos as a religious occurrence
and rherefore as a "miracle," regardless
of whether or not it is considered valid by
religious authorities.
One's concept of nature affects
whether or not one considers miracles
possible, and what one considers to be
miracles. Modern scientific views of nature, and therefore of the definition and
possibility of miracles, fall roughly into

Milarepa

(c. 1052-1135)

two schools. The rational materialist

view, dominant in the nineteenth century,
eventually came to explain everything
that is or can be in terms of matter and
energy, governed by rigid laws that determine all events. In this view the supernatural is an illusion - but so are a great
many other things, rather harder to explain away.
In the twentieth century, Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity and the
uncertainty principle of Werner Heisenberg, a founder of the quantum theory,
has led to a less rigidly deterministic scientific model of the universe: If science
must acknowledge randomness on the
part of the smallest particles, or waves, of
matter, it seems less improbable that
other actions also transcend the laws of
matter and energy. In addition, psychology seems to indicate that the mindeven the unconscious mind-has
a
greater control of the body than mechanistic theories allow (see Behavioral medicine). Many scientists thus have been
more willing to admit that "there are
more things in heaven and earth" than
were dreamed of in nineteenth-century
science. This is not, however, so much an
acceptance of the supernatural as it is a
willingness to include in nature what may
seem supernatural in the present state of
human knowledge.
From the point of view of religion,
the immanent god of pantheistic religions
is neither distinct from nature nor its creator, and thus is not supernatural and
cannot work miracles. Polytheistic religions abound in stories of what modern
Western people would call the miraculous. However, it is not always clear from
the outside which events are considered
miracles and which (especially in shamanistic religions) are considered "natural."
Religions and philosophies, such as
Christian Science and Buddhism, that
consider the material world an illusion
would not be expected to admit the pos-

Miracle

sibility of miracles as such: If matter does

not exist or is normally subject to direct
manipulation by mind, there would be
nothing extraordinary, or miraculous, in
such manipulation. Luddhism, however,
shows some ambivalence. Though the enlightened can perform what would be
considered miracles by the unenlightened,
and though Gautama Buddha himself is
said to have done so to assist his followers to conversion, the stricter Buddhist schools have maintained that they
should not be performed. On the other
hand, Mahayana Buddhism, especially in
China, has many stories of miraculous
occurrences.
Islam theoretically admits the possibility of miracles, but Muhammad refused to perform them, reminding his followers that all things, being made by
Allah, are signs of His power and goodness. Nonetheless, miracle stories are recounted of Sufi holy men, and some of
the orders are known for preternatural
achievements, such as swallowing coals
and the like.
Miracles have a more important role
in Judaism and Christianity. Both trace
their origin to events viewed as both historical and miraculous: the Exodus of the
Jews from Egypt in Judaism, and the Resurrection of Jesus in Christianity. It is
Christianity, especially in the Catholic
tradition, that has developed the most
systematic account of miracles. On the
one hand, it accepts the idea of a natural
order of things and laws of nature, which
are considered the work of God. On the
other hand, it maintains that God can
suspend or otherwise intervene in the natural order, and has done so at least on
certain occasions in the past. The Roman
church has in one document declared
both that miracles can occur and can be
known to have occurred, and that "there
can never be a real opposition between
faith and reason" (and, presumably, between faith and science). The God who
reveals himself is the same God who

371

..-~!_

""!i:~:!"'~' ~

made the natural world and the human

mind, and "He cannot contradict Himself" (Vatican I, Constitution De Filius).
In this view miracles are considered
an intervention in nature or a suspension
of its laws, not a violation of them, and
always have a religious purpose. The
New Testament miracles are presented as
providing a divine sanction of the person
and message of Christ. This stress on the
meaning of the miracle sets the JudeoChristian concept of miracle apart from
miracle stories in other religious traditions. It has also enabled certain schools
of modern theology to downplay the historical authenticity of the miracle stories
as less important than their purpose and
meaning. See Magic.
Sources: R. G. Collingwood. The Idea of
Nature. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1945; Heinrich Denziger. Enchiridion Symbolorum.
33d ed. Expanded and

enlarged by Adolf Schonmetzer, S.J.

Freiburg-im-Breisgau: Herder, 1965; David
Hume. Of Miracles. La Salle, IL: Open
Court, 1985; Peter Kreeft. "Apologetics:
Why Miracles Make Sense." National
Catholic Register (May 11, 1986): 1+; C.
S. Lewis. Miracles: A Preliminary Study.
New York: Macmillan, 1947.

Mirror
A gateway to magic, the supernatural, the
soul, and the mysteries of the universe.
Since ancient times, mirrors-as well as
all smooth, reflective surfaces - have been
used for divination, magic, and repelling
evil; they also have been greatly feared
for their power to steal the soul. In recent
times mirrors have been used as tools in
psychic development to increase clairvoyance and gain knowledge of so-called
past lives.
The precursor to the mirror is the
body of still water in a lake, pond, pool,
or bowl. The ancient Romans believed
mirrors originated in Persia, where they
were used by the magi for divination. The

372

Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians used

mirrors made of bronze or silver; the Chinese and Hindu also used metals. Glass
mirrors were introduced in the thirteenth
century in Venice, but metal mirrors and
polished surfaces have continued to be
used throughout the centuries.
Divination with mirrors is called
crystallomancy, catoptromancy, and scrying. The ancient witches of Thessaly are
said to have written their oracles upon
mirrors with human blood. They also
taught Pythagoras to divine by holding a
mirror up to the moon. In Rome, a culture of enthusiastic diviners, a special
class of mirror-readers emerged called
specularii. In the fourth century, Emperor
Julianus religiously consulted his specularii, blindfolded boys who stood before
mirrors and chanted charms to see the future.
In the West magic mirrors were particularly popular from the Middle Ages to
the nineteenth century. They were used
by all classes of society, but especially by
magicians, witches, sorcerers, and cunning men and women. Catherine de Medici and Henry IV often consulted their
magic mirrors. Albertus Magnus and
Agrippa divined with one, as did Cagliostro. John Dee, the royal magician to
Queen Elizabeth I, used a crystal egg and
a black obsidian mirror.
In more recent times, mirrors as
magic tools have fallen out of widespread
popular fashion, but are still used by diviners, psychics, and students of psychism.
Mirrors are more commonly used
for divination in the East than in the
West. In parts of India, preparation for
mirror divination involves rituals of fasting, prayer, and perfuming of the mirrors.
In Tibet mirrors are used for tra, divination by the reading of signs and visions,
an esteemed skill which requires a natural
gift and instruction from a trap a, or practitioner. The trapa uses a mirror made of
polished metal or stone, or gazes into a

Miracle

clear lake or the clear sky. He recites

mantras and empties his mind, eventually
seemg VISIons.
Fear of mirrors is universal. In many
tribal societies, the reflection is believed
to be the soul. Exposing the soul in a mirror or reflecting surface makes it vulnerable to danger and death. The Zulus believe dark pools of water harbor beasts
that will drag away their reflections; Basutos believe crocodiles will do the same.
A common belief in many cultures holds
that a person who sees his or her reflection will soon die. This is the basis for the
Greek myth of Narcissus, who looked
upon his reflection in the water and pined
and died. The ancient Greeks also believed that dreaming of seeing one's reflection was an omen of death. A worldwide folklore custom is the removal of
mirrors from sick rooms, lest the mirror
draw out the soul of weakened persons,
and the turning or removal of mirrors
upon a death in the house. According to
superstition whoever looks into a mirror
following a death will also die. An old
custom in some parts of Germany called
for the covering up of all shiny, reflective
surfaces after a death.
Mirrors are associated with evil. In
Russian folklore they are the invention of
the Devil and will draw souls out of bodies. In other superstitions, if one looks
into the mirror long enough at night or
by candlelight, one will see the Devil;
thus it is advisable to cover up mirrors in
the bedroom at night. The candlelight is
not advisable because fire is the element
of spirit, and attracts the unseen. Witches
and vampires cast no reflections in mirrors. The look of the evil eye will shatter
a mirror or poison its surface. Conversely, mirrors may be used to protect
against evil. They can reflect the evil eye;
in the seventeenth century, it was fashionable in Europe to wear small mirrors
in hats. The ancient Aztecs protected
their homes from witches at night by
leaving a knife in a bowl of water at the

Mirror

threshold. A witch would see her reflection, or soul, pierced by the knife and
would flee.
Numerous superstItIons surround
mirrors. Breaking one means bad luck for
seven years, or disaster or death; a mirror
that falls and breaks of its own accord is
an omen of impending death in the
house. A girl who gazes at the moon's
reflection in a mirror will learn her wedding day; if performed on Halloween, the
ritual will reveal a vision of her future
husband. In Ozark lore to see an absent
friend appear in a mirror means he will
soon die; babies under a year in age
should not see their reflections, or they
will be cross-eyed or die before their second birthday.
Students of the occult use mirrors to
look into the world of spirit. Gazing into
one supposedly reveals visions of spirit
guides and helps one gain auric sight, the
ability to see the aura. Some believe that
the face changes seen by staring into a
mirror are images of past lives. Mirrors
painted black on the convex side are considered an excellent tool for developing
clairvoyance. See Scrying.
Sources: W. E. Butler. How to Develop
Clairvoyance. 2d ed. New York: Samuel

Weiser, 1979; Frederick Thomas Elworthy.

1895. Reprint. The Evil Eye. Secaucus, NJ:
University Books/Citadel Press, n.d.; The
Encyclopedia
of Occult Sciences. New
York: Robert McBride & Co., 1939; James
G. Frazer. The Golden Bough: The Roots
of Religion and Folklore. 1890. Reprint.
New York: Avenel Books, 1981; Craig Junjulas. Lecture on "Psychic Awareness." Vahalla, NY, October 5, 1987; Michael
Loewe and Carmen Blacker. Oracles and
Divination.
Boulder, co: Shambhala,
1981; Elizabeth Pepper and John Wilcock.
Magical and Mystical Sites. New York:
Harper & Row, 1977; Vance Randolph.
Ozark Magic and Folklore. New York: Columbia University Press, 1947; Jane Sarnoff
and Reynold Ruffins. Take Warning! A
Book of Superstitions. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1978; Harry E. Wedeck. A

373

Treasury of Witchcraft. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1961.

Montgomery,

Ruth

(b. 1912)
Author who says she communicates with
spirit guides via automatic writing.
Montgomery's subjects have included reincarnation, magnetic healing, Atlantis,
Lemuria, Earth changes, and visits from
aliens and advanced spiritual beings.
She was born Ruth Schick in Princeton, Indiana, on June 11, 1912. Her early
ambition was to be a missionary, but she
pursued journalism instead. Montgomery
attended both Baylor and Purdue universities, but never graduated with a degree.
She had several reporting jobs, culminating in her most important post with the
International News Service (INS) in
Washington, DC, which later merged
with United Press International. She met
her husband, Robert H. Montgomery, a
management consultant, in Detroit.
Montgomery was introduced to the
occult in 1956 in St. Petersburg, Florida,
when she attended seances given by Sr.
Malcolm Pantin, whose mediumship included spirit communications through
floating trumpets. In Washington Montgomery attended seances given by the
Reverend Hugh Gordon Burroughs of the
Spiritualist Church of Two Worlds. She
began to use a Ouija board, which enabled her to make contact, she believed,
with Burroughs's control, Father Murphy, and her dead father. She also attended Burroughs's controversial Spiritualist camp in Ephrata, Pennsylvania,
Camp Silver Belle. She wrote articles
about her experiences for INS.
In 1958 Montgomery met trance medium Arthur Ford and formed an enduring friendship. Through Ford and her deceased father, she received messages that
she should write about life after death.
Ford also told her she had the ability for
automatic writing. It manifested in 1960,

374

and an entity announced himself as

"Lily," a writer of alleged repute in a past
life who would be her control for other
spirits who wished to communicate material for books. Critics, such as the Committee for the Investigation of Claims of
the Paranormal (CSICOP), have contended Montgomery is not communicating with external beings, but with her
own subconscious. See Automatic writing; Ouija.
Montgomery's third book, A Gift of
Prophecy (1965), about Jeane Dixon,
was her first of numerous bestsellers. Her
fourth book, A Search for the Truth
(1966), dealt with her spiritual explorations and firmly established her as an occult author.
According to Montgomery she did
not believe in reincarnation until she undertook a thorough investigation of it
with the help of her guides, which resulted in Here and Hereafter (1968). Toward the end of the 1960s, Montgomery
left journalism and her husband retired
from the Small Business Administration.
Her last non occult book was Hail to the
Chiefs: My Life and Times with Six Presidents.
When Ford died in 1971, he allegedly joined Lily's group of guides, and
aided Montgomery in writing A World
Beyond (1971), about life after death.
Montgomery believes she and Ford have
shared numerous intertwined past lives as
part of a group karma, in Atlantis, Moab,
Egypt, Persia, Tibet, Greece, France, Italy, and England. In Companions Along
the Way (1974), Montgomery states that
according to her guides, she lived during
the lifetime of Jesus, as a girl named
Ruth, the alleged sister of Lazarus. Their
father, Jeremiah, was Ford.
At the behest of her guides, Montgomery wrote a book about aliens on
Earth-Aliens Among Us (1985)-who
ostensibly were here to train the upcoming leaders of the New Age. Such leaders
would be among the survivors of the pole

Mirror

shifts predicted for the turn of the

twenty-first century, which Montgomery's guides agreed would usher in an era
of peace after a period of great turmoil.
One of her most popular theories
concerns walk-ins, the subject of Strangers Among Us (1979). Montgomery says
a walk-in is a highly developed discarnate
entity who takes over the body and personality of an incarnate adult in order to
work to raise spiritual consciousness and
help prepare the world for the cataclysms. Hundreds of thousands of walkins are said to be on Earth, most as ordinary people. Most keep their identities
secret, but some have announced themselves publicly with various groups and
societies.
According to Montgomery some
walk-ins come from other planets, while
others come from the "sixth dimension";
they have been visiting Earth for millennia. She says Jesus Christ surrendered to
a walk-in upon his baptism by John the
Baptist. Other alleged walk-ins include
Joseph, Meister Eckhart, Christopher Columbus, Albert Einstein, Emanuel Swedenborg, Gandhi, Moses, Quetzalcoatl,
William Penn, Benjamin Franklin, John
Greenleaf Whittier, and Abraham Lincoln.
Sources: Florence Graves. "Searching for
the Truth: Ruth Montgomery Investigates
Life, Death and the Hereafter." New Age
Journal (JanuaryIFebruary 1987): 25-29+;
Ruth Montgomery. A Search for the Truth.
New York: Bantam Books, 1968; Ruth
Montgomery. Companions Along the Way.
New York: Popular Library, 1976; Ruth
Montgomery. Aliens Among Us. New
York: Fawcett Crest, 1985; Ruth Montgomery. Strangers Among Us. New York:
Fawcett Crest, 1979; Ruth Montgomery
with Joanne Garland. Ruth Montgomery:
Herald of the New Age. New York:
DoubledaylDolphin, 1987; Violet M. Shelley. "Extra!! Extra!! All About Ruth Montgomery." Venture Inward 3, no. 2 (March!
April 1987): 50-52.

Moon

Moon
Symbol of the feminine principle, the occult side of nature, the psychic, emotion,
intuition, inspiration, imagination, and
the deep layers of the subconscious. Its
phases correspond to the menstrual cycles
of women and the seasons of nature; it is
linked to fecundity, moisture, wetness,
and the tides. It is a symbol of life, death,
and rebirth: it waxes, wanes, vanishes
from the heavens for three days, and then
reappears to grow again to fullness.
Early humankind noticed that the
moon regulated the tides, and came to believe that it regulated all moistures as
well, including blood and the moistures
within the human body. The moon appeared to regulate all growth and life cycles. It was believed to be responsible for
fertilization, and women who desired to
become pregnant thus slept under the
rays of the moon. In the first century A.D.
the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder catalogued the moon's apparent influence
over life in his thirty-seven-volume work,
Natural History. Pliny put forth many
prescriptions for regulating all activities
of daily life according to the moon's
phases.
Because the moon appeared to die
and be reborn each month, it became associated with immortality, rebirth, and
the Land of the Dead. Plutarch, the firstcentury Greek essayist and biographer,
conceived of the moon as a way-station
for souls following death and prior to rebirth. According to the Upanishads, the
moon is where unenlightened souls go to
rest and await reincarnation (enlightened
souls go to the sun).
The moon was considered a force of
nature until about 2600 B.C., when it became personified, first as the Man in the
Moon, and then as gods and goddesses of
the moon. Lunar goddesses predominate
over gods, because of the moon's reflective (passive) nature and because of its
associations with the regulation of life.

375

.1I1!!!!

lnllllll~;ti~1P=c:..'

The moon is associated with witchcraft, magic, and sorcery, and is considered to be the source of witches' power. It
is personified by the Triple Goddess-the
virgin, mother, and crone-usually represented by the classical deities Diana (Artemis), Selene, and Hecate. The ancient
witches of Thessaly were said to have the
power to draw the moon down from the
sky at their command; a symbolic ritual
of drawing down the moon is still performed in modern Witchcraft. Witches
hold their meetings, called "circles" or
"esbats," and work their magic spells in
accordance with lunar phases. The waxing moon is propitious for growth,
achievement, good fortune, and healing
spells; the waning moon is propitious for
banishing spells and the undoing of harm
and negative influences.
The moon itself is believed to cast a
spell; one may become moonstruck beneath its silvery rays. The term "mania,"
derived from "moon," means ecstatic
revelation; "lunacy" means possessed by
the spirit of Luna. Nights of the full
moon provide the greatest power for
magic and the world of spirit. In folklore
those cursed by lycanthropy are said to
turn into werewolves under the spell of
the full moon.
Moon power is mind power. The
moon is Goddess's "wise blood" in
women. In ancient times women withdrew to moon huts during menstruation
to contemplate and absorb the power of
the dark moon.
In astrology the moon exerts a powerful force in horoscopes and in daily affairs. As the moon moves through the zodiac, different creative forces are brought
into play. When the moon is between
signs, it is "void of course," a time of
uncertainty and instability.
Sources: Joseph Campbell. The Masks of
God. Vol. 4, Oriental Mythology.
New
York: Viking Penguin, 1962; J. E. Cirlot. A
Dictionary of Symbols. New York: Philo-

sophical Library, 1971; Grace Cooke with

376

White Eagle's teaching. Sun Men of the

Americas. New Lands, England: White Eagle Publishing Trust, 1975; Rosemary Ellen
Guiley. The Encyclopedia of Witches and
Witchcraft. New York: Facts On File,
1989; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. Moonscapes: A Celebration of Lunar Astronomy,
Magic, Legend and Lore. New York:

Prentice-Hall, 1991; Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor. The Great Cosmic Earth
Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the
Earth. San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1987; Starhawk. The Spiral Dance. San

Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979; Keith

Thomas. Religion and the Decline of
Magic. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1971; Doreen Valiente. Witchcraft for Tomorrow. Custer, WA: Phoenix Publishing,
1978; Barbara G. Walker. The Woman's
Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983.

Moon, Sun Myung

See Alternative religious movements.

Mu
See Lemuria.

Muhammad

(c. 570 or

571-632)
The Messenger of God and the Prophet
of Islam, believed by followers to be the
bearer of the last of all Divine revelations
before the end of the world. Muhammad
means "the Praised one" or "he who is
glorified"; it was either given at birth or
was a nickname. According to tradition
there are two hundred names for Muhammad, such as "Joy of Creation," "Beloved of God," and so on. Mention of his
name is customarily followed by one of
several invocations, such as "God bless
him and give him peace."
Muhammad was an inspired prophet
and religious reformer in the Semitic and
biblical tradition, preaching holy war and

Moon

the triumph of justice. He was an energetic, attractive man described as having

a beautiful face. He is believed to have
been illiterate, and to have obtained his
wisdom directly froin God in revelations.
He believed in a God who is both personal and transcendent. He also accepted
the Christian beliefs in Jesus as the Messiah, and in the immaculate conception of
Mary and the virgin birth. However, he
believed that Judaism and Christianity
had distorted God's revelations to Moses
and Jesus, and that the pagan Arabs lived
in ignorance of God's will. As the
Prophet, he reformed and revolutionized
Arabian religion and life. Islam became
not a new religion, but the "original"
word of God.
Only two dates are certain in Muhammad's life: the year of his emigration
from Mecca to Medina, 622, and the year
of his death, 632. Information concerning
his earlier life is lacking in detail. The primary source is the Koran (Qu'ran), the
holy book of Islam given to him by Allah
(God) in a series of revelations.
Muhammad probably was born in
Mecca between 567 and 572, most likely
in 570 or 571. His lineage was traced
back to Ishmael and Abraham. His father
died prior to his birth, and he was made
a ward of his grandfather, Abd alMuttalib, the founder of the pagan Hashimite tribe of the Quryash of Mecca, a
cult of idols. Muhammad was given to a
Bedouin foster mother to raise in the desert. His foster family soon realized they
had an unusual child, for many unusual
events took place. According to one account, two men dressed in white appeared one day when the boy was four or
five. They threw him down, opened his
chest, and stirred their hands around. In
later years Muhammad said the men were
angels who had come to wash a dark spot
from his heart with snow; thus was he
purified of original sin. Muhammad also
had an unusual large mark between his
shoulders, ringed by hair, said to be the

Muhammad (c. 570 or 571-632)

"Seal of Prophecy," the sign of the last

Divine Messenger to the world.
Muhammad
returned to Mecca
while still a young child. When he was
eight, his grandfather died and he became
a ward of an uncle, Abu Talib. As a
youth he managed trade caravans belonging to a wealthy widow, Khadijah. During one caravan he met a Christian monk
who recognized him as a future prophet.
At age twenty-five he married Khadijah, who was then forty-four. She had
either two or three sons, who died in infancy, and four daughters.
In 610, at age forty, Muhammad entered a life of asceticism, withdrawing to
the mountains near Mecca to pray and
meditate. One night the angel Gabriel appeared in his dreams as the Messenger of
Allah and gave him the first revelation of
the Koran. The night is called the "Night
of Power." The Koran was revealed gradually over the rest of his life, in nearly
daily trance states, with the final revelation coming just months before his death
in 632. The Koran totals 6,666 verses
and forms the doctrine of Islam. Muhammad remained in constant awe of its unfoldment, which came sometimes via angels and sometimes via clairaudience. His
trances were torporous; in them he had a
red face and breathed heavily.
Three years after the first revelation,
he began his calling as Prophet, in which
he sought to restore the religion of Abraham. He began preaching to his own clan
that if they did not worship God instead
of their idols, they would be punished.
The followers of the new religion were
called Muslims, which is derived from a
term that means "they that surrender to
God."
Muhammad's success in converting
others naturally stirred the animosity of
the Quryash, which feared loss of prestige
as guardians of the Ka'bah, a cube of masonry (with a Black Stone in one corner)
in a large open square in Mecca. The
square was founded by Abraham and sur-

377

rounded by idols, and it drew great numbers of pilgrims, who were one of Mecca's key sources of income.
Muhammad would have no compromise with the Quryash, which then
banned commerce with his clan, the
Hashimites. Persecutions of the Muslims
began, driving some of them to Abyssinia. Muhammad benefited from protection accorded by his uncle, but when Abu
Talib died, animosity toward the Muslims escalated.
Khadijah died in 619 at the age of
sixty-five. Muhammad married another
widow, Sawdah, thirty-five.
The first pledge of fealty to Islam by
pilgrims to Mecca took place in 620. Persecutions continued, and Muslims fled to
Yathrib. Muhammad himself emigrated
to Yathrib in 622, now observed as the
year in which the Islamic era began.
Yathrib became the first Islamic state,
and became known as Medina, "the city
of the Prophet."
In Medina Muhammad was joined
by his second wife, Sawdah, and a band
of seventy followers. He soon married a
six-year-old girl, A'ishah, who became
his favorite wife; she had an innate ability
to stimulate his intuition and sense of
spiritual immanence. The marriage was
consummated when she came of age.
Throughout the course of his life, Muhammad had ten wives and at least two
concubines. (Islamic law limits the number of wives to four per man, but a revelation of the Koran allowed the Prophet
to have more.)
The growing opposition to Islam
eventually led to a Holy War. In the view
of the Muslims, all unbelievers and idolaters had no "right" to peace. The Koran
exempted from the ranks of unbelievers
the followers of divinely revealed religions, including Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Sabians, the latter of whom
included a number of smaller religions,
and later the Hindus.
Fighting broke out in 624; Muham-

378

mad's forces numbered only three hundred. In 630 Muhammad led an army of
10,000 into Mecca, which offered but token resistance. He destroyed the idols at
the Ka'bah. Within weeks, the city officially converted to Islam. There followed
conversions all over Arabia.
In March 632 Muhammad led
30,000 people (by some accounts,
90,000) in a farewell pilgrimage, during
which he delivered the last revelation of
the Koran in his sermon on Mount Arafat. The new religion was named Islam
("surrender" or "reconciliation") and the
law of Islam was established. Muhammad died on June 8, 632, and was buried
in his house. His death was followed by a
period of confusion and civil wars.
Islam now has an estimated 800 million to 900 million followers in various
sects around the world. It accepts Jesus
and the prophets of Judaism as prophets
of Islam. It seeks to restore the pre-Fall
state of the Garden of Eden, in which humanity in its essence was perfect and capable of perceiving God in the Unseen.
Its fundamentals are the Five Pillars:
the profession of faith; the canonical
prayer or worship; the fast; the legal
tithe; and the pilgrimage. The canonical
prayer rituals are elaborate, done five
times a day at certain times, with certain
attitudes and prostrations, preceded by
ablutions. The worshiper must face toward Mecca. In addition there are other
types of prayer, done at night or upon
certain occasions. The mystical path is
practiced by Sufis. See Sufism.
Sources: Emile Dermenghem. Muhammad
and the Islamic Tradition. 1955. Wood-

stock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1981; John

L. Esposito. Islam: The Straight Path. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1988; Cyril
Glasse. The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam.
San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989; Lex
Hixon. Heart of the Koran. Wheaton, IL:
The Theosophical Publishing House, 1988;
Thomas W. Lippman. Understanding Islam:

An

Introduction

Muhammad

to

the

Moslem

(c. 570 or 571-632)

World. New York: New American Library,

1982.

Murphy, Bridey
See Reincarnation.

Murphy, Gardner
See American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR).

Music
Arrangements of sound, which, aside
from creating entertainment, are believed
to affect physical, mental, emotional, and
spiritual states. The ability of music to
positively or negatively influence health,
character, morality, and consciousness
has been known since ancient times. It is
one of the oldest therapies, and in nearly
all cultures has been believed to facilitate
healing, meditation, and religious experience.
According to Eastern traditions
thousands of years old, vibration emanating from a spiritual source creates the
physical
universe.
Sacred
soundshabda-has long been applied to healing
and spiritual unfoldment, combined with
chants, musical instruments, postures,
and rhythmic movements. See Chanting;
Mantra; Om. The ancient Chinese believed music to be the basis of everything:
all things, including human beings, were
molded according to the music that was
performed within them. Confucius stated
that if the music of a kingdom changed,
then its society would alter itself accordingly. Plato, too, believed that music had
the power to bring about the downfall of
the state, and said it was the duty of the
legislature to suppress "effeminate" and
"lascivious" music and promote dignified
and pure music. In the sixth century,
Boethius associated music with morality.

Music

His work, De Musica, was widely used

by scholars up until the middle of the
nineteenth century.
The ancient Greeks believed in the
healing power of music; it was applied to
aid digestion, induce sleep, and treat
mental disturbance. Plato offered many
ideas on music in education and culture,
and banned or approved of various instruments, modes, and rhythms. Aristotle
placed great power in flute music to rouse
emotions and provide catharsis; he said
music affects human character. Pythagoras, who is credited with discovering the
diatonic scale, found that all music can be
reduced to numbers and mathematical ratios, and concluded that all phenomena in
the universe could be similarly explained.
Pythagoras devised numerous medical
medicines "calculated to repress and expel the diseases of both bodies and of
souls," according to Iamblichus. See
Pythagoras.
Shamans and healers have long used
music combined with chant and rhythmic
movement to induce the altered states of
consciousness necessary to carry out their
work. See Shamanism. The Sufis use music in healing, believing that it, combined
with the use of colors, affects the body's
endocrine system.
The belief that music influences
moral character prevailed until about the
start of the twentieth century, when attitudes toward music began to change.
Technology made music accessible almost
any time via recordings. With advances in
media communications, music became an
integral part of radio, film, and then television. Presently, society is bombarded
with several hours of music a day from
these sources, without having the awareness of the effect of the music upon the
body and consciousness.
Research has shown that the elements of music that have physiological
and psychological effects are (1). rhythm,
which has the most immediate and intense effect, especially on the pulse rate

379

and emotions; (2) tone or pitch, which is

the specific quality and vibration of a
note; (3) interval, the distance between
notes, which creates melody and harmony; and (4) timbre, the specific nature
of an instrument or voice, which evokes
associations.
Music's effects are due largely to entrainment, a principle of physics in which
the stronger vibrations of one object will
cause the weaker vibrations of another
object to begin oscillating at the same
rate as the stronger. Entrainment was discovered by Dutch scientist Christopher
Huygens in 1665. For example, a room
full of grandfather clocks whose pendula
are set swinging asynchronously will synchronize with the rhythm of the dominant clock. Also, muscle cells, when
brought close together, will begin to pulse
in harmony.
Thus the rhythms of music can entrain the mind, body, and spirit by affecting the rhythms of physiological and neurological processes. Music has been
shown to affect pulse rate, skin temperature, blood pressure, muscle tension, and
brain-wave activity. It can help the release of biochemicals, such as endorphins. It can alleviate pain, reduce the
amount of anesthesia required during
surgery, help postoperative recovery, aid
in head trauma injuries, and bring temporary relief to people suffering from debilitating disease. It relaxes, excites, releases emotions, and helps to induce
altered states of consciousness, out-ofbody experiences, and peak experiences
similar to those which occur in deep meditation or with the help of psychedelic
drugs. Music also has been shown to affect the health of plants and the health
and behavior of animals.
The power of sound, which is measured in cycles per second (hertz), has
been demonstrated in experiments. The
eighteenth-century
German
physicist
Ernst Chladni found that playing a violin
near a sand-covered disk caused the sand

380

to form geometric shapes. In the 1930s

Hans Jenny, a Swiss sound researcher,
created a wide range of natural shapes,
such as honeycombs and shells, by vibrating sand, liquids, powders, and putty on
metal disks at different frequencies. Jenny's work led Peter Guy Manners, a British osteopath, to develop the controversial "cymatic therapy," in which the
"correct" sound of a healthy organ or
part of the body is applied directly to a
diseased counterpart.
Research results vary considerably,
and the precise nature of the effects of
music remains scientifically inconclusive.
Researchers know that states of arousal
are affected by music, but don't know
much about the hormonal changes
caused by music, or what music does
electrochemically in the brain. However,
music is viewed as a helpful alternative
treatment in medicine.
Music therapy, which languished
during the nineteenth century and began
to revive in the twentieth century, focuses
on the areas of pain relief, stress reduction, and occupational therapy. Interest
in music as a transpersonal therapeutic
tool is due largely to the work of Helen L.
Bonny, founder of the Bonny Foundation
in Salina, Kansas. Bonny had her first
peak experience induced by music in
1948, while playing the violin at a religious ceremony. She later undertook
training as a music therapist, and experimented with music combined with
prayer and meditation. Bonny concluded
that music could induce introspective or
ecstatic states without the need for psychedelics. Bonny's book, Music and Your
Mind (1973), written with Louis M. Savary, paved the way to an explosion of
books on the health effects of music.
In therapy music appears to work
best when used in conjunction with spoken instructions in the background;
Guided Imagery and Music (GIM), as it is
called, is used in hospitals and clinics and
in psychological counseling and psychiat-

Music

ric treatment. It also has been used succ~ssfully in prisons.

Music also has harmful effects, such
as pieces that arouse base instincts or passions, or induce melancholy. Some forms
of rock music, especially heavy metal, are
debilitating, have been shown to adversely affect the health of plants and laboratory mice, and have been associated
with depression, aggression, and destructive behavior. Similarly, some types of
music pumped into exercise salons for
aerobic workouts create confusion in the
brain and work to weaken muscles rather
than
strengthen
them.
Syncopated
rhythms have been shown to have a deteriorating psycho-physiological effect.
Certain rhythms have been shown to induce epileptic seizures in unusually sensitive listeners.
New Age music, which dates to the
1970s, is based on the idea that music
can expand consciousness and alter
awareness. Critics label much of it as simplistic or bodiless, but many New Age
composers, like music therapy composers, attempt to create music that will foster physical and psychological well-being
and harmony. Many have returned to ancient theories about music as sources of
inspiration. In the field of behavioral
medicine, music had potential for helping
to maintain wellness.
Various individuals report being able
to see or sense colors and shapes when
listening to music. Clairvoyants report
awareness of music thought-forms, created by the vibrations of sound. See Altered states of consciousness; Behavioral
medicine; Creative visualization; Imagery; Out-of-body experience (OBE).
Sources: Jeanne Achterberg. Imagery in
Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine. Boston: Shambhala Publications,
1985; Roberto Assagioli. Psychosynthesis:
A Manual of Principles and Techniques.

1965. New York: Penguin Books, 1976;

Rosemary Bitzel. "Tripping on Music."
Unicorn Times (April 1979): 8; Pamela

Myers, Frederic W. H.

Bloom. "Soul Music." New Age Journal

(March/April 1987): 58-63; Helen L.
Bonny and Louis M. Savary. Music and
Your Mind. New York: Harper & Row,
1973; Joscelyn Godwin. Harmonies of
Heaven and Earth: The Spiritual Dimension of Music from Antiquity to the AvantGarde. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International, Ltd., 1987; Manly P. Hall. The
Secret Teachings of All Ages. 1928. Los

Angeles: The Philosophic Research Society,

1977; Steven Halpern with Louis Savary.
Sound Health: The Music and Sounds That
Make Us Whole. San Francisco: Harper &

Row, 1985; Arthur W. Harvey. "Utilizing

Music as a Tool for Healing." In The
Fourth International Symposium on Music:
Rehabilitation and Human Well Being. Ed-

ited by Rosalie Rebolla Pratt. Lanham,

MD: University Press of America, 1987;
Arthur W. Harvey. "Music and Health."
International

Brain

Dominance

Review

(Fall 1987): 9-11; Hal A. Lingerman. The

Healing Energies of Music. Wheaton, IL:
The Theosophical Publishing House, 1983;
R. J. Stewart. Music and the Elemental Psyche: A Practical Guide to Music and
Changing Consciousness. Rochester, VT:
Destiny Books, 1987; David Tame. The Secret Power of Music. Rochester, VT: Des-

tiny Books, 1984; Andrew Watson and

Nevill Drury. Healing Music. Bridport,
Dorset, England: Prism Press, 1987; "Music Facilitates Healing, Bodymind Coordination." Brain Mind Bulletin 8, no. 2 (December 13, 1982): 1+. Sources from
Conference Proceedings. The Second National Music and Health Conference, Eastern Kentucky University, April 7-8, 1988:
M. Susan Claeys. "The Role of Music and
Music Therapy in the Rehabilitation of
Traumatically Injured Clients." 118-139;
Kay Gardner. "On Composing Medical
Music." 12-20; Jonathan S. Goldman.
"Sonic Entrainment and the Brain." 30-59;
Arthur W. Harvey. "Moving Music into
the Mainstream of Behavioral Medicine."

1-8.

Myers, Frederic W. H.
See Apparition; Society for Psychical Research (SPR).

381

Mysteries
In the strictest sense, secret religious cults
that flourished during the Hellenistic period, involving adoration of various deities and rites of spiritual transformation
and rebirth. "Mystery" derives from the
Greek myein, "to close," and refers to the
closing of the lips or the eyes. The mystes,
or initiate, was required to keep the secrets of the cult. In a broader sense, the
term "mysteries" also is applied to esoteric teachings and the rites of secret societies outside of the classical world.
The Hellenistic mystery cults were
pre-In do-European and pre-Semitic in origin, although their advanced elements
probably came from the Indo-Europeans.
The mysteries involved the worship of deities from Greece, Syria, Anatolia, Egypt,
and Persia. Some were limited to either
men or women; the Eleusinian mysteries
of Greece are probably the best-known of
those which admitted both sexes.
Regardless of orientation the mysteries shared some common characteristics:
They were centered on a divine female as
the vessel of transformation, even if they
were cloaked in patriarchal form; their
purpose was to secure eternal life in the
afterworld, through rebirth or redemption; they contained an erotic-sexual element of union with the primal mother;
there was preparation and consumption
of special food and drink as part of the
transformative process or as reenactment
of a holy meal of the gods and goddesses;
there were blood sacrifices; there were elements of magic and ecstasy in the rites;
the initiate was revealed the secrets and
the instructions of the cult.
The rites of the mysteries consisted
of religious dramas of the deities, reenactments of the hieros gamos (sacred
marriage), and/or the death and rebirth of
a deity. Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung observed that the ancients learned how to
escape spiritual death by submitting
themselves to the dramas of the myster-

382

ies, which became an original experience

for each initiate.

Mystery

Cults

The Eleusinian mysteries, the most

popular and influential of the Greek
cults, centered on the rape, abduction,
and marriage or death of Kore (Persephone), and her reunion/resurrection
with her mother, Demeter, the grain goddess. The rites were intimately linked to
the cycle of fertility of the Earth. The selfsacrifice of Kore was at the heart of the
transformation, the fruit of which was
the birth of a divine son, spiritually conceived and born, whom she held on her
lap.
The Dionysian mysteries, the second
most important Hellenistic cult, centered
on Dionysus (Bacchus), the Thracian
bull-god and ruler of the dead and souls
who became the god of the vine and vegetation. Immortality could be obtained
through communion with him in ecstatic
rites apparently involving consumption of
wine and the raw flesh of a sacrificed animal, and sex. Descriptions of the rites
ranged from banquets to orgies in which
the initiates tore the sacrificial animal to
pieces and devoured it. The Villa of Mysteries, discovered in the ruins of Pompeii
in 1910, includes a room called the Initiation Chamber, which is painted with
Dionysian scenes and features Dionysus
and his beloved, Ariadne. According to
one interpretation of the mysteries, the
rites represented the individuation process of the Self, in the transformation of
both Dionysus and Ariadne through their
sacred marriage. Both are portrayed in
the Villa of Mysteries paintings.
In the mysteries of Isis and Osiris,
the Egyptians observed a mystery play of
succession, the death of a pharaoh and
the succession of another, with a funeral
ritual of mummification and burial in
which the dead would be mystically
joined in the underworld by Osiris. Dur-

Mysteries

ing the Hellenistic period, the mysteries

of Isis and Osiris centered on the death of
Osiris and his rebirth in the underworld
with the help of Isis, and the birth of Isis's
divine son, Horus, whom she held on her
lap.
The Mithraic mysteries were a male
cult of Persian origin centered on the
slaying of a bull by Mithra, god of light
and beneficence, which guaranteed the
fruitfulness of the earth. The initiates
consumed bread and water, representing
the body and blood of the divine bull.
Initiates were believed to be under the divine protection of Mithra, who would
protect their souls from darkness.
Evidence for mystery rites concerning the mystical wisdom of Woden
(Odin), the patriarch of Teutonic gods, is
found in the mythical Poetic Edda and
Prose Edda of the Viking Age (A.D. 8001100). Woden, whose name derives from
the proto-Germanic term for "master of
inspired psychic activity," is the god of
magic, poetry, wisdom, and war, and
once was considered the primal ancestor
of the royalty of northern Europe. To obtain wisdom he hung from Yggdrasil, the
World Tree, for nine days in a trance,
and thus learned the secrets of the runes.
Similarly, human initiates into the Wodenic (or Odinic) mysteries hung themselves from a symbolic Yggdrasil. Another rite centered on Woden's winning
back the poetic mead, the source of inspiration fermented from the blood of a
god, Kvasir, and which was being
hoarded by a giant. See Runes.
There were also Judaic and Christian
mysteries. Rites of circumcision, baptism,
and anointing the forehead with oil may
be seen to have similarities with the ancient mystery rites of initiation into a select religious community. The Jewish
holy meal of Seder reenacts a religious
drama, the Exodus from Egypt.
The primary Christian mysteries are
the Eucharist, the Cross, and the baptism.
The rite of the Eucharist involves the con-

Mysteries

sumption of bread and wine as the body

and blood of Christ, a means of seeking
salvation through union with Christ.
Goddess or Great Mother remains a hidden part of these rites, as the cup which
holds the blood and wine, and the womb
in which the rebirth of baptism takes
place. The Cross represents the scheme of
the universe, the entire history of the cosmos before and after the crucifixion of
Christ; it foreshadows the coming of the
transfigured Christ. The baptism, the fundamental mystery, represents initiation
into the divine life of the resurrected
Christ.
The cult of Mary, who holds her divine son on her lap, also has associations
with Goddess and the ancient mysteries.
The Hellenistic mysteries came to an
end with Christianity. The elements and
purpose of the ancient mysteriesresurrection to eternal life-have been
preserved in the rites of various secret societies such as the Freemasons and Rosicrucians. See Alchemy; Freemasonry;
Goddess; Grail, the; Mary; Rosicrucians.
Sources: Joseph Campbell, ed. The Mystic
Vision: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks.

Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1968; Linda Fierz-David. Women's Dionysian Initiation: The Villa of Mysteries in
Pompeii. Dallas: Spring Publications, 1988;
Manly P. Hall. The Secret Teachings of All
Ages. 1928. Los Angeles: The Philosophic

Research Society, 1977; C. W. Leadbeater.

Ancient Mystic Rites. First published as
Glimpses
of Masonic
History,
1926.

Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing

House, 1986; Marvin W. Meyer, ed. The
Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook.
San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987; Erich
Neumann. The Great Mother: An Analysis
of the Archetype. 2d ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963; Lewis Spence.
The Encyclopedia of the Occult. Reprint.
London: Bracken Books, 1988; Edred
Thorsson. "The Way of Woden: The Runic
Mysteries of the Hidden God of the
North." Gnosis no. 9 (Fall 1988): 31-35.

383

Mystical experiences
A wide range of experiences in which one
suddenly transcends the bounds of ordinary consciousness to an ineffable awareness beyond time, space, and the physical.
Mystical experiences intrinsically defy description, so the effort here will at best
hint at their nature.
Mystical experiences are universal,
and share some common traits, despite
differences in culture and religion. They
are invariably spiritual, yet not necessarily religious; one need not be a monk or
priest in order to have one. However, all
personal religious experiences are rooted
in mystical states of consciousness, and
mystical experiences are part of all religIOns.
Though mystical experiences are
common as a whole, they occur unbidden
to an individual perhaps once or twice in
a lifetime, if at all. According to a survey
(1987) by the National Opinion Research
Center in Chicago, 43 percent of adult
Americans say they have had some type
of mystical experience. In British polls
published in 1978 and 1979 in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 56
percent of churchgoers said they had had
such an experience. According to the British polls, mystical experiences were more
likely to occur to those who were older,
better educated, and regularly attended
church.
Psychologist and philosopher William James identified four general characteristics of mystical experiences:
1. Ineffability. Mystical states are more
like states of feeling than intellect,
subtly shaded and with fine nuances
that are difficult to convey in their
import and grandeur to another.
Consequently, much mystical literature is filled with paradoxes and
symbolism.
2. Noetic quality. Mystical experiences
are states of knowledge, insight,
awareness, revelation, and illumina-

384

tion beyond the grasp of the intellect.

There is awareness of unity with the
Absolute, of immortality of the soul,
of great truths. Time and space are
transcended.
3. Transiency. Mystical experiences are
fleeting in linear time, though they
seem to be eternal. Most last a few
seconds, some perhaps up to ten
minutes. It is rare to sustain a mystical state for more than a half-hour,
or perhaps one to two hours at best.
Eastern adepts are able to sustain
prolonged periods of samadhi, a
mystical state of one-pointed concentration; and some reportedly are able
to sustain the highest states of nirvana (satori in Zen) and even the
rarely attained nirodh. See Meditation.
4. Passivity. The individual feels swept
up and held by a superior power.
This may be accompanied by a sensation of separation from bodily
consciousness (see Out-of-body experience [OBE]); trance; or such
phenomena as prophetic speech, automatisms, mediumistic trance, healing powers, visions, and voices. Such
phenomena are regarded in Eastern
thought
as states of pseudoenlightenment: partway up to the
real thing, but not quite there.
James described the simplest form of
mystical experience as the deepened sense
of significance of a maxim or formula-a
sort of aha! that bursts upon a person
when something is seen in an entirely new
light. Compare to Inspiration. He also
classed dejii vu as a simple mystical experience. See Deja vu. Higher up on the
mystical ladder are the sudden awareness
of truths which burst upon one in dreamy
states and reveries, and the sudden
awareness of the presence of God or the
Absolute, and one's unity with it-the tat
tvam asi, "that thou art," realization described in the Upanishads. R. M. Bucke,

Mystical experiences

a Canadian doctor who studied mystical

experiences, called this latter state "cosmic consciousness," or consciousness of
the cosmos and of the life and order of
the universe.
A minority of mystical experiences
occur spontaneously. Typically, they occur when a person is alone and in a relaxed state of mind. Many things can
trigger a mystical experience: dreams,
words, phrases, music, art, sounds,
smells, daydreaming, the play of light
upon the land and sea, nature, or a neardeath experience. See Near-death experience (NDE).
Most
mystical expenences
are
sought through some form of inducement, usually as part of a spiritual or religious regimen. Techniques include hypnosis and autohypnosis, flotation tanks
and sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, fasting, chanting, dancing, breath
control, sexual rites, yoga, and meditation. In the Eastern religions, yoga and
meditation are the paths to enlightenment. (According to the Vedantists, spontaneous mystical experiences are impure;
only through yoga can one obtain pure
enlightenment.) See Meditation; Yoga;
Zen. The Sufis, the mystical sect of Islam,
practice meditation, prayer, and ecstatic
dance. Ecstatic dance also is used in shamanic cultures. See Shamanism; Sufism.
In the Christian tradition, mystical disciplines include prayer, contemplation, and
meditation. Mysticism in Western orthodoxy reached its peak with the great medieval mystics, and has largely been lost
in Protestantism. St. Teresa of Avila
wrote of the "orison" (meditation) of
union, in which the soul is fully awake as
regards to God.
The role of alcohol, anesthesia, and
psychoactive drugs as inducers of mystical experiences is controversial. It is
argued on one hand that drugs induce
true mystical experiences, and argued on
the other that they induce pseudoexperiences which have no lasting value.

Mystical experiences

See Drugs in mystical and psychic experiences.

As yet there are no discernible differences between spontaneous and induced mystical experiences, in terms of
their characteristics or their effects.

Physical Phenomena
Mystical experiences flood an individual with a sense of well-being, joy, and
optimism. The ecstasy can reach such
heights as to become almost unbearable
torment and pain, as seen in the writings
of the great Christian mystics. See Ecstasy. A number of physical phenomena
are characteristic of various mystical expenences.
Decrease in bodily functions is common especially in sustained mystical
states; breathing, pulse, circulation, and
brain waves slow, and one loses awareness of the body. In the state of rapture
described by Christian mystics, the body
seems to be on the verge of extinguishing.
St. Teresa of Avila wrote in The Interior
Castle that in the orison of union, the
soul "is utterly dead to the things of the
world and lives solely in God .... I do
not even know whether in this state she
has enough life left to breathe. It seems to
me she has not; or at least that if she does
breathe, she is unaware of it."
The rise of the powerful kundalini
energy, which in yogic literature resides
at the base of the spine and under certain
conditions of spiritual discipline rises to
the crown chakra, is reported crossculturally. Christian mystics, such as St.
Therese (1873-1897, not to be confused
with St. Teresa of Avila), sometimes experienced the heat, energy, spontaneous
body movements and pain characteristic
of a yogic kundalini awakening. The
same phenomenon is reported among the
!Kung bushmen of Africa, and in Sufism,
Taoism, Buddhism, and shamanism. In a
nonreligious context, kundalini awakening is called a "spiritual emergence" or

385

II~:'.

"spiritual emergency." See Kundalini;

Spiritual emergence.
Various mystical states are characterized by light, either exteriorized or internal, described as "illumination," "radiance," "lightning," "light of grace,"
and other terms. Within the Christian tradition, the classical mystical experience
involving light occurred to St. Paul while
on the road to Damascus. A brilliant light
from heaven blinded him for three days,
and he went without food and water.
When his sight was restored, Paul was
converted to Christianity. He ceased his
persecutions of Christians and worked to
spread the new religion. See Paul, St. In
the Islamic tradition, Muhammad, the
founder of Islam, was awakened one
night by an overpowering light, marking
the first revelation to him of the Koran.
See Muhammad.
Heat is a by-product of the enormous energy generated by some mystical
experiences, especially in kundalini awakenings. Taoism and Vajrayana Buddhism
have elaborate techniques for manipulating this heat. See David-Neel, Alexandra;
Milarepa. Richard Rolle, the "father of
English mysticism," experienced intense
heat that manifested physically; he associated it with a fire of burning love.
R. M. Bucke's initial mystical experience, which came in a moment of
dreamy, passive reverie, involved fire imagery, but Bucke did not disclose whether
he also felt heat. The experience, a vision
that lasted but a few seconds, occurred
spontaneously in 1872 when he was
thirty-five. It led him to investigate mystical experiences and write his classic
book, Cosmic Consciousness (1901).
Wrote Bucke:
All at once, without warning of any
kind, I found myself wrapped in a flamecolored cloud. For an instant I thought of
fire, an immense conflagration somewhere close by in that great city; the next,
I knew that the fire was within myself

386

Directly afterward there came upon me a

sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination impossible to describe. Among other things,
I did not merely come to believe, but I
saw that the universe is not composed of
dead matter but is, on the contrary, a living Presence; I became conscious in myself of eternal life....
In the very highest mystical states,
however, all physical, mental, and emotional sensations, all imagery, fall away.
A mystical experience often leads to
dramatic changes in one's ordinary consciousness and life-style. Most typically,
one renounces or loses interest in material
pursuits. See Mysticism.
As mentioned earlier, the Eastern
traditions discount and disregard the
physical phenomena associated with mystical experiences; however, they are esteemed within the Christian tradition.
Paranormal powers such as levitation, telepathy, clairvoyance, materializations,
and so on are called siddhis in yoga, and
are obstacles that must be overcome in
pursuit of true enlightenment. See Siddhis. On the other hand, Christian mystics have been revered for their levitations, bilocations, halos, odors of
sanctity, stigmata, and so on.

Science and the Mystical

Experience
Some scientists believe the mystical
experience is a physical phenomenon that
arises in the brain, and can be induced
with the proper stimulation of the temporallobes, which lie beneath the brain's
major hemispheres. Around the turn of
the twentieth century, a British doctor,
John Hughlings, noticed that epileptics
have different temporal lobes. He identified various temporal lobe traits, such as
the epileptics' seizures and dreamy states,
as well as deja vu, dissociation, alien-

Mystical experiences

ation, and jamais vu (in which familiar

surroundings seem strange). In 1933
American surgeon Wilder Penfield induced mystical-like phenomena in epileptics by stimulating their brains with electric currents. In the late 1970s and the
1980s, further relationships were established between the temporal lobes and
paranormal experiences, using electromagnetic stimulation. However, the temporal lobe model does not explain all
mystical experiences, and thus remains
controversial.
Mystical Experiences
Psychology

and

In Freudian psychology mystical experiences generally are dismissed as illusion. Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung saw them
as a liberation of the unconscious. Humanistic psychologist
Abraham
H.
Maslow called certain mystical experiences "peak experiences" and believed
they are essential to health and to selfactualization, the realization of one's fullest human potential. See Peak experiences. Transpersonal psychology explores
the mystical experience for its therapeutic
potential. See Psychology.
Sources: Richard Maurice Bucke. Cosmic
Consciousness.
1901. New York: E. P.
Dutton, 1969; Nona Coxhead. The Relevance of Bliss: A Contemporary Exploration of Mystic Experience. London: Wildwood House, 1985; William James. The
Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study
in Human Nature. 1902. London: Long-

mans, Green

& Co., 1911; Lee Sannella.

Experience. Lower Lake,

CA: Integral Publishing, 1987; Dennis
Stacy. "Transcending Science." Omni 11,
no. 3 (December 1988): 54-60+; John
White, ed. The Highest State of Consciousness. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books/
Doubleday, 1972; Joshua C. Whiting.
"Sources of Spontaneous Mystical Experience." The Journal of Religion and Psychical Research 10, no. 3 (July 1987):
148-157.
The Kundalini

Mysticism

Mysticism
The belief in or pursuit of unification
with the One or some other principle; the
immediate consciousness of God; or the
direct experience of religious truth. Mysticism is nearly universal and unites most
religions in the quest for the One. There
are different types of mysticism, and different understandings of what constitutes
mystical union. Mysticism is not confined
to monks and ascetics, but touches most
people at least once in life.
The term "mysticism" is derived
from the classical Greco-Roman mystery
cults. It may have come from myein,
which means to close the lips and eyes,
and refers to the sacred oath of the initiate, the mystes, to keep secret about the
inner workings of the religion. In Neoplatonism "mysticism" came to be associated with secrecy of any kind. The term
mystica appeared in the Christian treatise, Mystica Theologia, of an anonymous
Syrian Neoplatonist monk of the late fifth
or early sixth century, known pseudonymously as Dionysius the Areopagite. In
this treatise mysticism is seen as a secrecy
of the mind.
Despite the various approaches to
mysticism, there are some characteristics
common to mysticism in general. Philosopher W. T. Stace studied Roman Catholic, Protestant, ancient classical, Hindu,
and American agnostic mystical experiences and found seven common themes:
(1) a unifying vision and perception of
the One by the senses in and through
many objects; (2) the apprehension of the
One as an inner life; (3) an objective and
true sense of reality; (4) feelings of satisfaction, joy, and bliss; (5) a religious element that is a feeling of the holy and
sacred; (6) a paradoxical feeling; and (7)
inexpressible feelings.
Types of Mysticism
Mystics subscribe to one of two theories of Divine Reality: emanation and

387

immanence. In the emanation view, all

things in the universe are outflowing
from God. In the immanence view, the
universe is not projected from God, but is
immersed in God.
Mysticism can be either nonreligious
or religious. Nonreligious mysticism derives much of its experience and content
from Nature, though many religious mystics have found their way to God or the
Absolute through Nature. Nature mysticism sometimes is called pantheistic mysticism, in that God or the divine being is
in everything and everything is divine.
Not all transcendent experiences with
Nature are mystical, however, but may
simply be overwhelming joy or ecstasy. In
a mystical experience, the boundaries between subject and object disappear: one
becomes one with Nature as opposed to
having a heightened appreciation for it.
Religious mysticism falls into two
major groups: monistic and theistic. Monistic mysticism seeks unity and identity
with a universal principle. Theistic mysticism seeks unity, but not identity, with
God.
Perhaps the ultimate monistic mysticism is expressed in the Upanishads of India, in the concepts of "I am Brahman"
(the all-pervading principle) and tat tram
asi, "that thou art," meaning that the
soul is the eternal and Absolute Being.
Monistic mysticism also is found in T aoism, which seeks unity with Tao, the ineffable Way. Theistic mysticism, unity
with God, characterizes Christianity, Judaism (in the Kabbalah), and Islam (the
Sufi sect) and also is found in Hinduism.
See Hinduism; Kabbalah; Mysticism,
Christian; Sufism; Taoism.
Parallel to both theism and monism
is yoga, a mysticism of the soul, which
seeks nirvana, a state of ineffable peace
characterized by extinction of desires and
freedom from reincarnation, and which
subsists in God. The mystical goal of
Jainism also is nirvana, though Jainism
has no concepts of Supreme Being or Ab-

388

solute. The soul is eternal and so is the

universe, which passes through infinite
cosmic cycles. See Yoga.
There is disagreement as to whether
Buddhism is truly mystical. The Buddhist
goal of nirvana, described as "become
Brahman," is not a union of the soul with
the divine or an abstract principle. There
is no permanent ego in Buddhism, and
the existence of the soul is unclear. In nirvana there is no personal survival, no becoming of any kind; one is extinguished
in phenomenal existence. See Buddhism;
Meditation; Zen.
In Africa mysticism is found in ecstatic possession religions, in which mediums are possessed by, and become the
servant or property of, ancestral or divine
spirits. Such people become the "wife of
the god" and are bound in sacred marriage. They unite with the god in ecstatic
trance rituals, in which they assume the
behavior of the god or allow the god to
speak through them. These practices are
world-affirming and cannot be compared
to the pathological possession cases of
Western society.
Native American religions contain
concepts of both monotheism and polytheism. The Supreme Being, who in some
cases is unnamed because it is unknowable, is both the Creator and the sum
total of all deities, spirits, and creative
powers. Native American religions are diverse, and there is no one Native American mystical path. There are, however,
common fundamentals that underlie the
various approaches to mysticism.
Foremost is the Native American
view that the Earth is sacred, and that it
is a living, intelligent being with holy
powers. "Earth Mother," as the land is
often called, is treated with great respect.
Also holy are all phenomena associated
with the earth-its geographical features
and elements-as well as all life forms
upon it, and the heavens above it. Everything is animated with Spirit, a view similar to the kami of Shinto, and to the out-

Mysticism

look of other tribal societies. All of these

beings and phenomena, along with the
planet and the cosmos, ideally exist in
balance and harmony. It is the duty of
every creature to look after its daily business in a responsible fashion, which
maintains the balance and serves the
greater good. Failure to do so brings imbalance, which results in disease, illness,
and misfortune, not only to the offending
creature but to the Whole.
Native Americans feel a particular
kinship with animals, and in many respects regard them as superior peoples
because they were placed on Earth before
humans.
Native Americans do not draw the
distinctions between the sacred and secular as found in Western religion. The sacred is part of everyday life, accessible by
all, not a few selected holy persons. At an
early age, most Native Americans begin
to experience the supernatural, usually
through visions and dreams, and integrate it into daily life. What a Westerner
would term "psychic" or "paranormal"
is part of the Native American's ordinary
reality. Thus it is not remarkable to communicate with animals, the natural environment, or Supernatural Beings; see
spirits; or have precognitive or prophetic
dreams. Medicine men and women, who
. are endowed with greater than ordinary
powers, are able to use the supernatural
realms in ways to serve and help others,
particularly in healing. See Shamanism.
Mystical communion with the sacred
varies from group to group, even subgroup to subgroup, and includes dance,
song and chant, the sacred pipe, purifying
sweats (a preliminary for sacred undertakings), fasts, dreams, vision quests, and
occasional use of psychotropic drugs. As
in other cultures, the Native American
experience of the mystical takes place
within a framework of language, traditions, concepts, rituals, and interactions
developed over thousands of years, and
which reside in the racial collective un-

Mysticism

conscious. See Sacred pipe; Sweat; Vision

quest.

The Mystical Path

Theologian Rudolph Otto defined
mysticism more by method: the mysticism of introspection and the mysticism
of unifying vision. In introspection the
mystic rurns inward in contemplation
and meditation, withdrawing from the
external world, and finding within the
depths of the soul the One. In the unifying vision, which Otto also called the
Way of Unity, the mystic looks outward
to the world to find the One.
Evelyn Underhill, in her classic
study, Mysticism (1955), defined five psychological stages along the mystical path.
Not all may be experienced by anyone
mystic. The path itself is characterized by
a vacillation between states of intense
pleasure and intense pain. The five stages
are:
1. The Awakening of the Self to Consciousness of Divine Reality. Typically, this is a well-defined, often
sudden experience and is characterized by great joy.
2. The Purgation of the Self. The mystic, through discipline and/or mortification, attempts to rid himself or
herself of imperfections and material
desires, which are obstacles to unity.
3. Illumination. A happy state of apprehension of the Divine Presence, experienced in contemplation and meditation. It is not true union. Many
mystics never get beyond Illumination. Artists and highly creative people tend to have Illumination expenences.
4. The Purification of the Self. Also
called the "Dark Night of the Soul."
The mystic attempts total surrender
of Self, personal identity, and will to
the Divine, and is plunged into a
painful and unhappy state of the absence of the Divine Presence.

389

5. Union with the One. The mystic

achieves a permanent and transcendent level of reality.
In Eastern mysticism a still higher
stage is reabsorption of the individual
soul into the Infinite. The Sufis, too, consider such annihilation the only true attainment of God.

Phenomena of Mysticism
Mysticism invariably is accompanied
by phenomena such as visions, voices,
oracular dreams, paranormal powers
(clairvoyance, telepathy, psychokinesis,
bilocation, levitation, and so on), raptures, trances, and hyper-emotionalism.
Some argue that such phenomena must
be excluded from the mystical experience,
while others contend they are preliminary
and important to the mystical goal. In
the Eastern meditation and yoga disciplines such phenomena, called siddhis,
are distractions, obstacles, and pseudoenlightenment, which must be overcome
in order to achieve the true objective. See
Siddhis.

Sources: Paula Gunn Allen. "American Indian Mysticism." Shaman's Drum no. 14
(Mid-Fall 1988): 39-46; Joseph Epes
Brown. The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian. New York: Crossroad, 1987;
Fritjof Capra. The Tao of Physics. 2d ed.
New York: Bantam Books, 1984; Nona
Coxhead. The Relevance of Bliss: A Contemporary Exploration of Mystic Experience. London: Wildwood House, 1985; F.
C. Happold. Mysticism: A Study and an
Anthology. Rev. ed. Harmondsworth, Mid-

dlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1970; Ake

Hultkrantz. Native Religions of North
America. San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1987; William Johnston. The Inner Eye of
Love: Mysticism and Religion. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978; Geoffrey Parrinder. Mysticism in the World's Religions.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1976;
Samuel Umen. The World of the Mystic.
New York: Philosophical Library, 1988;
Evelyn Underhill. Mysticism. 1955. New
York: New American Library, 1974; Ken
Wilber, ed. Quantum Questions: Mystical
Writings of the World's

Mysticism,
Mysticism and Science
A great deal has been written, especially from a "New Age" perspective,
about the apparent parallels and common
worldview between modern physicsquantum and relativity-and the Eastern
mysticism of Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and Zen. It is argued that physics
and mysticism are complementary approaches to the same reality. Much controversy surrounds
these assertions
within the scientific community. The
founders and great theorists of modern
physics-who were mystical in their own
outlook, were acquainted with Eastern
philosophy, and advocated interdisciplinary communication-nonetheless
have
said modern physics neither support nor
refutes mysticism. The debate will continue as new theories are put forward.

390

Great Physicists.

Boston & London: New Science Library/

Shambhala, 1985.

Christian

Mysticism for followers of Christ and his

teachings is essentially a personal experience of, or at least an approach to, the
sacred in general, and to a presence of
God in particular, distinctively through,
with, and in Christ. Characteristically, it
takes the form of a sense of openness to
a union with God through Christ, although Christians do not all agree on the
nature(s) and person(s) of Christ. It normally includes frequent periods of (if not
the state of) intense prayer, meditation,
or contemplation.
Christian mysticism is best understood if the Christian person is seen as
one who believes, or professes, or is assumed to have active faith in Jesus and
the truth taught by him. More precisely,
the Christian mystic is ideally seen as one
who is fully incorporated into Christ,

Mysticism

bears true witness to the spirit of Christ,

and accepts the spiritual structure established by Christ, that is, his Mystical
Body, the church.
While not all Christian nonsecular
mystics lead an austere life, they do practice some degree of asceticism, which is
relative to many changing historical, political, or other factors. What was austere
for the desert monks of the early centuries, for example, may be very different
from the asceticism of cloistered monks
of today. Approaches to Christian mysticism have changed along with other theological issues, especially in the sixteenth
century, when Martin Luther broke from
Catholicism. Luther stressed "justification by grace, through faith," with the
Bible alone (and not also papal authority)
being the rule of faith. Luther also retained a belief in the Real Presence, not
just a symbolic representation, of Jesus in
the Sacrament of Communion. Roman
Catholic mysticism includes belief in the
Eucharist as the true Body and Blood of
Christ, under the appearance of bread
and wine.
The Christian mystical experience includes visions, such as of a sacred presence, not necessarily of God and/or
Christ himself. For example, visions of
saints and especially of Mary are docuJIlented in the various rites of the Roman
Catholic church and Eastern Orthodox
church. See Marian apparitions.
Catholic mysticism includes worship
of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, as well as formal liturgical and sacramental rites, most notably the Celebration of the Eucharist (the Mass). More
uniquely Catholic is a veneration of Mary
and many canonized saints, for whose intercession Catholics pray. See Mary.
Within Catholicism many religious orders
of men and women have distinctive approaches to mysticism, such as the strict
order of Trappists, who often practice silence. Another order, the Society of Mary
(Marianists), advocates a spirituality of

Mysticism, Christian

"filial piety" to Mary, that is, the son-like

love which they believe Christ had (and
has) for his mother.
The integration of Christian mysticism into various other expressions of
spirituality are as numerous as the cultures to which Christianity has spread
over two thousand years. The extremes
can be seen in Vodoun practices, where
the externals of certain rituals show the
direct influence of Christian liturgies and
practices, as well as in Santeria. Mythologist Joseph Campbell and other scholars
found in such universal influences "many
songs; one voice."
Scriptural

Foundation

Much of the theology of Christian

mysticism is rooted in interpretations of
the Old and New Testaments. In the Old
Testament, "seeing God" is exceptional
and can even mean death to the viewer
(Exodus 33:20); a person who survives
such a mystical experience does so by
special privilege, as it was with Jacob
(Genesis 32:31). Yet in the Psalms it is
the virtuous and upright who contemplate Yahweh's face (Psalm 11:7), such as
the Levite in exile, symbolizing the devout who does not yet see Yahweh. He
"thirsts for God" and asks '~when shall I
go to see the face of God?" (Psalm 42:2).
But the experience of seeing Yahweh is
sometimes kept secret and is not always
comprehensible, as with Daniel, the
Psalm writer who does not understand
what his vision means (Psalm 27:8). In
more modern times, it is not unusual for
those favored with visions not to understand their purpose or meaning, such as
those who have seen visions of the Virgin
Mary.
On the other hand, Yahweh promises Hosea that "I will speak to the
prophets, I will increase the visions ... "
(Hosea 12:10). Moreover, Yahweh commands Habakkuk to "write the vision
down, inscribe it on tablets to be easily

391

read ... " (Habakkuk 2:2). In the spirit of

this same passage from Habakkuk, which
says the vision is "eager for its own fulfillment," the Christian liturgical year
applies the passage to the expectation
of Christ's (second) coming commemorated during the annual Advent (preChristmas) season. Concerning Christ's
Second Coming, the mysticism of at least
one Christian denomination, the SeventhDay Adventists, includes a belief that it
will occur in the very near future. The
early Christians thought similarly.
This eagerness to see the face of God
is personified in the fundamental Christian mystique-the
desire for union in
Christ. This envisioning is expressed in
John: Speaking of himself as Son of God,
Christ says, "It is my Father's will that
whoever sees the Son and believes in him
shall have eternal life ... " (6:40).
Essential to the beliefs of Christian
mystics is the ultimate goal of the Beatific
Vision, in which they will see God "as he
is" (1 John 3:2). Even at its most intense,
the envisioning is itself already more than
a symbol about which Christ speaks (God
as a presence and reality), while alluding
to the time of the final vision of God: "I
shall no longer speak to you in metaphors" (John 16:25). This notion of
Christian mysticism is compatible with
the metaphors of the Hero's Journey to
his ultimate goal; in this sense the archetypical Hero certainly includes Christ and
each Christian.
The Book of Revelation (The Apocalypse) speaks of this ultimate mystical
state in symbols, such as the "heavenly
Jerusalem," which the visionary describes
in terms prophetic of planetary consciousness: "Then I saw a new heaven
and a new earth; the first heaven and the
first earth had disappeared now, and
there was no longer any sea" (21:1). The
sea here is considered the home of the
apocalyptical dragon and symbolizes evil
(Job 7 and 12), and will "dry up" and
become "a road for the redeemed to

392

cross" (Isaiah 51:9-10) as it did at the

Exodus. The misuse of nature seems to
cooperate only for a while, but such misuse turns in on its abusers. The "returning waters" overwhelmed the enemies of
the Chosen People so that "not a single
one of them was left" (Exodus 14:5-31).
An awareness of this rebirthing cycle contributes ecumenically to contemporary
planetary consciousness as it sees the returning of nature to its pristine state. The
mystical process is not only a cleansing,
but a rebirthing of creation. For Christians this New Creation is realized
through, with, and in Christ as Teilhard
de Char din's Omega Point. See Planetary
consciousness; Teilhard de Chardin,
Pierre.
As in other religions, Christian approaches to mysticism also include meditation, prayer, contemplation, public
worship (liturgy), and asceticism. Christianity likewise has also documented
saintly and/or heroic (not necessarily
martyred) individual mystics, as well as
false or even diabolical activity in each of
these areas; there are both legitimate and
illegitimate documentation of unusual experiences, including miracles, visions, and
other mystical phenomena. While some
faiths perceive the possibility of achieving
exceptional mystical experiences primarily, if not exclusively, through one's human efforts (such as by contemplation or
fasting), Christian mysticism involves
"good works" with dynamic interfacing
of the individual with Christ in the Mystical Body (spiritual Christian community). The latter doctrine, intrinsic to Christian mysticism, is developed by St. Paul
throughout his epistles.
In judging the authenticity of Christian mystical experiences, interdisciplinary approaches of science and by many
non-Christian faiths are employed, as
well as additional criteria such as the discernment of God's action through Christ
in individuals, the apparent union of the
individuals with Christ, and the reception

Mysticism, Christian

in Christ of unmerited grace. Alleged

mystical experiences, such as apparitions,
are scrutinized with intense caution, especially by the Catholic church.
Christian mysticism has played a vital role in both Western and Eastern cultures, most demonstrably in the arts.
Since the nineteenth-century discoveries in psychology and related disciplines, the study of mysticism has usually
included scientific scrutiny. The foundation for interdisciplinary study of Christian mysticism in the twentieth century
was laid by psychologist and philosopher
William James in his milestone study, The
Varieties of Religious

Experience

(1902).

Here James attempted to show empirically that dimensions of consciousness

exist beyond or beside the realm of everyday experience. See James, William.
Christian mysticism was also of special interest to psychiatrist Carl G. Jung,
who saw it as part of the collective unconscious. It continues to be investigated
by Jungian scholars.

Recent Trends
The popularity within Protestant
groups of proclaiming one's born-again
Christianity has spread within Catholicism. It is often accompanied by dramatic
public witnessing or personal Epiphany
("a showing forth" of Jesus to the Gentiles).
Since the Ecumenical Council Vatican II in the 1960s, ecumenism among
Christians and with other faiths has revived interest in all aspects of spirituality,
especially the mysticism leading to and
flowing from the Cosmic Christ about
which Teilhard de Chardin, Matthew
Fox, and others write.
Women theologians, philosophers,
and writers are also redefining the role of
women in Christian spirituality and mysticism from perspectives such as women's mysteries (birth-death-rebirth) and
the Great Mother/Mary archetype. See

Mythology

Creation spirituality; Goddess; Mary;

Mysteries; Mystical experiences; Mysticism; Prayer.
Sources: Mortimer J. Adler, ed. "Experience." Chapter 25, The Great Ideas: A Syntop icon of Great Books of the Western
World. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica,
1952; Saint Thomas Aquinas. Summa
Theologica. Part I, Q 112, A 5; Part III, Q
9, A 2; Part III Suppl., Q 92, A 1; Mary E.
Giles, ed. The Feminist Mystic: And Other
Essays on Women and Spirituality. New

York: Crossroad, 1989; F. C. Happold.

Mysticism:

A Study

and an Anthology.

Rev. ed. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1970; William

James. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study

in Human

Nature.

1902.

London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1911;

Bernard McGinn and John Meyendorff,
eds. Christian Spirituality I: Origins to the
Twelfth Century. New York: Crossroad,
1985; Robert L. Moore, ed. Carl Jung and
Christian Spirituality. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist
Press, 1988; Evelyn Underhill. Mysticism.
1955. New York: New American Library,
1974; Christin Lore Weber. Woman Christ.
San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987; Donald Wigal. A Presence of Love. New York:
Herder & Herder, 1969.

Mythology
Stories that explain the creation of the
cosmos; the reasons for the characteristics of the features of the Earth, the animals, plants, and human beings; supernatural traditions; and gods and culture
heroes. Myths (and fairy tales, which are
degenerated myths) hold the wisdom of a
culture. They reflect how the individual
relates to his or her culture and to the
universe; they are archetypal encounters
and comprise a language of the psyche.
Without myths, a society decays.
Myths come into consciousness as
revelations. The stories are reenacted
through ritual, which is a means of accessing the spiritual power of a myth.
An important figure in mythologies
is the culture hero, a human, animal, or

393

bird who gives a culture to its people.

Typically, the culture hero steals or liberates the sun or fire, masters the elements, and teaches people how to hunt,
grow food, make tools, and heal the sick.
He also teaches ceremonies and rites. After delivering the culture, the culture hero
often goes away into the west, from
whence he will return at some time in the
future, or when needed by his people. In
Native American mythologies, for example, the culture hero often is identified
with the Trickster, as well as Transformer
or Creator. In Native South American
mythologies, the culture hero usually is
the Creator.
Mythology has lost much of its importance in modern Western civilization,
which has evolved away from an orientation to Earth, spirit, and intuition to a
preoccupation with technology and control of nature and emotion. Myth is commonly regarded as a child's fantasy. By
losing touch with myth, however, modern society has lost its sense of wonder
and awe at the natural world and the
universe-perhaps
one reason for the
exploitation of the resources of the
planet, pollution of the environment, and
destruction of other living things in the
name of "progress." See Planetary consciousness.
The great minds of depth psychology, Sigmund Freud, Carl G. Jung, Alfred
Adler, and others took interest in mythology. Jung said myths are not invented but
are experienced. He said they were "original revelations of the preconscious
psyche, involuntary statements about
psychic happenings. Pathology is mirrored in myth; mythological motifs in unconscious fantasy are statements of the
psyche about itself.
Thanks in large part to the work of
Jung and the later contributions of mythologist Joseph Campbell and others, interest in mythology has revived in the
West. Campbell's seminal work, The
Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), pre-

394

sents a definitive study of the archetype

of all myth: a single hero and a single
journey-pattern, which emerges from behind many different versions.
In The Masks of God: Creative Mythology (1968), Campbell notes that mythology serves four basic functions: (1) to
bridge one's local consciousness with
transcendent, universal realms; (2) to
provide images with which to interpret
the relationship between local and universal consciousnesses; (3) to empower
moral order and reconcile one to one's
culture or environment; and (4) to "foster
the centering and unfolding of the individual in integrity" with oneself, one's environment, and the universe.
Campbell lamented the absence of
myth in modern Western culture, and
said culture is now changing too quickly
for things to become mythologized. He
advocated the study of comparative mythology, which would lead to an understanding of the experience and meaning
of life.
The effort to reconnect individuals
to mythology is called by some "personal
mythology," which refers to the inner infrastructure that guides an individual
through life on both conscious and unconscious levels. Personal mythology provides a means for organizing experience
and opening the individual to the mysterious, transcendent realms of the universe.
The term "personal mythology" was
popularized by psychologist David Feinstein, who, with psychologist Stanley
Krippner, has since the mid-1970s taught
thousands of individuals "to live more
mythically." Feinstein built upon the
term "personal myth," which was first
used in psychiatric literature in 1956 by
Ernst Kris to describe elements of the personality that influence whether or not
therapy has a lasting effect. According to
Krippner and Feinstein, humankind now
has greater capacity than at any other
time in history to construct personal my-

Mythology

thologies, which in turn can be used to

influence life patterns in a positive way,
by reconnecting the individual to the numinous. In Personal Mythology: The Psychology

of Your

Evolving

Self (1988),

they define five stages in a person's "evolution of consciousness," that is, one's
consciousness and the consciousness of
the culture in which one is embedded.
The stages are: (1) recognizing and defining a personal myth and knowing when it
is no longer an ally; (2) identifying an opposing myth; (3) conceiving a unifying
mythic vision from the rwo opposing
myths; (4) moving from vision to commitment by testing insights; and (5)
weaving the new mythology into daily
life.
When preparing to present the initial
steps in this process, the authors call
upon rwo key concepts of Joseph Campbell's from The Hero with a Thousand
Faces: "Myth is the secret opening
through which the inexhaustible energies
of the cosmos pour into human cultural
manifestations," and "It has always been
known the prime functions of mythology
and rite supply the symbols that move the
human spirit forward."
Other self-help approaches to personal mythology involve becoming acquainted with various archetypes, such as
the Magician, Sage, Wanderer, Child,
Mother, and so on, to determine what

Mythology

role they play in one's life. The influence

of archetypes changes as one goes
through different life stages. See Archetypes; Dreams; Psychology; Ritual.
Sources: Joseph Campbell. The Inner
Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth
and as Religion. San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1988; Joseph Campbell. The Hero
with a Thousand Faces. 1949. New York:

World Publishing, 1970; Joseph Campbell,

ed. Myth, Dreams and Religion. Dallas:
Spring Publications, 1970; Joseph Campbell. The Masks of God: Creative Mythology. Vol. 4. New York: Viking, 1969; Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers. The
Power of Myth. New York: Doubleday,
1988; "Thus Spake Zoroaster: An Interview with Joseph Campbell." Omni (December 1988): 143-44; "The Value and
Uses of Mythology." Sarah Lawrence
(Summer 1986); David Feinstein and Stanley Krippner. Personal Mythology: The
Psychology of Your Evolving Self. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1988; Maria
Leach, ed. and Jerome Fried, assoc. ed.
Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of
Folklore, Mythology,
and Legend. San

Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979; Carol

Pearson. The Hero Within: Six Archetypes
We Live By. New York: Harper & Row,
1986; Andrew Samuels, Bani Shorter, and
Fred Plaut. A Critical Dictionary of Jungian
Analysis. London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1986.

395

N
Native American mysticism
See Mysticism.

Nature spirits
Various types of beings or spirits said to
dwell in the nature kingdom; they possess
supernatural powers and are usually invisible to humans, save those with clairvoyant sight. Belief in the existence of nature spirits is ancient and universal and
persists in animistic religions. Nature
spirits come in countless types, shapes,
sizes, and dispositions. Some are regarded
as benevolent toward humans, while others are mischievous and enjoy playing
tricks on them, or are malevolent and
seek to harm them. Some are human-like
in appearance, while others assume
shapes of animals, half-human halfanimals, or fabulous-looking beings.
Nature spirits usually are attached to
a thing or place in nature, such as trees,
rivers, plants, bogs, mountains, minerals,
and so on. For example, in China there
are nature spirits that watch over rice,
silk, roads, gateways, and the like. The
Shinto religion of Japan includes worship
of nature, nature forces, and nature spirits. The ancient Greeks and Romans also
worshiped nature spirits, who inhabited
every glen and pool and even the air.
Elementals, a well-known type of nature spirit, are a lo\ver order of spirit beings that exists as the life force of all

396

things in nature: minerals, plants, and animals; the four elements of earth, air, fire,
and water; the planets, stars, and signs of
the zodiac; and hours of the day and
night. They are ruled by archangels, and
are generally viewed as benevolent creatures who maintain the harmony of nature.
The Neoplatonic Greeks (c. third
century A.D.) grouped elementals according to the four elements of life. Earth elementals are gnomes, ruled by the angel
Ariel; air elementals are sylphs, ruled by
Cherub; water elementals are undines,
ruled by Tharsis; and fire elementals are
salamanders, ruled by Seraph. In the fifth
century, Proclus added a fifth group that
lives beneath the ground; and in the eleventh century, Psellus added a sixth group,
the lucifugum, which means "fly-thelight." Interest in elementals in the four
cardinal groups was revived in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, when alchemists and magicians sought to control the
forces of nature and the universe.
Elementals also include elves, who
live in the woods and along the seashore,
and household spirits such as brownies,
goblins, bogIes, and kobolds. Fairies are
sometimes included within the elemental
category, as are mannikins, which are
male fairies who also have attributes of
elves, gnomes, and brownies. In the lore
of many Native North American tribes,
water babies, nature spirits in small human form, inhabit lakes, streams, springs,

Native American mysticism

and other bodies of water. Water babies

are not malicious, but are wont to play
tricks upon humans and are feared. Other
types of "little people," as some are
called, inhabit the forests and mountains;
some possess powerful medicine, which
they may bestow upon humans in times
of need.
Elementals appear to clairvoyants in
forms that can be recognized easily by
humans. Many are said to wear clothing
and jewelry. Gnomes appear as dwarfish
humans who live in caves and the mountains. Sylphs appear as butterflies, undines as waves, and salamanders as
lizard-like creatures who frolic in flames.
British Spiritualist Grace Cooke said elementals enjoy human company, can understand human speech, and respond to
music. They have their own karmic evolutions, progressing toward higher forms
of life.
British medium Geraldine Cummins
channeled information about elementals,
purportedly from the deceased Frederic
W. H. Myers, one of the founders of the
Society for Psychical Research in London.
In automatic writing "Myers" described
elementals as the essence that emanates
from forms of life, such as trees and
plants, and which coalesces into a form
perceived by the human mind as a sprite.
Practitioners of magic purportedly
command elementals to perform tasks.
Some elementals are said to be deceitful and hateful of humans, and delight
in causing accidents and tragedies. These
entities usually are associated with certain kinds of ritual magic, and may be
natural or artificial. They may be dispatched on missions of psychic attack.
Those who practice magic say that such
elementals, when summoned, attach
themselves to the human aura, and are
extremely difficult to control. Unless they
are properly dismissed when no longer
needed, they drain energy from the aura.
Artificially created elementals are most
commonly called thought-forms.
See

Nazca

lines

Deva; Fairies; Psychic attack; Thoughtform.

Sources: June G. Bletzer. The Donning International Encyclopedic Psychic Dictionary. Norfolk, VA: The Donning Co.,
1986; Katherine Briggs. The Vanishing
People: Fairy Lore and Legends. New

York: Pantheon Books, 1978; Richard

Cavendish. The Black Arts. New York:
Perigee Books, 1967; Grace Cooke. The Illumined Ones. New Lands, England: White
Eagle Publishing Trust, 1966; Geraldine
Cummins. Beyond Human Personality.
London: Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1935;
Manly P. Hall. Paracelsus: His Mystical
and Medical Philosophy. Los Angeles: The
Philosophical Research Society, 1964; Geoffrey Hodson. Fairies at Work and Play.
1925. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1982; Maria Leach, ed., and
Jerome Fried, assoc. ed. Funk & Wagnalls
Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend. San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1979; The New Age Catalogue. New

York: Doubleday/Dolphin, 1988; Kathryn

Paulsen. The Complete Book of Magic and
Witchcraft. New York: New American Library, 1970; Rudolf Steiner. The Influence
of Spiritual Beings Upon Man. Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1961;
Doreen Valiente. An ABC of Witchcraft
Past and Present. Amended ed. Custer,
WA: Phoenix Publishing, 1986.

Naturopathy
See Behavioral medicine.

Nazca lines
Giant lines, geometric figures, and human
and animal drawings on the desert mesa
close to the village of Nazca and near the
Ingenio Valley, Peru. The purpose of the
markings is not known for certain. Theories advanced propose that they had astronomical functions, or once marked an
airfield for the landing of ancient extraterrestrials and their spacecraft. Research
in the 1980s suggests that the lines were

397

integral to ancient religious ceremonies

honoring mountain gods associated with
the weather, forces of nature, and fertility, and possibly with out-of-body trips
taken by Indian priests who ingested hallucinogens in sacred rites.
The lines are of various lengths and
run parallel or intersect over an area of
more than forty miles in length and five
to ten miles in width. Some are geometric
shapes, while others are humans, animals, reptiles, birds, whales, and insects.
Some are crisscrossed by straight lines.
The figures and lines appear to have been
formed by pushing aside the top crust of
pampa to expose the lighter yellow soil
beneath; they can only be seen clearly
from the air. The lines are extremely fragile and have been damaged by road construction and vehicles, and by tourists
who began flocking to see them in the
1970s following the popularization of the
"ancient astronaut" theory.
The Nazca lines are believed to have
been created between 500 B.C. and A.D.
500 during the Nazca culture, which preceded the Incas. Some researchers believe
the lines are newer, dating to 1000. It is
possible that the Incas may have used or
elaborated upon Nazca-built lines. Neither the Nazcas nor the Incas left behind
written records to explain the lines, and
Spanish conquerors made but a few references to them in their writings. Local
inhabitants call them "Inca roads." They
first received archaeological attention in
1926.
The theory that the lines were meant
for astronomical purposes was first proposed in the 1940s by Paul Kosok, an
American archaeologist, who was supported by Maria Reiche, a German mathematician. Both believed that the lines
marked the positions of the sun, moon,
planets, and stars for agricultural purposes. Many lines radiate from centers located on little hillocks, some of which
contain ruins of small stone structures
that could have served as observation

398

points or altars. However, the astronomical theory was discredited in 1968 by

Gerald S. Hawkins, English astronomer,
who used the same computer analysis he
had applied to Stonehenge to test the
Nazca lines. See Stonehenge. Hawkins
found too few celestial alignments to support the astronomical theory.
At about the same time, author Erich
Von Daniken theorized the lines were created by extraterrestrials to guide the landings of their spacecraft. He suggested the
local inhabitants imitated the markings to
encourage the "space gods" to return. See
Extraterrestrial encounters.
In the 1980s researchers such as anthropologist Johan Reinhard, archaeologist Josue Lancho, and science journalist
Evan Hadingham saw possible connections between the Nazca lines and underground canals in the area, and similarities
with religious pictographs drawn on soil
in Chile and Bolivia. They theorize that
some of the figures represent animal "sky
gods" that were seen in the stars, or
served functions in ancient rites to worship the mountain gods who still are believed to control rain, and therefore fertility and prosperity. Rites to petition the
mountain gods continue to be performed
in Bolivia, for example, by villagers who
walk straight-line paths to mountain
summits.
The ingestion of powerful hallucinogens such as datura and the San Pedro
cactus continues to be part of sacred rites
in the Andean cultures. It is theorized
that the Nazca lines were drawn to represent what ancient shamans saw during
their out-of-body, psychedelic trips, and
to help them connect with their spirit
helpers, who assumed animal shapes. See
Drugs in mystical and psychic experiences; Shamanism.
Sources: William R. Corliss, ed. Ancient
Man: A Handbook of Puzzling Artifacts.

Glen Arm, MD: The Sourcebook Project,

1978; Erich Von Daniken. 1968. Gods
from Outer Space. New York: Bantam

Nazca

lines

Books, 1972; Evan Hadingham. Lines to

the Mountain Gods: Nazca and the Mysteries of Peru. New York: Random House,
1987; Gerald S. Hawkins. Beyond Stonehenge. New York: Harper & Row, 1973;
Jennifer Westwood, ed. The Atlas of Mysterious Places. New York: Weidenfeld &

Nicholson, 1987.

Near-death

experience (NDE)

Term coined in the 1970s by the American physician Raymond Moody to describe the mystical-like phenomena experienced by individuals who appear to die
and then return to life, or who come close
to death. Until the 1975 publication of
Moody's landmark book, Life After Life,
few people would talk openly about an
NDE experience. By 1982, however, a
Gallup poll revealed that some 8 million
adult Americans claimed to have had an
NDE.
Moody, along with other NDE researchers, including Kenneth Ring, a psychologist and founding member of the International Association of Near-Death
Studies at the University of Connecticut,
identified several traits common to
NDEs, although the experiences themselves are unique to each individual. In an
NDE people generally experience one or
more of the following phenomena in this
sequence: a sense of being dead, or an
out-of-body experience in which they feel
themselves floating above their bodies,
looking down; cessation of pain and a
feeling of bliss or peacefulness; traveling
down a dark tunnel toward a light at the
end; meeting nonphysical beings who
glow, many of whom are dead friends
and relatives; coming in contact with a
guide or Supreme Being who takes them
on a life review, during which their entire
lives are put into perspective without rendering any negative judgments about past
acts; and finally, a reluctant return to life.
Despite the numbers of people who
claim to have had an NDE, the experience has not been scientifically proved.

Near-death

experience

(NDE)

All that is known about the phenomenon

is based on anecdotal material.
Skeptics believe the NDE is a dream,
or only a hallucination brought about by
a lack of oxygen, the release of endorphins (the body's own pain-killers), or increased levels of carbon dioxide in the
blood. Ronald K. Siegel, a researcher at
the University of California at Los Angeles school of medicine, reportedly reproduced NDE-type phenomena in laboratory experiments by administering LSD
and other drugs. See Drugs in mystical
and psychic experiences. NDE researchers say there is no evidence supporting
drugs as a cause, and say other druginduced experiences may parallel an NDE
but are not the same thing. The researchers have argued that such explanations ignore the fact that many clinically dead
individuals are able to give elaborate accounts of their resuscitations or report
conversations they heard in other parts of
the hospital while apparently out of their
bodies. In one recollection-offered
as
proof against oxygen deprivation as the
cause of an NDE vision-psychotherapist
Michael Sabom told of a patient who,
while out of body, watched his physician
perform a blood test that revealed both
high oxygen and low carbon dioxide.
Almost all reported NDEs are described as positive experiences. Fewer
than 3 percent of the experiences are described as negative or unpleasant. The
NDE is not limited to religious or "good"
people. Many who have NDEs do become more spiritual or develop a belief in
some type of God after their return from
death. Most say they lose their fear of
death and begin believing in an afterlife.
Almost all discover a new and positive
purpose for their lives, finding meaning it
previously lacked. In some cases the NDE
leaves individuals with heightened intuitive or psychic abilities, including precognition, clairvoyance, and telepathy.
Because the NDE is so profound,
some individuals have difficulties adjust-

399

ing after their return to their lives. In her

study of the aftereffects of the NDE,
Coming Back to Life (1988), author P.
M. H. Atwater found that near-death survivors identified these as their most common negative reactions: anger, because
they had to return to life; guilt, for not
being sorry about leaving; disappointment, because once again they were back
in their bodies; dumbfoundedness and inability to talk about their experience (or
fear of talking about it); and depression
at the realization that they had to resume
their lives.
On the positive side, survivors offered these reactions: ecstasy at the wonder of their experience; thrill because of
what they were able to experience; gratitude for what had happened to them;
awe and lack of words to describe what
happened; evangelism in wanting to tell
others why they shouldn't fear death; and
humility at the overwhelming nature of
their experience.
According to research by Ring and
colleagues, some individuals may be more
prone to NDEs than others due to factors
in their psychological makeup. Such factors include abuse, neglect, and dissociation experienced in childhood. NDEprone personalities are not necessarily
more likely to come close to death, but if
they do they are more likely to experience
NDE phenomena than other individuals.
See Encounter phenomenon.
Ring, philosopher Michael Grosso,
and others have theorized that the NDE
may be a form of enlightenment or "gateway to a higher consciousness," and
could have a transformative effect on the
entire planet if enough people have similar experiences. Ring further has suggested that one does not have to die in
order to experience similar enlightenment, or at least to assimilate the lessons
of an NDE.
In a theological variation on that
view, Carol Zaleski, a religion lecturer at
Harvard, published a 1987 study, Other-

400

that compared stories of

"otherworld visions and journeys" found
in medieval Christian literature to modern near-death accounts. She argues that
the modern NDE stories, like their medieval counterparts, provide a way for individuals to incorporate a "religious
sense of the cosmos" into their scientific!
secular understanding. Putting aside the
question of validity, Zaleski adds that the
near-death testimony is "one way in
which the religious imagination mediates
the search for ultimate truth." Zaleski
also notes that the modern NDE has its
historical roots in the earliest myths that
told of the hero or shaman and even "ordinary mortal" who passes through the
gates of death only to return with a lesson for the living. See Mysticism; Out-ofbody experience (OBE). Compare to
Deathbed visions.
world Journeys,

Sources: P. M. H. Atwater. Coming Back

to Life. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1988;

Amy Sunshine Genova. "The Near-Death

Experience." McCall's (February 1988):
103-6; Michael Grosso. The Final Choice:
Playing the Survival Game. Walpole, NH:
Stillpoint Publishing, 1985; Raymond A.
Moody, Jr., M.D. Life After Life. New
York: Bantam Books, 1975; Raymond A.
Moody, Jr., M.D. Reflections on Life After
Life. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books,
1977; Raymond A. Moody, Jr., M.D. The
Light Beyond. New York: Bantam Books,
1988; Kenneth Ring. Life at Death: A Scientific Investigation of the Near-Death Experience. New York: Coward, McCann &
Geoghegan, 1980; Kenneth Ring. Heading
Toward Omega. New York: William Mor-

row, 1984; Kenneth Ring and Christopher

J. Rosing. "The Omega Project: An Empirical Study of the NDE-Prone Personality."
Journal of Near-Death Studies 8, no. 4
(Summer 1990): 211-40; Stephen Sabcim.
"Otherworld Journeys" (Review). Journal
of Near-Death Studies 6, no. 4 (Summer
1988): 258-63; Carol Zaleski. Otherworld
Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times. New

York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Near-death

experience

(NDE)

Neo-Paganism
An eclectic mO,dern movement primarily
concerned with revived and reconstructed
pre-Christian nature religions and mystery traditions, As a movement it dates
from about the 1960s, drawing its base
from a wide spectrum of individuals interested in the occult revival, environmentalism, mythology, spiritual awareness, and comparative religions,
Neo-Paganism is loosely organized
with no central authority, and is interpreted on a highly individualistic and personal basis; it is a religion, a philosophy,
and a way of life, There are various neoPagan groups and churches, most of
which are in the United States, England,
and Canada, and also in Australia and
Europe; but it is probable that the majority of neo-Pagans-or Pagans, as some
prefer-practice
their religion on a solitary basis. For some, being a "solitary" is
necessary to protect their privacy and
jobs, as neo-Paganism often is falsely associated with Devil-worship cults. Many
neo-Pagans also are Witches.
The term "pagan" comes from the
Latin paganus, which means "country
dweller," and was applied in previous
centuries to those who still believed in
pre-Christian deities. The isolated country dwellers were among the last to be
converted to Christianity.
The first neo-Pagan organization in
the United States was Fereferia, which began in 1959 as the Fellowship of Hesperides and was incorporated as Fereferia
in California in 1967. Its founder was
Fred Adams, then a graduate student at
Los Angeles State College. Fereferia,
which comes from Latin for "wilderness
festival," was a Goddess-and-Nature system that preached an abandonment of
technology and a return to a peaceful,
loosely organized vegetarian society, a
utopia as envisioned by Adams. Fereferia
is still in existence with a small following.
In the United States, two organiza-

Neo- Paganism

tions that most influenced the early development and spread of neo-Paganism
were Pagan Way and the Church of All
Worlds. See Church of All Worlds. Pagan
Way emerged in 1970, the product of
an international collaboration between
persons in America and Britain who also
were involved in the reconstruction of
Witchcraft as a religion. Pagan Way was
organized in groves, which grew quickly
and thrived during the 1970s. No central organization was ever established,
and by 1980 Pagan Way evolved into
new groups. Pagan Way rituals, written
largely by Ed Fitch, are in the public domain and continue to be practiced.
Neo-Pagan networking is fulfilled
primarily by Circle Sanctuary, established
in 1974 near Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, by
Selena Fox, Jim Alan, and others. It is
now run by Fox and her husband, Dennis
Carpenter. In addition to networking,
Circle offers counseling services and neoPagan and Wiccan training programs.
In Britain the Pagan Front was established in 1971 by members of the four
branches of the Old Religion, or Witchcraft. It later changed its name to Pagan
Federation, and remains active out of
London headquarters. It espouses three
principles: (1) love for and kinship with
Nature; (2) adherence to the Pagan Ethic,
"Do what you will but harm no thing";
and (3) a belief in reincarnation.

Beliefs, Philosophies, and Rites

Although neo-Paganism takes many
forms, it has three general principles:
polytheism, pantheism, and animism.
However, not all neo-Pagans believe in all
three principles. Generally, neo-Pagans
view creation as an unbroken and interconnected whole, and hold all life equally
sacred. The Divine Force has numerous
personifications, but most revered is
Goddess in her many aspects. Also recognized and worshiped is the Horned

401

God (not to be confused with the Devil)

in various aspects. The various gods and
goddesses are more than deities, they are
also archetypes of the collective unconscious. (As Christianity supplanted paganism, pagan deities all came to be associated with the Devil. Neo-Pagans do
not worship the Devil, nor do they practice or condone blood sacrifice.)
Most neo-Pagans believe in reincarnation and follow the ethic as stated previously. The development of psychic and
magical skills is integral to most faiths.
Religious holidays are eight traditional seasonal holidays, also observed by
Witches as sabbats. They include the winter and summer solstices and spring and
fall equinoxes, as well as the agrarian!
pastoral holidays of Imbolc (also Imbolg), February 2; Beltane (also Bealtaine, Walpurgisnacht), April 30/May 1;
Lughnasadh (also Lammas), July 31/
August 1; and Samhain, October 31/
November 1. The sabbats celebrate the
wheel of birth-death-rebirth, made possible by the union of Goddess and Horned
God. Great outdoor festivals are organized on private land around the sabbats;
some are attended by hundreds of people.
Neo-Pagan rituals are patterned on
pre-Christian fertility, ecstatic, and mystery traditions. The mysteries of the Descent of Goddess to the Underworld,
from earlier worship of Demeter and
Kore, Inanna, and Ishtar, are often reenacted.
Neo-Pagan liturgies are constantly
freshened with new material, and neoPagans value this creative right to shape
their own worship. When possible, rites
are conducted outdoors, and involve
chanting, drumming, and dancing to
achieve an ecstatic state. The use of alcohol or other drugs in rites is an individual
matter. Some rites involve a trance channeling of Goddess or the Horned God,
who is "drawn down" to speak through
a high priestess or high priest or other
designate. Many neo-Pagans, like many

402

Witches, conduct their rituals in the nude

("skyclad") in order to achieve a closer
communion with nature.
Some neo-Pagans have looked beyond pre-Christian Western religions and
have integrated into their faiths elements
of Native American religions, Eastern religions, shamanic practices, and African
and Latin religions.
Because of neo-Paganism's emphasis
on the fertility cycles of nature, neoPagans generally have liberal attitudes toward sex, believing it should be celebrated and enjoyed, not repressed. Actual
sexual rites to reenact the GoddessHorned God union are less common than
in the earlier days of neo-Paganism, reflecting the overall trends toward conservative sexual behavior. Most sexual
rites now are performed symbolically.

Social Responsibilities
Because of their aversion to centralized authority, and the need for many to
remain private about their religion, neoPagans have not organized on a great
scale for social causes. However, many
individuals, and some churches and
groups, work for environmentalism and
animal welfare, against nuclear weapons
and nuclear energy, and for various charitable causes. Of particular interest to
some neo-Pagans is child abuse, especially ritual child abuse, practiced by
some satanic groups and often blamed on
neo-Pagans and Witches.
In the mid-1980s, neo-Pagans began
to recognize the need to provide social
services for their own. The chief champion of this has been P. E. 1. (Isaac) Bonewits, Archdruid of Ar nDraiocht Fein
("Our Own Druidism"), a neo-Pagan
group based on reconstructed Druidic
rites. See Mysteries; Witchcraft.
Sources: Margot Adler. Drawing Down the
Moon. Rev. ed. Boston: Beacon Press,
1986; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The Ency-

Neo-Paganism

clopedia of Witches and Witchcraft. New

York: Facts On File, 1989.

N eo-Pentecostalism
See Charismatic renewal.

New Age
Controversial term applied to a spiritual
and social movement encompassing a
broad range of interests in religion, philosophy, mysticism, health, psychology,
parapsychology, ecology, and the occult.
It is virtually impossible to define precisely what constitutes "New Age," as no
two opinions agree; and much of what is
called "New Age" is not new, but a renewed cycle of interest and rediscovery.
The term "New Age" has replaced the
"Age of Aquarius" label used in the
1960s.
"New Age" has been used in the
past, such as for the names of various periodicals. These include the Freemasons'
journal, New Age, christened in 1914;
and a London weekly newspaper, The
New Age, founded before World War I
and which featured articles on social, political, economic, spiritual, and psychological issues.
The New Age has no organization
and no central leaders, though there are
networks of like-minded individuals, and
various people are widely regarded as
spokespersons of New Age thought.
There is no organized agenda. New Age
beliefs and activities are highly individual
and eclectic, and essentially are part of a
striving to be whole: the individuation
process described by psychiatrist Carl G.
Jung, or the self-actualization described
by humanistic psychologist Abraham H.
Maslow. See Psychology. There is a general interest in pursuing a sadhana, a spiritual path, toward self-realization; in
transforming the world through spiritual
consciousness that unifies all religions;
and in looking after planetary concerns.

New Age

The New Age is largely a phenomenon of the industrialized West, with the
greatest activity taking place in the alchemical crucible of the United States,
where it is the latest expression in a mystical and occult tradition that extends
back to the founding of the nation. J.
Gordon Melton, an American Methodist
minister, church historian, and scholar of
nonconventional religions, dates the approximate beginning of the New Age to
1971, when it was first articulated. Small
groups in the 1960s, outgrowths of the
beatnik and hippie movements, had begun to call themselves "new age," but it
was not until the 1970s that New Age
networks, organizations, periodicals, and
publications emerged.
David Spangler, one of the most eloquent observers of the essence of the
New Age, sees it as "a metaphor for being in the world in a manner that opens
us to the presence of God-the presence
of love and possibility-in the midst of
our ordinariness."
Spangler's books, Revelation: The
Birth of a New Age (1976) and Emergence: The Rebirth of the Sacred (1984),
are among the best presentations of New
Age ideals. Another is Marilyn Ferguson's The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980;
1988). However, Ferguson's accurate observations that New Age proponents are
everywhere in all levels of society, plus
her unfortunate choice of the word "conspiracy," have been seized upon by some
fundamentalist anti-New Age forces as
evidence of a massive, anti-Christian
New Age plot to dominate the world.
Among the concepts that stand out
in New Age thought are that one creates
one's own reality; that divinity exists
within; and that there is a need for renewed recognition of the feminine principle and the use of "feminine" traits
such as intuition.
New Age thought is not new in and
of itself, but new expressions of eternal
laws of the universe, mind, and heart. In

403

The New Religions (1970; 1984), Jacob

Needleman observes that the modern
spiritual questing has to do with "the formation of something that is authentically
one's own I, one's own source, the source
of the truly human within the self and
within the community." The "one's own
source," says Needleman,
can never be classified as either ancient or
modern, as either thought or feeling, as
either psychological, spiritual, or even religious in its customary sense. It is always
new, but not necessarily novel or
innovative-though
it often first appears
that way. We are speaking here of the
appearance within man and within the
life of humanity of something entirely
new and which yet, when it appears, is
seen to obey fundamental, eternal laws.
The New Age has found the greatest
growth in the United States for several
reasons. The very essence of America as
the melting pot of the world has given it
a long tradition of absorbing and syncretizing the diverse elements of other cultures, including their religions. Asian immigrants, some of whom have come to
America specifically to spread Eastern religions, have found receptive audiences,
especially since the 1960s. The nation's
materialism also makes it ripe for transformational change. In the late nineteenth
century, French statesman and author Alexis de Tocqueville as much as predicted the
New Age with his observations on the coexistence in America of materialism and a
strong religious spirit. "If ever the faculties of the great majority of mankind
were exclusively bent upon the pursuit of
material objects, it might be anticipated
that an amazing reaction would take
place in the souls of some," de Toqueville
said in Democracy in America. "I should
be surprised if mysticism did not soon
make some advance among a people
solely engaged in promoting their own
worldly welfare."

404

The New Age has had ample precedents. In fact, as scientist and philosopher
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin observed in
The Phenomenon of Man (1955), humankind has in every age of history declared itself to be at a turning point.
While this is in a sense true because we
advance in an upward spiral, Teilhard
said, "There are moments when this impression of transformation becomes accentuated and is thus particularly justified."
The foundation for the New Age in
America was laid in the birth of the nation, many of whose leaders were steeped
in Masonic and Rosicrucian mystical
thought, and were influenced by Confucian philosophy. "A New Order of the
Ages Begins," proclaims the reverse side
of the Great Seal of the United States. Democracy and the individual's right to selfdirection in the pursuit of life, liberty,
and happiness helped to foster a culture
more open to innovation and change than
any other culture before it. In the early
and mid-nineteenth century, the Transcendentalists became acquainted with
Eastern religions and philosophies. They
espoused a philosophy that emphasized
intuition as well as intellect and, contrary
to the prevailing scientific views, a living,
evolutionary universe. Transcendentalism
in turn influenced the subsequent movements of Theosophy, which represented
the first broad effort to disseminate Eastern teachings in the West; Spiritualism;
mental healing; Christian Science; and
New Thought, the latter of which presented a synthesis of unorthodox medicine, religion, and psychology.
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the number of alternative religious
groups began growing in the United
States, and accelerated following World
War II. In 1965 immigration restrictions
on Asians were revised to be comparable
to quotas for Europeans, which brought a
wave of Asians to the country. The social
and political unrest of the 1960s offered

New Age

a fertile ground for Eastern religions to

expand
beyond their own ethnic
communities-primarily
to an audience
of single, upwardly mobile urban adults.
Other influences were the experimentation with psychedelics as a means to
higher states of consciousness, and the
development of humanistic psychology.
In the mid-1980s, actress Shirley MacLaine was instrumental in bringing the
New Age to the mainstream masses with
her public accounts of her own spiritual
awakening. For many MacLaine's frank
confessions about beliefs in reincarnation
and extraterrestrials made acceptable the
open exploration of many topics.
New Age activity by no means has
been limited to America. The environmental consciousness that arose in the
1960s, for example, and which led to the
political activism of the Greens in Europe
(and to a lesser extent in North America),
may be seen as part of the New Age. In
Britain one of the leading figures in New
Age thought is Sir George Trevelyan, who
in 1971 founded the Wrekin Trust in
West Malvern, Worcestershire.
The
Wrekin Trust is an educational charity
"concerned with promoting awareness
and study of the spiritual principles that
operate through us and the universe"; it
seeks to combine ageless wisdom with
modern science and psychology to present a holistic worldview. The Trust is
based on the medieval concept of the university, to find methods and systems of
knowledge leading to union with the
One.
The present search for the spiritual
has continued to focus on the Eastern religions and philosophies. Though the
deep, mystical cores of Judaism and
Christianity are similar to the religions of
the East, their popular practice has lost
elements individuals appear to need, and
which they find in Eastern thought: for
example, the presence of the cosmos, the
sacramental universe, in religious life (the
Eastern Orthodox church has been the

New Age

only branch of Christianity to retain this

element). The universe of the East is alive
and interconnected, not dead and mechanical. Eastern religions offer different
concepts of the Absolute (see Mysticism).
For those individuals who are disillusioned with material pursuits, Eastern
thought shows that satisfaction of desire
does not bring happiness, and that desire
must be transformed through rigorous
exercises (yoga and meditation). Such exercises are no longer a part of Western
religions, save in the monasteries or in a
few religious communities such as the
Hasidim.
While interest in Eastern religions
has increased, Catholicism, the mainline
Protestant denominations of Christianity,
and Judaism have lost followers. Many
have gone to evangelical Christian sects,
while others have drifted away from religion in general or sampled Eastern and
so-called "new" religions. However,
there is a danger in New Age ecumenism,
in that the individual may remain religiously rootless, skipping about and collecting a superficial grab bag of only the
most convenient doctrines and practices.
As Jacob Needleman has stated, it is not
enough to unlock the higher energies
within the psyche. Without "a serious
and extended inner discipline guided by
exact knowledge and the support of a
rightly ordered community," such energies are merely channeled to the pursuits
of the ego. Initially, Eastern religions as
practiced by Westerners are spiritual experiences which pass through the individual. Needleman has raised the question as
to how much time and help is required to
transform the experiences into a spiritual
force within.
Flirtation without commitment is
one factor that has led critics to call the
New Age superficial, exploitative, narcissistic, fraudulent, cultish, anti-Christian,
and a host of other uncomplimentary
terms. Certain fundamentalists and other
opponents of New Age thought claim the

405

New Age is indeed organized-by Satan,

who leads an army of demonic minions
against humankind. Constance Cumbey,
one of the most prominent New Age critics and who has seized on the "conspiracy" theory, has attempted to draw parallels between the New Age and Nazism,
and contends the Lucifer-led New Age is
plotting to destroy Christianity and Western civilization. Other less strident fundamentalists take a more reasoned approach, but still see New Age thought on
Christ and Jesus as flawed and misguided.
Such extreme claims must be dismissed. However, the criticisms of narcissism, superficiality, exploitation, and
fraud have some legitimacy-but there is
not a single field which does not have its
abusers. The New Age is not antiChristian, but part of it does reflect dissarisfaction with the failure of organized
Christianity to provide spiritual nourishment. Some cults are identified with the
New Age, but cults existed long before
the New Age.
Proponents of the New Age call it a
"revolution in consciousness" and predict
it will permeate mainstream culrure and
push out new frontiers. To some extent
mainstream penetration of New Age
thought has already occurred, most notably in the areas of behavioral medicine,
physics, psychology, and business, and in
the growing cultivation of inruition and
the increasing acceptance of psi as a normal function of the human organism.
Concerning psi, 67 percent of all American adults say they have experienced extrasensory perception, according to a survey published in 1987 by the University
of Chicago's National Opinion Research
Council. This reflects a dramatic change
from a 1974 Roper poll, which found
only 53 percent believed in the reality of
psI.

The term "New Age" was quickly

imperiled through overuse and misuse.
The media did the most damage, equating

406

"New Age" with the more offbeat or

questionable pursuits. Those who liked
the term and found great power in what
it conveyed could find no adequate substirute. By the 1990s, as New Age interests merged into the mainstream, the need
for the term as a label began to disappear. Indeed, if New Age thought is to
transform, then it must become the norm,
not the exception. See Age of Aquarius;
Alternative religious movements; Christology; Planetary consciousness.
Sources: Gina Cermina. Insights for the
Age of Aquarius. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

Prentice-Hall, 1973; Constance E. Cumbey.

The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow: The
New Age Movement and Our Coming Age
of Barbarism. Shreveport, LA: Huntington
House, 1983; Robert S. Ellwood, ed. Eastern Spirituality in America. New York:
Paulist Press, 1987; Marilyn Ferguson. The
Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social
Transformation in the 1980s. Rev. ed. Los

Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1988; Otto

Friedrich, et al. "New Age Harmonies."
Time (December 7, 1987): 62-72; Andrew
Greeley. "Mysticism Goes Mainstream."
American Health (January/February 1987):
47-55; William H. Kautz and Melanie Branon. Intuiting the Future: A New Age Vision of the 1990s. San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1989; Christopher Lasch. "Soul of a
New Age." Omni (October 1987): 7885+; Robert Lindsey. "Spiritual Concepts
Drawing a Different Breed of Adherent."
The New York Times (September 29,
1986): A1+; Texe Marrs. Dark Secrets of
the New Age: Satan's Plan for a One
World Religion. Westchester, IL: Crossway
Books, 1987; J. Gordon Melton. Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America. New

York: Garland Publishing, 1986; Jacob

Needleman. The New Religions. New
York: Crossroad, 1984; The New Age Catalogue. New York: DolphinIDoubleday,
1988; Ron Rhodes. "The Christ of the
New Age Movement." Christian Research
Journal (Summer 1989): 9-14; Joanne
Sanders. "The New Age in the Media Spotlight: Can It Take the Heat?" The Common Boundary 5, issue 3 (May/June 1987):

New Age

3-4; Anne A. Simkinson. "The Rise and

Fall of New Age Publishing." Common
Boundary (September/October 1990): 2223; David Spangler. The New Age. Issaquah, WA: Morningtown Press, 1988; Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The Phenomenon
of Man. 1955. New York: Harper & Row,
1965; Kenneth L. Woodward with Patricia
King, Peter McKillop, and Anne Underwood. "From 'Mainline' to Sideline."
Newsweek (December 22, 1986): 54-56;
The Wrekin Trust.

Newspaper test
An experiment attempting to prove survival after death. The newspaper test,
similar to the book test, was prevalent in
psychical research in the early twentieth
century.
The test was created in 1919 by
Feda, the spirit control of British medium
Gladys Osborne Leonard, who was successful in book tests. In the newspaper
test, a medium, working under controlled
circumstances, communicated with her
controls to give information about news
stories to be published the next day in the
London Times before it went to press.
Such information, including page numbers of stories, could not be known by
either medium or sitter.
In sittings with the Reverend Charles
Drayton Thomas, a member of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), Leonard provided words, names, and numbers, and the locations in which they
were to appear on certain pages. Thomas
acknowledged that most of the names
were common enough to be found in virtually every issue of the London Times.
However, Feda correctly gave page positions to within one-quarter of a column.
In twelve sittings in which 104 items were
given, Thomas determined seventy-three
were accurate, twenty were inconclusive,
and nineteen were wrong. The chance
odds were eighteen successes, ten inconclusives, and seventy-six failures.

Nostradamus (1503-1566)

Feda stated that the information was

provided to her by Thomas's deceased father, and gave evidential information that
convinced Thomas this was true. In Some
New Evidence for Human Survival
(1922), Thomas said his father communicated that he was assisted by higher
helping spirits, who took him to the
Times office where he could see the
etheric shadows of type not yet set.
Despite the success of the newspaper
tests and other similar tests, no evidence
yet is considered conclusive, scientific
proof of survival after death. See Book
test; Leonard, Gladys Osborne.
Sources: Theodore Flournoy. From India to
the Planet Mars: A Study of a Case of Somnambulism. New York and London:
Harper & Brothers, 1900; Rev. Charles
Drayton Thomas. Some New Evidence for
Human Survival. London: W. Collins Sons
& Co. Ltd., 1922.

Ninja
See Martial arts.

Nirvana
See Buddhism; Meditation; Mystical experiences; Yoga.

Nostradamus (1503-1566)
French physician and prophet whose farreaching prophecies have caused controversy for centuries. Nostradamus, a gifted
clairvoyant, made approximately one
thousand predictions to the year 3797.
Some scholars say more than half the predictions have come true.
Nostradamus was born Michel de
Nostredame in St. Remy de Provence, the
oldest of five sons in a well-educated Jewish family. His parents converted to Catholicism, which exposed Nostradamus
to both the occult wisdom of the Kab-

407

balah and the prophecies of the Bible. As

a child he experienced visions, which he
believed were a divine gift from God.
At home Nostradamus was educated
in Hebrew, Latin, Greek, mathematics,
medicine, astronomy, and astrology. In
1522 he was sent to Montpellier University to study medicine. He earned a degree and license, and went to work treating plague victims throughout southern
France. He possessed an uncanny gift for
healing and quickly became famous, despite opposition from fdlow physicians
to his unorthodox cures. He refused to
bleed patients and he made his own medicines, the recipes of which have not survived.
Around 1534 Nostradamus settled
in Agen, married, and fathered two children. He met Julius Cesar Scaliger, a philosopher and student of astrology, who
may have introduced Nostradamus to the
art of prophecy. A few years later, Nostradamus's life and medical practice fell
apart when the plague claimed his entire
family and the Inquisition sought him for
questioning concerning a friend of
Scaliger's. Nostradamus left Agen and
apparently drifted around Europe for
about six years. According to legend his
prophetic vision began to flower during
this time, and he delved further into a
study of the occult.
He settled down again, in Salon en
Craux de Provence, where he married
Anne Pons art Gemelle, a wealthy widow
who bore him six children. Sometime after 1550 he began to record his prophetic
visions, which came to him by "the subtle
spirit of fire," delivered in fragments and
accompanied by a voice from limbo,
which he believed to be the "Divine Presence." He summoned the visions by scrying every night alone in his study, gazing
into a bowl of water set in a brass tripod.
He began his sessions with a magic ritual
attributed to the ancient oracles of Branchus. He touched the tripod with a wand,
then dipped the wand into the water and

408

touched the tip to his robe. He recorded

the things he saw and heard, often not
understanding them. Mindful of the Inquisition, he phrased the prophecies in
rhymed quatrains written in a mixture of
Greek, French, Proven<;:al, and Latin;
some words were further disguised in
anagrams. He arranged the quatrains in
groups of hundreds, or "centuries,"
which were not in chronological order.
The first prophecies were published
in 1555 as Les Propheties de M. Michel
Nostradamus. They were an immediate
success in aristocratic circles, gaining him
the favor of Catherine de Medici and cementing his reputation as a prophet. He
published a second, larger edition of Propheties in 1558.
He enjoyed fame and success until
1566, when his health declined due to
gout and dropsy. He died during the
night of July 1 that year, and was buried
upright in a wall of the Church of the
Cordeliers in Salon. In 1791 superstitious
French soldiers opened his grave. His
bones were reburied in the Church of St.
Laurent, also in Salon.
Nostradamus wrote ten centuries,
but inexplicably left the seventh incomplete. At the time of his death, he had
been planning to write eleventh and
twelfth centuries. Scholars have puzzled
over the prophecies for hundreds of
years. Some seem clear, while others seem
to have various interpretations. Among
the many great events of history Nostradamus is credited with having foreseen
are the Napoleonic wars; the history of
British monarchs from Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II, including the abdication of Edward VIII; the American Revolutionary
War and Civil War; the rise and fall of
Hitler; the assassinations of Abraham
Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Robert
Kennedy; and the rise of Iran's Ayatollah
Khomeini. He also foresaw air and space
travel, including manned rockets to the
moon, and submarines, which would be
used for war. He is also said to have

Nostradamus (1503-1566)

prophesied the development of the

atomic bomb.
During World War II, Nostradamus's quatrains were used by both Axis
and Allied powers for propaganda purposes. The Germans air-dropped over
France selected quatrains, which they
claimed foretold victory by the Nazis.
The British countered by air-dropping
quatrains over Germany and occupied
countries that foretold the Nazis' defeat.
The US government used quatrains in
film shorts shown in movie houses that
portrayed America as the torch of freedom for the world.
Nostradamus predicted three reigns
of terror created by what he termed three
Antichrists. The first two are believed to
be Napoleon and Hitler. According to
some interpretations, the third is a yetunnamed Middle Eastern despot who,
with the aid of the Soviet Union, will
start a nuclear World War III between
1994 and 1999 by destroying New York
City. This great war is to be presaged by
famines, drought, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. The war itself is to last
twenty-seven years, when the Antichrist
will be defeated and killed. Following
that, a one-thou sand-year golden age of
peace will reign.
In a letter to his infant son, Cesar,
Nostradamus notes that his prophecies
extend to the year 3797, when the world
supposedly will come to an end.
Nostradamus always believed that it
is possible to alter the predicted course of
the future through awareness and action.
If his prophecies have been interpreted
accurately in terms of the wars and disasters rhat have come to pass, humankind has made precious little headway toward mastering its fate. See Prophecy;
Scrying.
Sources: Richard Cavendish, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Unexplained. New York:

McGraw-Hill, 1974; Jean-Charles de Fontbrune. Nostradamus: Countdown to Apocalypse. New York: Holt, Rinehart and

Numerology

Winston, 1980; Henry C. Roberts. The

Complete

Prophecies

of

Nostradamus.

New York: American Book-Stratford Press,

1969; The Man Who Saw Tomorrow. Documentary film, Warner Brothers, 1981.

Notarikon
See Gematria.

Numerology
A system of divination and magic based
upon the concept that the universe is constructed in a mathematical pattern, and
that all things may be expressed in numbers, which correspond to vibrations. By
reducing names, words, birth dates, and
birthplaces to numbers, a person's personality, destiny, and fortune may be determined.
Pythagoras is credited as the father
of numerology, due to his discovery that
the musical intervals known in his time
could be expressed in ratios between the
numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4. He also observed
that the numbers 1 through 4 add up to
10, which begins the cycle of numbers
over again, for all numbers larger than 9
may be reduced by a single digit by adding the digits together. Pythagoras reasoned that the entire universe could be
expressed numerically, creating a mystical system expanded by other early Greek
philosophers. He is quoted: "The world
is built upon the power of numbers."
Each primary number is ascribed
certain characteristics and values, and a
male or female aspect. Odd numbers are
masculine, active, and creative, while
even numbers are feminine and passive.
In the Greek mysteries, the number
888 represented the "Higher Mind." The
Greek variation of "Jesus," "Iesous,"
equals 888. The number 666 represented
the "Mortal Mind." In the New Testament, 666 is called the number of "the
Beast."

409

The early Hebrews placed great importance upon numbers, basing the letters of the Hebrew alphabet upon them
and relating them to cosmic forces. In the
Middle Ages, the teachings of the Merkabah sect of Judaism became intertwined
with numerical mysticism. In the thirteenth century, German Kabbalists developed the interpretation of the Scriptures
through a system of number mysticism.
See Gematria.
Both the Greeks and the Hebrews
considered 10 the perfect number.
Pythagoras said that 10 comprehends all
arithmetic and harmonic proportions,
and, like God, is tireless. All nations
reckon to it because when they arrive at
10 they return to 1, the number of creation. The Pythagoreans believed the
heavenly bodies were divided into 10 orders. According to the Kabbalah, there
are 10 emanations of numbers out of
Nothing. The emanations form the 10
sephiroth of the Tree of Life, which contains all knowledge and shows the path
back to God.
In the nineteenth century, when scientific discoveries were made about light,
magnetism, and electricity, the theory
that numbers were energy patterns of vibrations became popular.
In numerological divination all numbers are reduced to nine roots between 1
and 9. Each number corresponds to a letter of the alphabet:
12345
678
ABCDEFGHI
J KL MNOP
STUVWXYZ

9
QR

To find the numerical value of a

name, all the numbers of the letters are
added together and reduced to a single
digit; for example, if a name totals 45, it
is reduced to 9 by adding 4 plus 5.
Briefly, the numbers represent:
1-unity, creation, independence
2-duality, emergence

410

3-power, generative force

4-solidity, dullness
5 -sensuality, pleasure
6-perfection, harmony, balance
7 -mysticism, psychic, magic
8- material success, justice
9-spiritual, mental achievement
The numbers 11, 22, and 33 are
master numbers and are not reduced to
single digits. People whose names correspond to these numbers are said to be
highly developed spiritually. The number
33 is that of avatar.
Numerologists believe that one's full
name given at birth is the expression of
the vibratory forces of the universe,
which determine one's character and destiny. Changing one's name can alter these
factors, but several years supposedly are
required for the vibrational patterns to
readjust.
Various formulae exist for detailed
name analysis. Adding up vowels reveals
one's "heart's desire" or "soul's urge";
adding up consonants reveals aspects of
one's personality. The frequency of various letters determine's the karmic lessons
to be faced in life. The sum of the month,
day, and year of birth tells the birth path,
or the general direction of one's life. The
sum of one's full name and birth date
equals a power number, which acts as a
beacon to guide one through life.
All words may be converted to numbers to see how virtually anything complements or clashes with one's life, including one's career and city of residence.
Numerology also is used to determine the
propitious days for various activities, as a
guide in health matters and selecting business and marriage partners and friends,
and to predict the future. It may also be
used in the selection of gifts, colors for
one's decorating scheme, and names for
one's baby. See Tarot.
Sources: Francis Barrett. The Magus. 180l.
Reprint. Secaucus, NJ: The Citadel Press,

Numerology

1967; Richard Cavendish. The Black Arts.

New York: Perigee Books, 1967; Eden
Gray. A Complete Guide to the Tarot. New
York: Bantam Books, 1972; Manly P. Hall.
The Secret Teachings of All Ages. !928. Los
Angeles: The Philosophical Research Soci-

Numerology

ety, 1977; Helyn Hitchcock. Helping YourWest Nyack, NY:

Parker Publishing, 1972; Gershom Scholem. Kabbalah. New York: New American
Library, 1974; Colin Wilson. The Occult.
New York: Vintage Books, 1973.

self with Numerology.

411

o
ad
See Universal life force.

Odic force
See Universal life force.

Odyle
See Universal life force.

Olcott, Colonel Henry Steel

See Blavatsky, Madame Helena Petrovna;
Theosophy.

am
In Hinduism, the most sacred and comprehensive expression of spiritual knowledge. am, also represented as Aum, is a
mantra, a symbol of form and a manifestation of spiritual power. am also appears in Buddhism, most notably the Vajrayana, or "Diamond Vehicle" school.
The symbol of am represents supreme consciousness, which encompasses
and reveals the physical, mental, and unconscious; the three states of consciousness (waking, dreaming, and deep sleep,
or the unconscious); and the three principles of creation as embodied in Brahma,
Vishnu, and Shiva.

412

In the Mandukya Upanishad, am,

the imperishable Brahman, the Supreme
Reality and Truth, transcends past, present, and future. The Self is one with am,
and has three aspects: the universal person who is conscious only of external objects; the universal person who is conscious only of his or her dreams; and the
universal person who is in the dreamless
sleep of the lord of all, Prajna, a state of
bliss. Beyond is a fourth aspect of ineffable peace and supreme good, the Self
which is the syllable am. The Taittiriya
Upanishad states that, "He who meditates on am attains to Brahman."
"Om mani padme hum," Sanskrit
for "0, Jewel of the Lotus, Hum," is a
mantra of enlightenment (jewel) arising
within consciousness (lotus). To recite it
assists in the transformation from the impure state to the pure. In Tibetan Buddhism the mantra is "Om Mani Peme
Hung," and is the oldest and greatest of
mantras in that form of Buddhism. The
exact meaning of the mantra is complex,
and relates to compassion and the desire
for the attainment of nirvana of all sentient beings.
In yoga am is a powerful mantra
that pierces the material nature of the
body to purify and bring the soul in
touch with the Absolute. To meditate
upon am is to connect with the Self. See
Mantra.
Sources: The Encyclopedia of Eastern Religion and Philosophy. Boston: Shambhala,

Od

1989; Bernard Gunther. Energy Ecstasy

and Your Seven Vital Chakras. North Hollywood, CA: Newcastle Publishing, 1983;
Lama Anagarika Govinda. Foundations of
Tibetan Mysticism.
First American ed.
York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1969;
Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Kindness, Clarity and
Insight. Translated and edited by Jeffrey
Hopkins, coedited by Elizabeth Napper.
Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1984;
Ormond McGill. The Magic and Mysticism
of India. Cranbury, NJ: A. S. Barnes &
Co., 1977. The Upanishads. Translated by
Swami
Prabhavananda
and
Frederick
Manchester. New York: Signet, 1957.

Omen
A sign, often
nature, of a
are found in
cients of East

of a supernatural or psychic
future event. Many omens
the natural world. The anand West examined the en-

trails of animals and observed changes in

the elements and the movements or appearances of animals and birds. They also
observed the movement of heavenly bodies. Unusual occurrences,
such as monstrous births, eclipses, comets, meteors,
novae, floods, storms, and earthquakes,
were considered to be omens of disasters
or of divine
kind.

unhappiness

with

human-

The ancient Babylonians, Sumerians,

and Assyrians were prodigious
recordkeepers of omens, listing them on tablets
and constantly updating them according
to experiences. Virtually everything that
happened
portended
something.
The
Druids produced omens by observing the
death struggles of their sacrificial human
victims.
Dreams have provided
omens for
thousands
of years.
Unlike
oracular
dreams, in which an explicit divine message is given to the dreamer,
omen
dreams are symbolic and must be interpreted. Some precognitive
dreams are
clearer, in which the dreamer previews

Oracle

plane crashes, car accidents, ship sinkings, fires, and other disasters.
The appearance
of apparitions
and
visions also is considered an omen. Joan
of Arc's soldiers were bolstered by heavenly visions of St. Michael and of the
Holy Spirit, which appeared as a dove
perched on the Maid's shoulder. In the
sixteenth
and seventeenth
centuries in
England, it was common for people to
report seeing great visions in the sky of
galloping horses, dragons, armies in battle, and angels with owls' heads. The
English Civil War (1642-1648)
was presaged by numerous
visions of armies
marching through the skies.
Vision and apparition omens are still
seen. A vision of a deceased person may
be viewed as an omen of the impending
death of a member of the family. In Ireland the banshee, or "fairy woman," heralds the death of members of old families
and great and holy persons. The appearance of spectral animals, ghostly ships,
and spirits is universal and often considered to be an omen. See Divination;
Prophecy.
Sources: Katherine Briggs. An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1976; E. A.
Wallis Budge. Amulets and Superstitions.
1930. Reprint. New York: Dover Publications, 1978; Robert Graves. The White
Goddess. Amended and enlarged ed. New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966;
Michael Loewe and Carmen Blacker. Oracles and Divination. Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 1981; Charles Mackay. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of
Crowds. 1852. Reprint. New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 1932; Keith Thomas.
Religion and the Decline of Magic. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971.

Oracle
A method of divination and prophecy in
which deities or supernatural
beings are
consulted, usually through a human me-

413

dium who, while in a trance possession,

allows the entity to speak. Various cultures throughout history have relied
heavily upon oracles for advice and wisdom as to the best course of action to
take.
In ancient Greece and Rome, oracles
were often sought by leaders for important political and military advice. The
mediums were sibyls, women priestesses
usually past childbearing age, who resided in caves believed to be the thrones
of deities. Major sibyls resided in Phrygia,
Libya, Persia, Samos, Cumae, Cimmeria,
Marpessa, Tibur, and Erythrae; the most
famous was at Delphi, in a temple built
on limestone in the sixth century B.C. near
Mt. Parnassus, about one hundred miles
from Athens.
At Delphi a priestess called the
Pythia or Pythonness was the oracular
medium; she resided with snakes, symbols of prophecy and wisdom. Initially
the Pythia served the Earth Goddess,
Gaea (Gaia), who eventually gave way to
the sun god, Apollo, who, according to
myth, slew the sacred python in residence. On certain days inquirers were
chosen by lot and paid a fee to ask a
question of the oracle. The Pythia retired
to an inner chamber and induced a frenzied trance, perhaps by drinking blood,
inhaling smoke, or chewing laurel leaves.
Her elliptical pronouncements and moanings were interpreted by priests, who
translated them into hexameter verse.
The Greeks and Romans believed the
Pythia inhaled mysterious vapors from
cracks in the rocks, though scientists have
found no evidence of such. King Croesus
of Lydia led his army to disaster on the
basis of a Delphic prophecy. Told that if
he declared war on the Persians a great
army would be destroyed, he assumed the
losers would be the enemy; but his own
great army was destroyed instead.
Zeus was oracle to the Romans, who
believed the god resided in the oak trees
at Dodua and spoke through the mouths

414

of the Peleiads (doves). The Peleiads may

have been priestesses impersonating
doves. The old Prussians believed that
gods inhabited oaks and other high trees
and whispered answers to inquirers.
The ancient Babylonians consulted
priestesses as oracles, and also relied
upon the dream visions of deities. Major
oracular centers were at Mani and in Sargonid Assyria. The goddess Ishtar was referred to as "She Who Directs the Oracles."
In the Old and Middle Kingdoms of
Egypt (2680 B.c.-1786 B.C.), women of
important families were known as prophetesses, and had access to the goddesses
Hathor and Neith. Other oracular consultation took place in the form of
dreams. In the Middle Kingdom (2000
B.c.-1786 B.C.),dreams were believed to
be sent by the gods so that humankind
might know the future. Oracular dreams
were both deliberately sought and spontaneous. In the New Kingdom (1570
B.c.-1342 B.C.), the first fully developed
oracular procedure appeared with the use
of cult statues. The statues, usually of
Amun, god of fertility, agriculture, and
the breath of life, were carried in portable
shrines on the shoulders of priests during
festivals. The statues allegedly could nod
and talk, perhaps due to surreptitious
manipulation by a priest. Or the priest
indicated a "yes" answer by moving toward the inquirer, and "no" by recoiling.
The statues were consulted by both commoner and royalty for predictions and
dispensations of the law. A papyrus of
magical spells from the third century A.D.
gives a ritual for transforming a boy into
an oracle.
The primary function of ancient Hebrew priests was to divine and give oracles. The priests were consulted at sanctuaries where Yahweh, God, was believed
to be present. Their procedure included
the use of Urim and Thummim, of which
little is known, but apparently were objects the priests consulted. Answers were

Oracle

given by lots, though the oracle could

give a "no-answer." Many answers required interpretation by the priests.
In China, where divination is an ancient art, there is no equivalent of the
Delphic-type of oracle. Inspired answers
to questions have been sought through
the production of signs, such as casting
the I Ching, or in the signs of nature,
such as cloud formations.
Trance oracles are traditional in Tibet. Most of the mediums are men who
exhibited natural psychic gifts in childhood, though some suddenly develop
their ability in adulthood. Typically, they
are members of laity, not the priesthood.
It is believed that their psychic powers are
bestowed by deities, who belong to the
phenomenal order of existence at levels
ranging from higher than humans to
lower. Some deities are destructive and
dangerous. The medium enters a trance in
a procedure similar to those used by shamans in Siberia and Alaska. Beforehand,
the medium is expected to abstain from
sex, alcohol, tobacco, and meat.
Various state oracles reside in monasteries throughout Tibet. One of the
most important, in Nechung Gumpa, is
the mouthpiece of Pe Har, a destructive
deity. The Nechung oracle has played a
key role in the location and identification
of several incarnations of the Dalai Lama,
and helped the esteemed thirteenth Dalai
Lama thwart a black magic assassination
attempt.
In Africa the Azande witch doctors
use oracles to determine the perpetrators
of bad spells and illness. One method is
the iwa, a rubbing board; another is
benge, a strychnine-like poison administered to a fowl, which ideally does not
die. The actions of the poisoned fowl are
interpreted. The Cape Ngui of South Africa consult diviners who are women possessed by the spirits of their ancestors.
There is evidence that pre-Christian
tribes of Germanic and Scandinavian
peoples consulted oracles. The wizards

Order of the Knights

Temp/ar

and village wise women of the Middle

Ages who were consulted for their clairvoyant gifts were a form of oracle. The
oracular practice was condemned by the
Christian church. However, a Christian
priest is treated as an oracle when he is
consulted for advice, for he is expected to
have a superior communication with
God. Spiritualist mediums who consult
the spirits of the dead also are a type of
oracle.
In the modern West, the term "oracle" is rarely used, though individuals
and oracular methods continue to be consulted for divine or inspired guidance.
See Channeling; Divination;
Ching;
Prophecy.

Sources: Bob Brier. Ancient

Egyptian
Magic. New York: QuiIVMorrow, 1981;
James G. Frazer. The Golden Bough: The
Roots of Religion and Folklore. 1890. New

York: Avenel Books, 1981; Michael Loewe

and Carmen Blacker. Oracles and Divination. Boulder, co: Shambhala, 1981; Max
Marwick, ed. Witchcraft and Sorcery. 2d
ed. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England:
Penguin Books, 1982; Edgar D. Mitchell.
Psychic Explorations: A Challenge for Science. Edited by John White. New York:

Paragon Books, 1974; Monica Sj66 and

Barbara Mor. The Great Cosmic Mother:
Rediscovering

the Religion

of the Earth.

San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987; Merlin Stone. When God Was a Woman. San
Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976;
Keith Thomas. Religion and the Decline of
Magic. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1971; Danah Zohar. Through the Time
Barrier: A Study in Precognition and Modern Physics. London: William Heinemann

Ltd., 1982.

Order of the Knights T emplar

Military arm of the church during the
Crusades and one of the most powerful
monastic societies in Europe. The Order
of the Knights Templar symbolized the

415

holy struggle of Christians against the infidels. But their enormous wealth, jealously coveted by kings and popes, and
their secret rituals brought about their
spectacular downfall and the establishment of sorcery as evidence of heresy.
In A.D. 1118, about twenty years after the founding of the Kingdom of Jerusalem by Godefroy de Bouillon and
a group of crusaders, French knight
Hugues de Payns ("of the pagans") led a
group of nine other French noblemen to
the Holy Land, where they encamped
next to the alleged site of King Solomon's
Temple. Vowing to protect Christians
traveling to the holy places, especially between Jerusalem and St. Jean d'Acre, the
knights pledged chastity, poverty, and
obedience. They called themselves the
Order of the Knights of the Temple, or
Templars.
Although led by de Payns, the real
power behind the Order was St. Bernard
of Clairvaux, head of the Cistercian Order of monks and supported by Pope
Honorius II. The pope officially recognized the Templars as a separate Order in
1128, giving it unheard-of sovereignty.
The Order was exempt from local taxes,
could impose its own taxes on the community, was immune from judicial authority, could appoint its own clergy, and
answered only to the pope. Membership
was restricted to men of noble birth who
had to undergo various probationary periods and initiation rituals before acceptance. Attached to these noblemen were
various artisans and manual laborers.
The head of the Order was the Grand
Master, followed by his deputy the
Senechal, the Marshal, and the Commander.
The Order's battle standard was a
red eight-pointed cross on a background
of black and white squares called the
Beauceant, with the cross on a plain
background of white as the official symbol. Their battle cry was "Vive Dieu,
Saint Amour" ("God Lives, Saint Love"),

416

and the motto was "Non nobis Domine,

non nobis, sed Nomini Tuo da gloriam"
("Not for us, Lord, not for us, but to Thy
Name give glory"). The Templar seal
showed two knights sharing one horse, a
sign of poverty and service.
By the beginning of the fourteenth
century, the Templars had become one of
the most powerful organizations in Europe and the Middle East, with branches
in Scotland, England, Aragon, Castile,
Portugal, Germany, and the Kingdom of
Naples, all headquartered from the main
Temple in Paris. They had amassed huge
wealth and, unlike the Order of Hospitalers of St. John, supported no charities.
They also lent money, although at rates
lower than the Jews or Lombards.
For years stories circulated about the
Templars' secret rituals, and whether
they were Christians or had become
"Mahometans," or followers of Muhammad. The Templars had always maintained close ties with the Sufis, the mystic
sect of Moslems, sharing their esoteric
knowledge of alchemy and the Jewish
Kabbalah. The Templar battle cry, "God
Lives, Saint Love," closely parallels the
Sufi search for the Beloved as the symbol
of God. The father of founder Hugues de
Payns was a Moor from southern Spain,
and may have been heavily influenced by
Sufi thought. Each group admired the
other's spiritual dedication and monastic
determination.
Others claimed the Templars worshiped a devil named Baphomet, who appeared in various forms, including a huge
black cat. These rituals supposedly included kissing the cat's behind, bestiality,
sodomy, kissing the Grand Master's genitals, roasting children alive, idol worship, denunciation of Christ and the Virgin Mary, intercourse with demons and
succubi, and overall loss of their souls to
the Devil. All these rumors had been
around since the Order's founding, but
no one gave them much currency until
1307.

Order of the Knights Templar

At that time King Philip N of

France, called the Fair, was in debt to the
Templars and increasingly irritated at
their protection from secular jurisdiction.
He decided that the Templars' wealth
was his last source of funds. On October
13 he seized the Temple in Paris and arrested Grand Master Jacques de Molay
and 140 Templars, as well as every Templar his soldiers could find throughout
France. Charged with heresy and blasphemy, the victims were hideously tortured to extract confessions. Philip
needed the church's support. He bullied a
weak Clement V, the first Avignon pope,
into signing a papal bull authorizing the
Templars' trials and seizure of their properties.
The trials and tortures lasted for
seven years, while the king and pope
bickered over jurisdiction and disbursement of the property. Philip's charges of
heresy and witchcraft, supported by the
tortured confessions, gave the Inquisition
new evidence in its hunt for enemies, especially ones with property worth taking.
Such powerful arguments, preying on the
deepest fears of the medieval mind,
caused the eventual deaths of many supposed heretics and witches by the mid1700s.
Pope Clement V officially abolished
the Order and all its branches in 1312 at
the Council of Vienne, transferring the
property to the Hospitalers. They, in
turn, paid Philip N money he said the
Templars had owed him. A great deal of
the assets were seized directly by Philip
and King Edward II of England for their
own use or as gifts to friends. Resisting
papal pressure, the kings of Spain and
Portugal transferred the remaining assets
into new orders, allowing Templars to
obtain membership.
In 1314 Grand Master de Molay was
promised life in prison if he confessed his
crimes in public. In March soldiers led
him and his chief lieutenant onto a scaffold in front of a packed crowd of clergy,

Order of the Knights Temp/ar

nobility, and commoners. But de Molay,

who had been Philip N's friend and godfather to the king's daughter, frustrated
the king's triumph by loudly proclaiming
his innocence and that of all the Templars. Enraged, Philip N sentenced the
Grand Master to be burned alive. As the
flames took his body, de Molay supposedly cursed Philip's family to the thirteenth generation and called for Philip IV
and Clement V to join him before God's
throne within a year. Clement died within
a month, Philip died in November, and
Philip IV's Capetian dynasty withered
within one generation, to be replaced by
the Valois.
Although the truth probably died
with Grand Master de Molay, Temple
tradition maintains that the Order did
not go with him. One persistent story
says that some of the survivors of the persecutions fled to Scotland disguised as
stonemasons. As a disguise the Templars
borrowed masonic symbols and called
themselves Freemasons, giving birth to
that secret society. The Templars were always known as builders, going back to
the founding of the Order on the site of
Solomon's Temple. One of the dearest
wishes of their mentor, St. Bernard of
Clairvaux, was to build cathedrals that
would esoterically transmit the secret
teachings he carried from early church fathers. Sufi tradition also uses buildings as
permanent repositories of esoteric knowledge.
Another theory says that Geoffroy
de Gonneville, a Templar, brought a message from de Molay before his death to a
group of Templars meeting in Dalmatia,
telling them of a resurgence of their Order in six hundred years. At the end of
this meeting, or "convent," as it was
called, the Supreme Council of the Order
remained in Corfu for three years, then
dissolved. But before disbanding the
Council supposedly launched the Order
of the Rose-Croix, or Rosicrucians.
Later accounts insist that the

417

eighteenth-century adept, the Comte de

St. Germain, was a Templar. The Comte
also participated in Rosicrucian and Freemasonic rituals, and some Masonic scholars believe he was attempting to reintroduce Templar secrets into those two
organizations. Albert Pike, Masonic historian, has stated that Count de Cagliostro, another eighteenth-century occultist
and a student of St. Germain's, was a
Templar agent. Cagliostro's introduction
of Egyptian rites into Freemasonic ceremonies was, according to Pike, an attempt to revive the worship of Isis.
Regardless of whether the Knights
Templar actually founded these organizations, their spiritual power does live on in
the traditions of all secret societies and
esoteric organizations. See Cagtiostro,
Count Alessandro; Freemasonry; Rosicrucians; Saint Germain.
Sources: Gaetan Delaforge. "The Templar
Tradition Yesterday and Today." Gnosis
no. 6 (Winter 1988): 8-14; Rosemary Ellen
Guiley. The Encyclopedia of Witches and
Witchcraft. New York: Facts On File,
1989; Manly P. Hall. Masonic Orders of
Fraternity. Los Angeles: The Philosophical
Research Society, 1950; Barbara W. Tuchman. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous
14th Century.
New York: Ballantine
Books, 1978.

Order of the Rosy Cross

See Rosicrucians.

Ordo Templi Orientis

See Crowley, Aleister; Illuminati.

Orgone
See Universal life force.

Osis, Karlis.
See Deathbed visions.

418

Ouija
A board and pointer used for divination
and by some as a means to contact spirits
or entities. The name comes from the
French and German words for "yes," oui
and ja (ja is mispronounced with a hard
"j"). Critics of the Ouija, who include authorities in most denominations of Christianity, say it is dangerous and a tool of
the Devil. Advocates say that it, like other
forms of divination, is a legitimate means
to discover insight, wisdom, and selftruths and to communicate with discarnate beings.
The board includes letters of the alphabet, numerals 0 through 9, the words
"yes" and "no," and a heart-shaped
pointer on three felt-tipped legs. One or
two people place their fingertips on the
pointer, which moves to answer questions. In most cases answers probably rise
up from the subconsciousness of the users, even when "spirits" identify themselves and give messages. However, Ouija
pointers have been known to fly off the
board and spin out of control, as though
being directed by unseen forces, and some
users claim to be harassed by external
agents contacted through the board.
Precursors to the Ouija date back to
ancient times. In China before the birth
of Confucius (c. 551 B.C.), similar instruments were used to communicate with
the dead. In Greece during the time of
Pythagoras (c. 540 B.C.) divination was
done with a table that moved on wheels
to point to signs, which were interpreted
as revelations from the "unseen world."
The rolling table was used through the
nineteenth century. Other such devices
were used by the ancient Romans as early
as the third century A.D., and in the thirteenth century by the Mongols. Some Native Americans used "squdilatc boards"
to find missing objects and persons, and
obtain spiritual information. In 1853 the
planchette came into use in Europe. It
consisted of a triangular or heart-shaped

Order of the Knights

Templar

platform on three legs, one of which was

a pencil. The medium or user moved the
device over paper to draw pictures and
spell out messages.
The modern Ouija, which is marketed as a game, was invented by an
American, Elijah J. Bond, in 1892. Bond
sold his patent to William Fuld, who is
considered to be the father of the Ouija.
Fuld founded the Southern Novelty Company in Baltimore, Maryland (later
known as the Baltimore Talking Board
Company), and marketed the board as
"Ouija, the Mystifying Oracle."
The Ouija enjoyed enormous popularity during and after World War I,
when many people were desperate to
communicate with loved ones killed in
the war and Spiritualism was in a revival.
In 1966 Fuld sold his patent to Parker
Brothers game company of Beverly, Massachusetts. Interest in the Ouija picked up
again in the 1960s and 1970s, along with
renewed interest in the occult and supernatural. Parker Brothers stresses that the
Ouija is a game for entertainment purposes.
In parapsychology the Ouija is considered a form of automatism, an unconscious activity that picks up and amplifies
information from the subconscious mind.
Critics of the Ouija say users have no
control over repressed material that
might be released, and thus can suffer
psychosis.
Nor do users have control if the
board is used to contact spirits. Edgar
Cayce called it a "dangerous toy." Some
demonologists say the Ouija opens the
door to possession by evil spirits, perhaps
requiring exorcism and psychiatric care.
Ouija advocates use the board to divine the future, find lost objects, obtain
daily guidance, and gain spiritual insight.
The board has been the beginning step in
several famous cases of mediumship and
channeling. In 1913 a Ouija put St. Louis
housewife Pearl Curran into contact with
a seventeenth-century English spirit who

Out-of-body

experience

(OBE)

called herself Patience Worth. In 1919

Stewart Edward White and his wife,
Betty, were introduced to entities called
the "Invisibles." In 1963 Jane Roberts
and her husband, Robert Butts, began
Ouija experiments that led to contact
with the entity Seth. In all three cases the
Ouija activity began casually, almost as a
lark. Once the entities revealed themselves, communication advanced to automatic writing and use of vocal chords.
See Automatisms; Montgomery, Ruth;
Planchette; Roberts, Jane; White, Stewart
Edward; Worth, Patience.
Sources: Gina Covina. The Ouija Book.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979;
Stoker Hunt. Ouija: The Most Dangerous
Game. New York: Harper & Row, 1985;
Jane Roberts. The Coming of Seth. New
York: Pocket Books, 1976; Stewart Edward White. The Betty Book: Excursions
into the World

of Other-Consciousness.

New York: Berkley Medallion Books,

1969.

Our Lady of Lourdes

See Marian apparitions.

Ouspensky, Pyotr Demianovitch

See Gurdjieff, Georgei Ivanovitch.

Out-of-body

experience (OBE)

A phenomenon in which a person feels

separated from his or her physical body
and seems to be able to travel to, and
perceive, distant locations on Earth or in
nonworldly realms. The out-of-body experience (OBE) may be associated with
psi, but is not in itself a paranormal expenence.
Descriptions of the OBE, which are
nearly universal, date to antiquity and
contain many similarities. Nonetheless,
scientific evidence for the OBE is inconclusive, prompting skeptics to hypothe-

419

size that the OBE is not an exteriorization

but a mental exercise in an altered state
of consciousness. OBEs also are called
"astral projection," "astral travel," and
"exteriorization."
Approximately onequarter of the adult Western population
believe they have had at least one OBE.

Cultural Beliefs
The belief that the consciousness can
separate from the body has been held in
many civilizations throughout history.
The ancient Egyptians described a ka, a
vehicle of the mind and soul (ba). The
mysteries of Isis and Osiris had initiation
rites that required projection of the ka.
The initiation rites of the Mithraic mysteries also centered on out-of-body projection. Plato held that the soul could
leave the body and travel. Socrates, Pliny,
and Plotinus gave descriptions of experiences that resemble OBEs; Plotinus wrote
of being "lifted out of the body into myself" on many occasions. Plutarch described an OBE that occurred to Aridanaeus in A.D. 79. The Tibetan Book of the
Dead describes a "Bardo-body," an ethereal duplicate of the physical body, in
which the deceased find themselves. The
existence of an apparitional body is acknowledged in Mahayana Buddhism. The
ancient Chinese said they could achieve
OBE during meditation. OBEs are a phenomenon of yoga, but not a goal; they,
like other phenomena called siddhis, can
be obstacles to enlightenment. See Siddhis.
Shamans in tribal cultures say they
project themselves out-of-body at will by
achieving an ecstatic state of consciousness.
The belief in doubles, phantom duplicates that appear to be real, is widespread. See Bilocation; Double.

Characteristics of the GBE

While accounts of OBEs vary, there
are common characteristics. Most often

420

reported is the existence of a second, subtle body that becomes the vehicle for
travel. The subtle body is described as a
ghostly, semitransparent double of the
physical body that is either naked,
clothed in duplicate clothing, or clothed
in other apparel. To other individuals it is
usually invisible, though its presence may
be sensed. If seen it appears to be an apparition. Some individuals report having
no form at all, or being points of light or
presences of energy. The existence of a
silvery cord connecting the astral form to
the physical body is reported seen or
sensed in a minority of cases.
In the astral form, OBE travelers report moving about the earth plane like
apparitions, passing through walls and
solid objects. They say they travel with
the speed of thought. Travel to nonearthly realms called the astral plane are
much different, with contact with objects
and beings who "feel" solid and real.
The onset of an OBE occurs spontaneously during waking consciousness; before, during, and after sleep; during severe illness; and at times of great stress,
trauma, or fear. Some individuals believe
that OBEs occur to everyone during
sleep. OBEs also can be induced by hypnosis, meditation, and other techniques.
The physical body may be lying, sitting,
or standing.
The near-death experience (NDE)
usually involves some form of OBE. Some
people who have clinically died or come
close to death report the separation of
their consciousnesses from their bodies.
They watch efforts to restore their physical forms to life, or travel into an apparent afterlife state. See Near-death experience (NDE).
The OBE is often preceded by a perception of strong and high-frequency vibrations.
Individuals report leaving
through their head or solar plexus, or
simply rising up and floating away. Reentry is accomplished by returning
through the head or solar plexus, or by

Out-of-body experience (OBE)

melting back into the body. It is believed

that if the silver cord is severed while one
is out-of-body, physical death occurs because the body has been cut off from its
soul. The cord also is said to snap when
the body dies and the consciousness, or
soul, is released.
Individuals who are in pain often report an absence of pain during an OBE.

Historical Research
The most systematic, early experimentation in OBEs was conducted by
four individuals. Yram, born Marcel
Louis Forhan (1884-1917),
was a
Frenchman who believed everyone was
capable of astral travel in a variety of
bodies of various densities and dimensions, which he chronicled in his book,
Practical Astral Travel. Yram paid outof-body visits to a woman whom he later
married; the two traveled astrally together and experienced ecstatic astral sex.
Sylvan Muldoon, an American, researched OBEs from 1915 to 1950, as a
result of his spontaneous OBEs beginning
at age twelve. Muldoon was a sickly
youth who spent a good deal of time in
bed. As his health improved, his OBEs
became less frequent. Muldoon traveled
about in a double the exact duplicate of
his physical body. He remained on the
earth plane. He sometimes felt pain when
our-of-body, which runs contrary to most
descriptions. Muldoon
believed that
dreams of falling and flying corresponded
to movements during astral travel. He
wrote of his research in The Projection of
the Astral Body (1929), coauthored with
psychical researcher Hereward
Carrington.
Englishman Oliver Fox, born Hugh
G. Callway in 1885, was also a sickly
child. He did not experience OBEs until
adulthood, however, when he succeeded
in inducing them with lucid dreaming; he
experimented between 1902 and 1938.
Fox's "Dream of Knowledge" was an ef-

Out-of-body experience (OBE)

fort to remain awake mentally while

sleeping physically. He published his account in 1920 in English Occult Review;
it was later published as a book, Astral
Projection.
Englishman J. H. M. Whiteman
claimed to have more than two thousand
OBEs between 1931 and 1953, which
he described in The Mystical Life (1961).
He had his first OBE at age twelve in
1919 without realizing what had happened. Whiteman considered his OBEs to
be mystical experiences. He sometimes
found himself in the form of a child or a
female.
More recently, various surveys have
sought to establish the frequency and nature of OBEs. A difficulty in assessing the
results, however, is that perceptions of
what constitutes an OBE vary. A 1954
survey of 155 Duke University sociology
students by Hornell Hart yielded 27.1
percent who said they had had an OBE.
Two surveys of undergraduates at two
British universities by Celia Green (1967)
yielded 19 percent (of 115 persons) and
34 percent (of 380 persons). In 1971
Charles T. Tart reported that 44 percent
of 150 marijuana users said they h;1d
been out-of-body. The first survey of randomly selected individuals, one thousand
residents and students from Charlottesville, Virginia, conducted by John Palmer
and M. Dennis (1975), drew a positive
response from 25 percent of the students
and 14 percent of the residents.
Laboratory experiments have tended
to yield disappointing results, even with
individuals who claim to be able to project our-of-body at will. Tests for ESP
during OBEs have had sporadic results.
Typically, individuals asked to travel to
distant locations and report back what
they observed have been either partially
or completely wrong. Subjects, on the
other hand, feel they have observed something quite clearly.
Tests conducted with animals have
been more promising. For example, ex-

421

periments conducted in the late 1970s

with psychic Keith Harary and kittens
showed a measurable change in one kitten's behavior during Harary's out-ofbody efforts to calm two of them. However, it is possible the results could have
been obtained by psychokinesis, telepathy
or clairvoyance. See Animal psi.
Other tests done during sleep have
showed that the OBE does not correspond to the dream state, which occurs
during the REM (rapid eye movement)
stage of sleep.
Theories to explain OBEs fall into
two camps: (1) that something does leave
the body, and (2) that nothing leaves the
body. None of the theories in either camp
adequately explains OBEs.
Those who believe that something
leaves the body ascribe to one of three
general explanations: (1) a physical double travels in the physical world; (2) a
nonphysical double travels in the physical
world; and (3) a nonphysical double
travels in a mental astral world. The first
theory is problematic because it requires
the existence of unknown matter and energy and an unknown (and inaccurate)
means of seeing. The second theory presents a great unknown, "nonphysical
double," whatever that is; and it assumes
that if consciousness is projected from the
body, then it must normally be "in the
body," which also is unknown. In the
third theory, if such a mental astral realm
exists, it is not known whether it is created by private thought or is part of a
collective unconscious shared by all. Thus
do all OBE trips go to the same astral
world?
Those who think nothing leaves the
body in an OBE look to two main theories: (1) parapsychological, in which the
OBE is imagination plus psi; and (2) psychological, in which the OBE is a hallucinatory experience, the manifestation of
the Self to the Self, the ego's denial of the
inevitable death of the physical body.
Both theories assume that nothing sur-

422

vives physical death, a notion many people find difficult to accept.

Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung considered
the nature of OBEs in his work with patients, some of whom reported seeing
doubles. Jung hypothesized that in some
cases the doubles were a projection of archetypes, representing hypothetical contents of the collective unconscious and revealing hidden psychological meanings.

Monroe, Hemi-Sync, and

the GBE
Despite the lack of scientific evidence, the work and OBE claims of Robert A. Monroe have attracted a wide audience, including numerous scientists.
Monroe, who says he has had thousands
of OBEs, does not attempt to prove anything concerning OBEs; the experiences,
he says, must simply be accepted for what
theyare.
A former radio and television executive of Westchester County, New York,
Monroe began having spontaneous OBEs
during his sleep in 1958. At first he
thought he was mentally ill. Then he decided to experiment and investigate. In
1961 he and his family moved to Richmond, Virginia. There, in 1962, he established a research and development operation to pursue his experiments. Monroe
published his account of his OBE adventures in Journeys Out of the Body in
1971. He described an astonishing range
of experiences, both pleasant and unpleasant, in which he encountered other
intelligences, some of whom provided assistance; demonic or subhuman entities
and thought-forms who attacked him; an
energy presence of overwhelming magnitude (he does not say whether or not it
was "God"); the astral forms of other humans; sexual experiences on the astral
level, which produced intense shocks by a
seeming interflow of electrons (comparable to Yram's experience). He occasionally had difficulty reentering his body,

Out-of-body experience (OBE)

and on one occasion entered a corpse by

mistake.
Monroe identifies various levels of
reality encountered in the OBE state. Locale I is the here-and-now earth plane.
Locale II is the astral plane, the place
where everyone goes in sleep, and where
numberless beings and entities and concepts of heaven and hell exist; it is infinite. Locale III transcends time and space
and appears to be a parallel universe. According to Monroe there are yet unidentified, higher realms beyond our ability to
comprehend.
Following Journeys Monroe pursued
research in inducing OBEs through sound
by producing brain waves associated with
the OBE state. The research was conducted at his own laboratory, renamed
the Monroe Institute for Applied Sciences
in 1971. In 1975 he obtained a patent for
Hemi-Sync, sound that synchronizes the
left and right hemispheres of the brain
and induces physical sleep while allowing
the mind to remain alert and active. With
Hemi-Sync he devised a program called
the "Gateway Voyage," which takes participants to successively expanded levels
of consciousness. Not all participants report having OBEs. Those who do describe Locale I and II experiences, including meeting the spirits of the dead and

Out-of-body

experience

(OBE)

nonphysical entities, and experiencing

mystical bliss in the presence of what
some believe is God. No one other than
Monroe, apparently, has reached Locale
III.
Sources: Jean-Noel Bassior. "Astral Travel." New Age Journal (November/December 1988): 44--49+; David Black. Ekstasy:
Out-of-the-Body
Experiences. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975; Susan J. Blackmore. Beyond the Body: An Investigation
of Out-of-the-Body
Experiences. London:
William Heinemann Ltd., 1982; Susan
Blackmore. Parapsychology and Out-ofthe-Body Experiences. Monograph. London: Transpersonal Books, 1978; Robert
Crook all. Out-of-the-Body Experiences: A
Fourth Analysis. New York: University
Books, 1970; Robert Crookall. The JungJaffe View of Out-of-the-Body
Experiences. Booklet. London: World Fellowship
Press, 1970; Oliver Fox. Astral Projection:
A Record of Out-of-the-Body
Experiences.

1920. Secaucus, NJ: The Citadel Press,

1962; Celia Green. Out-of-the-Body Experiences. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1968;
Janet Lee Mitchell. Out-of-Body Experiences: A Handbook. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1981; Robert A. Monroe. Journeys
Out of the Body. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971; Robert A. Monroe. Far
Journeys.
Garden City, NY: Dolphin!
Doubleday, 1985.

423

p
Palmistry
A method of divination by the shape of
the hands and the lines and mounds on
the palms and fingers. Palmistry is one of
the oldest forms of divination, and until
modern times was more commonly
known as cheiromancy or chiromancy.
The exact age and origin of palmistry are not known. Prehistorical hand
prints found on cave walls in France,
Spain, and Africa may have had a magical significance connected with the development of palmistry. As a method of divination, it is believed to have started as
early as 3000 B.C. in either China or India
and then spread westward. One theory
places its beginning at about 1100 B.C.,
when the first written works appeared on
physiognomy, the art of judging a person
based on facial features.
Palmistry was popular during the
Middle Ages. Adherents believed that the
lines upon a hand were stamped by occult
forces and would reveal character and
destiny. They looked for support to such
biblical scriptures as Isaiah 49:16, "Behold, I have graven thee on the palms of
thy hands; thy walls are continually before me"; Job 27:7, "He sealeth up the
hand of every man; that all men may
know his work"; and Proverbs 3:16,
"Length of days in her right hand, and in
her left hand riches and honor."
Most Western medieval hand-readers were village wise women, witches,

424

and Gypsies. Among the Kabbalists rabbis were skilled at it and read palms after
Sabbath to foretell the future.
In the fifteenth century, the church
forbade palmistry and other forms of divination and ordered all written works on
the subjects confiscated, merely driving
the practice underground. Intellectual interest waned of its own accord with the
advent of the age of science and reason in
the seventeenth century. Palmistry became a parlor art, popularized in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries by
such figures as "Cheiro," the pseudonym
of "Count" Louis Harmon, an Irish fortuneteller.
In India, China, and other parts of
the East, palmistry remains part of some
esoteric teachings and continues to be
used for divination.
A palmist first looks at the shape of
the hand, which indicates physical or artistic activities. The left hand is said to
reveal destiny at birth; the right is a map
of how successfully the destiny has been
carried out. Roles of the hands are reversed for left-handed people. The palmist then observes the lines, digits, and
fleshy mounds, which have correspondences to the signs of the zodiac, sun,
moon, and planets, and indicate such factors as longevity, health, emotions, intellect, love, luck, money, psychic ability,
and so on.
In one form of Chinese palmistry,
the hand is analyzed based on the five

Palmistry

elements of earth, air, fire, water, and

ether, which represent the physical, emotional, creative, intellectual, and spiritual
aspects of a person. In acupuncture and
moxa therapy, the lines of the palm are
said to reveal changes in internal organs.
As a means of prediction, palmistry,
like other forms of divination, reflects the
conditions of the moment. Edgar Cayce
once said that a palmistry prediction was
about 20 percent absolute and 80 percent
chance, depending on free will. Palmists
say choices can physically change the
hands, within certain limits. In China it is
believed that the palm patterns can be improved through Zen and yoga disciplines,
especially in young children. See Divination.
Sources: Michael Asano. Hands: The Complete Book of Palmistry. New York: Japan

Publications, 1985; Raymond Buckland.

Buckland's

Complete

Book of Witchcraft.

St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications,

1986; Emile Grillot de Givry. Witchcraft,
Magic and Alchemy. New York: Houghton
Mifflin, 1931; Shifu Terence Dukes. Chinese Hand Analysis. New York: Samuel
Weiser, 1987; Charles Emmons. Chinese
Ghosts and ESP. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow
Press, 1982; Individual Reference File of
Extracts

from the Edgar Cayce Readings.

Virginia Beach, VA: Edgar Cayce Foundation, 1976; Nancy MacKenzie. Palmistry
for Women. New York: Warner Books,
1973; Gershom Scholem. Kabbalah. New
York: New AmericanLibrary, 1974; Keith
Thomas. Religion and the Decline of
Magic. New York: Scribner, 1971; Doreen
Valiente. An ABC of Witchcraft Past and
Present. Custer, WA: Phoenix Publishing,
1973.

Paracelsus (1493-1541)
One of the greatest alchemists and Hermetic philosophers, whose remarkable
but unorthodox healing methods endeared him to the public and estranged
him from the medical establishment.

Paracelsus

(1493-1541)

Paracelsus believed in natural magic, a

holistic approach to medicine, and the existence of the aura, which influenced
health. His contemporaries called him
"the Second Hermes" and "the Trismegistus of Switzerland." Later writers often erroneously labeled him a magician.
He was born on or near November
10, 1493, in Einsiedeln, Switzerland; another birth date given is December 17,
1493. The only son of a poor German
physician, he was christened Philipp us
Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim. He was known as Theophrastus
until he graduated from college, when he
renamed himself Paracelsus, or "above
Celsus," which reflected his egotistical
belief that he was greater than the Roman
physician Celsus.
In school Paracelsus excelled in
chemistry and medicine, earning a bachelor's degree in the latter from the University of Vienna in 1510. He also earned
a doctorate, perhaps from the University
of Ferrara.
At age twenty he began a series of
long travels that lasted over a twelve-year
period. It is thought that he learned the
Hermetic secrets from Arabian adepts in
Constantinople, and learned about elementals and other spirits from the Brahmins of India. After great success as an
army physician, he set himself to reforming medicine. His disdain for physicians
was exceeded only by his hatred of
women. There is no record of any romantic involvements in his entire life.
As a doctor Paracelsus gained fame
for his gift of healing. He believed in a
universal, natural magic bestowed upon
all things by God, and which manifested
in physicians as healing ability. All things
in nature served a good purpose, he said,
even the midnight dew, which he collected on plates of glass. His natural remedies often worked when the traditional
wisdom of the day did not. While other
doctors treated wounds by pouring boiling oil on them to cauterize them, or am-

425

putating limbs after they became gangrenous, Paracelsus maintained wounds

would heal naturally if kept clean and
drained. He is credited with successfully
treating syphilis, gout, leprosy, and ulcers
with mercury.
He practiced an early form of homeopathy by treating plague victims with
minute amounts of their own excrement.
He practiced holism, believing that mind
and body affected the other. Imagination,
he said, was the route to self-discovery.
He believed the Hermetic principle
that human beings had a vital body (an
etheric double created and energized by
the vital life force of the universe), and
that when the vital body was depleted,
physical ailment was the result. Paracelsus said the vital body could be reenergized by bringing it into contact with
another vital body that had an overabundance of the vital life force. He is
credited with having been the original
discoverer of mesmerism, a theory of
magnetic healing put forward in the late
eighteenth century by Franz Anton Mesmer. See Mesmer, Franz Anton; Universal life force.
Like most alchemists and physicians
of his time, Paracelsus believed in astrology, the idea that humankind was governed by the movements of heavenly bodies. He used magical astrological talismans that were metal disks inscribed with
planetary symbols.
In alchemy Paracelsus led the way in
introducing chemical compounds into
medicine, and in describing zinc. He believed in the prima materia, the essence
that is the world soul, and key to the philosopher's stone. See Alchemy.
His egotism antagonized his peers.
His searing putdowns of colleagues were
so offensive that he seldom lasted long in
a post, and roamed from city to city,
plagued by increasing drinking problems.
In his early thirties, Paracelsus was invited to the chair of medicine and philosophy at the University of Basel. At a lec-

426

ture he burned the books of Galen and

Avicenna and proclaimed that his cap
had more learning in it than all the heads
in the university, and his beard had more
experience than all the academies. After
less than a year, Paracelsus was forced to
flee town.
In his travels around Europe, he borrowed money in taverns to pay for his
drink. According to legend he always repaid the loans with handsome interest
from some mysterious fund. He wore
clothes until they were rags. He worked
cures and revised old manuscripts, making a brief comeback with the publication
of Wundartzney in 1536.
The Arch-Bishop Duke Ernsty of Bavaria invited Paracelsus to Salzburg in
1541. He died there within six months,
on September 24. It is said that he was
found on a bench at the White Horse tavern in Salzburg. It is believed he was poisoned or else killed in a scuffle by assassins who were hired by his enemies. After
he was buried, his bones were dug up several times, moved, and reburied. His
memory as a great healer remained alive
with the public. As late as 1830, when an
epidemic of cholera swept close to
Salzburg, people made a pilgrimage to his
grave and prayed. The cholera spared the
residents of Salzburg, but ravaged other
parts of Austria and Germany.
Paracelsus was the first man to write
scientific books for the public. His
writings-which he dictated to his disciples-comprise most of what is known
about the ancient Hermetic system of
medicine. During Paracelsus's time the
Hermetic wisdom was rediscovered and
put to use. It declined again, only to be
rediscovered once more in the latter half
of the twentieth century. See Hermetica.
Sources: Francis Barrett. The Magus. 180l.
Reprint. Secaucus, NJ: The Citadel Press,
1967; Richard Cavendish. The Black Arts.
New York: Perigee Books, 1967; Manly P.
Hall. The Secret Teachings of All Ages.
1928. Reprint. Los Angeles: The Philo-

Paracelsus (1493-1541)

sophical Research Society, 1977; Kurt Seligmann. The History of Magic and the Occult. New York: Pantheon Books, 1948;
Colin Wilson. The Occult. New York: Vintage Books, 1973.

Paranormal photography
See Spirit photography.

Parapsychology
The scientific study of psi and related
subjects. Para means "beyond" in Greek,
and parapsychology focuses attention on
the borders of psychology, essentially the
mind-body connection and on the relationship between consciousness and the
objects of its awareness.
As a science parapsychology dates
back to the late nineteenth century with
the formation of the Society for Psychical
Research (SPR) in London. In its early
days, parapsychology was called "psychical research," a term that is most commonly used in Britain today. Throughout
its history parapsychology has been met
with a great deal of skepticism and even
hostility by the general scientific community.
Before the beginnings of parapsychology, paranormal
phenomena
in
Western culture were either associated
with the divine or the demonic or were
largely ignored. The ancient Greeks and
Romans, for example, believed in clairvoyance and precognitive dreamsusually regarded as messages from the
gods-and consulted divine oracles.
The Bible contains many references
to paranormal phenomena, including apparitions, clairvoyance, levitation, precognitive dreams and prophetic visions,
and communication with spirits of the
dead. In the later Middle Ages, the Catholic church called such phenomena "demonic" unless manifested through a
saint. But earlier on St. Augustine at-

Parapsychology

tempted to form an objective concept of

telepathy, as did St. Isidore of Seville;
their attitude recurred in Pro spero Lambertini, later Pope Benedict XIV, who in
the eighteenth century investigated alleged miraculous and paranormal phenomena. Lambertini's conclusions make
him a prototypical psychical researcher.
He said that paranormal experiences occur to all kinds of people, even animals,
and are neither divine nor demonic, but
(here echoing St. Thomas Aquinas) are
evidence of the innate capabilities of
those having the experiences.
The Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg experienced his incredible clairvoyant visions in the eighteenth century,
but they were to have a far-reaching effect on later researchers. See Swedenborg,
Emanuel. In the late eighteenth century,
Franz Anton Mesmer developed his
"magnetic" healing of patients. Paranormal phenomena were observed in some
individuals and became the object of curiosity and study. See Mesmer, Franz Anton. The rise of Spiritualism in the nineteenth century kindled a great interest in
communication with the dead and in
physical mediumship. See Mediumship;
Spiritualism.
In 1870 and 1871, the London Dialectical Society was among the first to undertake scientific investigations of phenomena associated with Spiritualism;
results were poor. In 1872 William
Crookes, eminent physicist and member
of the Royal Society, conducted experiments with the famous physical medium,
Daniel
Dunglas
Home,
and
a
Mrs. Clayer, a nonprofessional medium.
Crookes concluded he had witnessed
paranormal phenomena, which brought
him much criticism from his contemporanes.
William F. Barrett, another physicist,
was impressed, however, and in 1876 undertook experiments with hypnotized
subjects and mediumistic subjects. Barrett
believed an organization needed to be es-

427

tablished to investigate the paranormal, a

goal he finally realized in 1882 with the
founding of the SPR.
The early years of the SPR were devoted to investigations of spontaneous
psychic phenomena, mediumship, and the
question of survival after death. The primary goal was to establish evidence for
the existence of psychic phenomena. Researchers such as Frederic W. H. Myers,
Henry Sidgwick, Frank Podmore, Edmund Gurney, and Richard Hodgson
compiled an impressive amount of positive evidence and established the foundations of scientific inquiry. The SPR's
work led to the founding of the American
Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) in
1885. See American Society for Psychical
Research (ASPR); Society for Psychical
Research (SPR).

Trends in Research
Before 1930 most psychical research
was qualitative and took place outside
the laboratory. Mediums were investigated under conditions that were controlled as much as possible. Investigation
of spontaneous phenomena, such as apparitions, depended upon reports from
individuals, followed by interviews after
the fact, and on written documentation.
The 1930s ushered in an era of controlled laboratory experiments that were
evaluated statistically. The major pioneer
of this era was J. B. Rhine. He and his
wife, Louisa E. Rhine, had undertaken
psychic investigations and were among
those who found evidence of fraud by the
celebrated Boston medium, Mina Stinson
Crandon, known as "Margery" in seances. John Thomas brought Rhine to
Duke University in North Carolina in
1927 for the summer. Rhine stayed on to
help William McDougall, the head of the
psychology department, in rat experiments for his Lamarckian research. In
1930, at the suggestion of colleagues,
Rhine began experimental ESP research

428

in an effort to replicate work that had

recently been published by the SPR. McDougall wanted to establish psychical research as a legitimate university discipline. In devising the research program,
McDougall and the Rhines sought to establish standard test procedures and to
demonstrate that psychic ability is a natural faculty. Test subjects were not celebrity mediums, but average people, mostly
student volunteers. Experiments involved
forced-choice tests, such as guessing cards
in telepathy and clairvoyance tests, and
results were evaluated statistically against
chance. See ESP cards.
Rhine's impressive reports of consistent and sustained results, released in
1934, were highly controversial, but
sparked more interest and led to refinements in testing procedures. Experiments
with dice for psychokinesis (PK), the influence of mind over matter, began in
1934. See Psychokinesis (PK). Rhine's
findings on PK, first published in 1943,
were again controversial.
Rhine trained other researchers,
many of whom are still active in parapsychology today; the Rhine era of research
in forced-choice tests with cards and dice
lasted until about 1965. Rhine is credited
with naming the discipline-he adopted
"parapsychology"
from the German
term, parapsychologie,
which was introduced in the late nineteenth century by
philosopher-psychologist Max Dessoir.
Rhine also coined the term "extrasensory
perception," commonly referred to as
ESP. See ESP (extrasensory perception).
Much of the terminology used in the field
today developed out of Rhine's research
at Duke. The early promise of his workthat psi could be shown to be universal
and controllable-was not fulfilled, however, and remains elusive.
Between 1930 and 1960, little research was done on spontaneous phenomena, though notable work was done
beginning in 1948 by Louisa E. Rhine.
Her findings confirmed the major find-

Parapsychology

ings of the SPR. Work was also done by

G. N. M. Tyrrell in England, who produced a now-classic study on apparitions.
See Apparition.
By the 1960s the concept of consciousness was rediscovered in psychology, and parapsychological interest began
turning to the psychological processes involved in psi, as ESP and PK collectively
are known. See Psi. This focused increasing attention on "process-oriented" research on psi, that is, on how psi performance is affected by variables such as
altered states of consciousness, time, distance, mood, personality, and attitude toward psi. Tests were devised for freeresponse ESP (instead of forced-choice).
Here subjects described whatever images
or information came to mind.
One of the best examples of freeresponse experiments was the dream ESP
work conducted at Maimonides Hospital
in Brooklyn, New York, under the direction of Montague Ullman and Stanley
Krippner, in the 1960s and 1970s. After
that program ended, free-response work
continued in a sensory-deprivation condition called the "ganzfeld," adapted from
mainstream psychology by Maimonides
team member Charles Honorton,
a
Maimonides team member. See Altered
states of consciousness; Dreams; Ganzfeld stimulation. Still other significant
free-response research was in remote
viewing, the seeing of distant objects
clairvoyantly or by out-of-body travel,
conducted beginning in the 1970s by
Russell T arg and Harold Puthoff of the
Stanford Research Institute in California,
and by many others. See Remote viewing.
Interest in macro-PK revived in the
1960s, marked by experiments with Ted
Serios (see Thoughtography), Uri Geller,
Nina Kulagina, and others. The term
"macro-PK" was applied to observable
phenomena that do not require statistical
evaluation, such as large-scale movement
of objects or metal bending. MicroPK occurring at a quantum level has

Parapsychology

attracted the attention of some physicists.

Beginning in the 1970s, some parapsychologists advocated paying less attention to proving the existence of psi
and more attention to applying it to other
sciences and fields. The future of applied
psi is uncertain, due to the unpredictable
and unreliable nature of psi itself. See Applied psi; Dowsing; Psychic archaeology;
Psychic criminology.
Parapsychology

Elsewhere

Some of the roots of European psychical research go back to interest in mesmerism. In the late nineteenth century,
some attention was devoted to Spiritualist phenomena. Psychical research began
to intensify around 1900, especially in relation to psychology and abnormal psychology. In 1914 the Institut Metapsychique International was founded in
Paris, and in 1928 the Institut fur Parapsychologie was founded in Berlin.
Researchers
such as Theodore
Flournoy, Pierre Janet, Hans Bender,
Charles Richet, and others explored automatisms, telepathic hypnosis, and mediumship. See Automatic writing; Automatisms; Smith, Helene; Telepathic
hypnosis. Exposes of fraudulent mediums, however, diminished this emphasis
in the 1930s.
Following World War II, the first
Chair of Parapsychology was established
at Utrecht University in the Netherlands,
and was accepted by W. H. C. Tenhaeff.
In 1953 the university was host to the
First International Conference on Parapsychological Studies, sponsored by the
Parapsychology Foundation, an organization established in 1951. See Garrett, Eileen J.
Statistical research in the fashion of
Rhine has been conducted in Europe, but
never to the same extent as in the United
States or Britain; most research has concerned spontaneous and individual cases.

429

However, experimental research on the

Anglo-American model has increasingly
gained a foothold in Europe, which has
produced some of the finest recent research, reported in the European Journal
of Psychology.
Interest in psi in Soviet-bloc nations
has developed independently of the West
with its own terminology, such as "psychotronics" or "bio-communication" in
place of parapsychology. See PsychotronlC5.

In Russia investigation of psi intensified following the visit of medium

Daniel Dunglas Home in 1871. By the
late 1870s, Russia had a periodical, Rebus, devoted exclusively to the subject.
Research was conducted in hypnosis and
telepathy, and information was exchanged with European and British researchers.
After the Russian Revolution, psychical research continued. Most notable
was the work of L. L. Vasiliev, who investigated hypnosis at a distance. Vasiliev
attempted to confirm a hypothesis that
hypnosis was produced by the radiation
of brain waves, but his efforts failed
when neither distance nor electromagnetic influence was shown to have any
impact on hypnosis.
During the Stalinist regime, psychical
research was discredited and repressed.
As late as 1956, telepathy, for example,
was officially defined as antisocial and
impossible.
Little is known about Soviet research
since then. In 1970 Lynn Schroeder and
Sheila Ostrander published Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, which
described their visit to the Soviet Union in
1968. According to the authors, Soviet
psychical research was advanced compared with that in the West, and the beneficiary of much more funding and government support. The Soviets were said
to be focusing on how to harness psychic
power, especially for military purposes.
Also in the late 1960s, Nina Kulagina, a

430

Leningrad housewife with alleged PK

powers, came to attention, but dropped
from the scene within a few years.
Czech researchers have pursued
paranormal healing in the form of
"bioenergy," a term for the universal life
force.
Psychical research societies and organizations also have been established in
Mexico, Latin America, Japan, and South
Africa. In Latin America much attention
is devoted to psychical healing. In Mexico
the Catholic church includes education
on parapsychology in its seminary training programs for priests.
The Progress and Future of
Parapsychology
The Rhine era brought parapsychology some increased academic acceptance,
but further progress has been slow. Although the number of parapsychology
courses taught has increased, few universities have institutionalized parapsychology. The Parapsychological Association,
founded in 1957, was not admitted to the
American Association for the Advancement of Science until 1969. The Koestler
Chair of Parapsychology was established
in 1985 at the University of Edinburgh,
funded in part from a bequest from
writer Arthur Koestler.
Disagreement exists among parapsychologists as to how much the field has
progressed since 1882. The empirical evidence for psi remains inadequate, though
some researchers feel psi has been proven.
Certainly, the lack of progress can be attributed in part to the lack of research
funds and serious support by the scientific and academic communities. Fraudulent research has been exposed over the
years, especially in the 1970s; despite the
low incidence of it, the integrity of the
field sometimes has been seriously damaged. Many scientists, however, remain
skeptical about parapsychology, and
some of them work actively against it. See

Parapsychology

Committee for the Scientific Investigation

of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP).
Some researchers forecast an increasing emphasis on applied science, including parapsychology, in the twenty-first
century. They predict that individuals
will be trained in visualization, meditation, and control of physiological processes, and in the development and use of
psychic abilities. One of the most promising areas for applied psi is seen in behavioral medicine. It is also speculated
that advances in physics will show psi to
be some sort of special physical phenomenon. The interaction of psi with consciousness remains largely unexplored.
The interest that spawned psychical
research in the late nineteenth century
was in part a reaction to the materialistic
mode of thought that separated science
and religion. It is significant that recent
research into consciousness and physics
points to the need to reintegrate the two.
To that end parapsychology may be able
to playa major role. See also Animal psi;
Decline/incline effects; Drugs in mystical
and psychic experiences; Experimenter
effect; Psi hitting and psi missing; Sheep/
goat effect.
Sources: John Beloff. The Importance of
Psychical Research. Monograph. London:

The Society for Psychical Research, 1988;

John Beloff. "The Changing Face of Parapsychology." ASPR Newsletter 14, no. 1
(January 1988): 1-3; Susan Blackmore.
"Do We Need a New Psychical Research?"
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 55, no. 810 (January 1988): 49-59;
Martin Ebon, ed. The Signet Handbook of
Parapsychology. New York: New Ameri-

can Library, 1978; Hoyt L. Edge, Robert L.

Morris, John Palmer, and Joseph H. Rush.
Foundations of Parapsychology.
Boston:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986; Ivor
Grattan-Guinness. Psychical Research: A
Guide to Its History, Principles and Practices. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire,

England: The Aquarian Press, 1982; Edgar

D. Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science. Edited by John White.

Past-life recall

New York: Paragon Books, 1974; A. R. G.

Owen. "Parapsychology: Failure or Success?" ASPR Newsletter 15, no. 1 (Winter
1989): 1-3; Betty Shapin and Lisette Coly,
eds. Parapsychology's
Second Century:
Proceedings of an International Conference
Held in London, England, August 13-14,

1982. New York: Parapsychology Foundation, 1983; Benjamin B. Wolman, ed.

Handbook of Parapsychology. New York:
Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977.

Parapsychology

Foundation

See Garrett, Eileen J.

Past-life recall
The remembering of alleged previous
lives. Past-life recall can occur spontaneously or can be induced through various
methods such as hypnosis, bodywork, or
yoga. Whether the memories actually are
of historical past lives or are reconstructions of material from the subconscious is
a matter of controversy. Scientific investigations of spontaneous past-life memories have yielded impressive evidence in
support of reincarnation, but past-life recall remains scientifically inconclusive.
Eastern mysticism provides for pastlife recall. As early as A.D. 400, Patanjali,
credited with compiling the Yoga Sutras,
said that all details of past lives and all
impressions of karma exist in the chitta,
or subconscious mind, and can be awakened through yoga meditation.
Past-life memories also seem to bubble to the surface of consciousness spontaneously, particularly in young children
in non-Western cultures. James G. Matlock, American parapsychologist and anthropologist, hypothesizes that children
remember past lives more readily than
adults because they are physically and
psychologically less mature. With maturity past-life memories have more difficulty penetrating the waking state.

431

One of the earliest documented cases

of spontaneous past-life recall is that of
Katsugoro, a Japanese son of a farmer
born in 1815. At age nine Katsugoro told
his sister about his previous life as the son
of a farmer in another village. He had
died of smallpox at age six in 1810. He
said that until he was four, he had remembered everything about his past life,
including his death, burial, between-lives
state, and rebirth. He described his
previous-life family and village, though
he had never been to the village. An investigation corroborated his statements.
Modern scientific investigations of
past-life recall have focused on the spontaneous memories of children. One of the
leading investigators is Ian Stevenson,
professor of psychiatry at the University
of Virginia, who began investigating
claims in the 1960s and collected more
than two thousand cases by the late
1980s. Most of them occur in the East,
where cultural support for past-life recall
exists. Western cases are few and weak
because parents tend to ignore or suppress what they think are fantasies. Stevenson considers a case "solved" when a
child's statements are accurate in reference to an identifiable deceased person.
Matlock identifies four types of
spontaneous
past-life memory:
(1)
verbal-the recall of names, dates, and
other facts; (2) imaged-that which enables children to recognize people and
places; (3) behavioral-personality
traits,
interests, skills, and so on; and (4)
physical-similarities
in appearance to
the deceased, including birthmarks. These
memories exist in varying strengths, depending upon any number of variables,
such as the circumstances of the deceased's life and manner of death, and
particular cultural beliefs about how one
may be reborn.
Certain universal features do exist.
In almost all documented child cases, the
subject was between the ages of two and
five when he or she first began talking

432

about a past life; the mean age is about

two-and-a-half years. Cases beginning at
or beyond age eight are rare. A high number involve violent death or sudden natural death. "Unfinished business" figures
in many cases, and may account for the
recall. Birthmarks may exist where a
death wound was made. Or an inexplicable phobia might be related to the manner of death, such as fear of water due to
drowning.
Some children make only a few statements about a past life, while others talk
incessantly about it and demand to be
taken to their previous home. Some may
talk about past lives at certain times of
the day, such as just after waking from
sleep, or when they are stimulated by a
person or object. Some children say they
remember their past life because they did
not eat a "fruit of forgetfulness" given
to them by spirit guides before reincarnating.
Other theories hold that so-called
past-life memories are instead the products of telepathy, inherited memory,
spirit possession, cryptomnesia (forgotten
memories), and paramnesia (illusions of
memory on the part of the children or
adults involved). Stevenson does not reject those theories, but refutes them for
the majority of cases.
Many individuals feel they experience spontaneous past-life recall through
deja vu, dreams, intuitive flashes, visions,
and resonances (strong likes and dislikes).
Information obtained from these experiences usually is sketchy and seldom yields
anything that can be verified historically.
Physical traumas-especially
head
injuries that result in unconsciousness,
concussion, or coma, and illnesses involving high fevers and delirium-have been
known to stimulate apparent past-life
memories. One of the most dramatic
cases was that of Dorothy Eady of England. In 1907, at age three, Eady fell
down a flight of stairs. She was pronounced dead but revived with no inju-

Past-life recall

ries. Soon after she began having strange

dreams of a temple and garden, and began complaining to her parents that she
was not "home," but did not know
where "home" was. As she grew older,
she came to believe that she had lived in
ancient Egypt as a young and illicit lover
of Sety the First (1306 B.c.-1290 B.C.),a
pharaoh in the Nineteenth Dynasty. She
had been a priestess sworn to virginity,
but had become pregnant with Sety's
child and had committed suicide.
Eady began experiencing nocturnal
out-of-body trips to visit Sety in the afterworld, and in turn was visited by his
spirit at night. She moved to Egypt and
lived in the primitive village of Arabet
Abydos where the ruins of Sety's temple
are located. She believed that if she renewed her ancient priestess vows of chastity and fealty, she and Sety would be reunited forever upon her death. Eady died
in 1981.
Hypnosis is by far the most common
means of induced past-life regression. In
hypnotic regression an individual is put
into a trance, usually light but sometimes
deep, and directed to go back in time and
describe what he or she experiences.
Some individuals have vivid and moving
experiences, others do not. Here again,
most memories are not evidential.
The appearance of past-life memories under hypnosis was first observed
during the practice of mesmerism in the
late eighteenth century. See Hypnosis.
One of the first systematic researchers of
induced past-life recall was Colonel Albert de Rochas, a French psychical investigator who hypnotized nineteen men and
women subjects beginning in 1904. He
found they regressed easily to past lives,
but his efforts to verify their information
were largely unsuccessful, due to lack of
records and, in some cases, inconsistencies between records and regression testimony.
Hypnotic recall of past lives is not
scientifically reliable, as was demon-

Past-life recall

strated as early as 1906 in the Blanche

Poynings case in England. A young
woman, identified as Miss c., claimed
under hypnosis to have lived as Blanche
Poynings at the end of the fourteenth century during the reign of King Richard II.
Poynings said she was a close friend of
Maud, the Countess of Salisbury, and
gave great detail about the Countess's
life. An investigation disclosed that the
true source of Miss Co's "past life" was a
novel, Countess Maud or the Changes of
the World, A Tale of the Fourteenth Century (1892), which Miss C. had read but
had forgotten.
Some hypnotic past-life regressions
have defied explanation, such as the famous Bridey Murphy case, which
touched off a storm of controversy. In
1952 Morey Bernstein, a businessman
and amateur hypnotist in Pueblo, Colorado, experimented with a twenty-nineyear-old housewife to see if he could regress her past birth. She regressed to the
life of Bridget (Bridey) Murphy, who
lived in County Cork, Ireland, between
1798 and 1864. Critics attempted to debunk the case as a hoax. Ian Stevenson
examined the evidence and considered it
to be in support of reincarnation.
Beginning in the late 1960s, Helen
Wambach, American psychologist, conducted a ten-year survey of past-life recalls under hypnosis among 1,088 subjects. She regressed them to periods
between 2000 B.C.and the 1900s (not all
subjects had lives in a specific period) and
collected data concerning race, sex, class,
clothing and utensils, and the death experience. She concluded that fantasy and
genetic memory could not account for the
patterns that emerged in the results.
Wambach found that 49.4 percent of
past lives were as females and 50.6 percent as males, which matches true biological balance. In all time periods, the great
majority of lives were lower class and less
than 10 percent were upper class, which
also reflected general population condi-

433

tions. Based upon the number of lives reported in each time period, Wambach extrapolated world population figures, and
found they were consistent with historical
population growth.
With the exception of eleven subjects, all descriptions
of clothing, footwear, and utensils were consistent with
historical records. Racial distribution also
conformed with history. Of those who reported going through deaths, 49 percent
said they experienced acceptance, calm,
and peace; 30 percent reported joy and
release; 20 percent said they watched the
death while floating above the body; and
10 percent said they were upset or saddened by the experience.
Past-life memories can also be induced through meditation and other techniques for achieving altered states. See
Cayce, Edgar;
Cooke,
Grace;
Grant,
Joan. Rhythmic activity, such as dancing,
drumming,
chanting,
or long-distance
running,
produces
altered
or ecstatic
states in which apparent past-life memories manifest. Bodywork,
such as acupuncture or deep massage, also has been
said to stimulate such memories. Past-life
recall induced by hallucinatory
drugs
must be discounted. Some psychics give
past-life readings, describing to clients details of the clients' past lives based on impressions received by the psychic. See
Past-life therapy (PL T); Reincarnation;
Soul mate.
Sources: Morey Bernstein. The Search for
Bridey Murphy. 1965. Rev. ed. New York:
Avon, 1975; Jonathan Cotto The Search for
Om Sety. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1987; Alan Gauld. Mediumship and Survival. London: William Heinemann Ltd.,
1982; Marshall F. Gilula, M.D. "Past-Life
Recall while Running." Journal of Regression Therapy 2, no. 2 (1987): 128-30; G.
M. Glaskin. Windows of the Mind. New
York: Delacourt Press, 1974; Bruce Goldberg. Past Lives, Future Lives. New York:
Ballantine Books, 1982; Rosemary Ellen
Guiley. Tales of Reincarnation. New York:

434

Pocket Books, 1989; Lafcadio Hearn.

Gleanings
in Buddha
Fields. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1897; Frederick Lenz.
Lifetimes: True Accounts of Reincarnation.
New York: Fawcett Crest, 1977; James G.
Matlock. "The Decline of Past Life Memory with Subject's Age in Spontaneous Reincarnation Cases." In M. L. Albertson, D.
S. Ward, and K. Freeman, eds. Paranormal
Research. Ft. Collins, CO: Rocky Mountain Research Institute, in press; Shirley
MacLaine. Dancing in the Light. New
York: Bantam Books, 1985; James G. Matlock. "Reincarnation."
Lecture to Summer
Study Program (FRNM), revised and expanded, July 23, 1987; Ian Stevenson. Children Who Remember Previous Lives. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia,
1987; Ian Stevenson. Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. 2d ed. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia,
1974; Ian Stevenson. India: Cases of the
Reincarnation Type. Vol. 1. Charlottesville,
VA: University Press of Virginia, 1975; Ian
Stevenson. "Some Questions Related to
Cases of the Reincarnation Type." Journal
of the American Society for Psychical Research 168, no. 4 (October 1974): 395413; Michael Talbot. Your Past Lives: A
Reincarnation Handbook. New York: Harmony Books, 1987; Helen Wambach. Reliving Past Lives. New York: Harper &
Row Perennial Library, 1978; Ian Wilson.
All in the Mind: Reincarnation, hypnotic
regression, stigmata, multiple personality,
and other little understood powers of the
mind. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982.

Past-life therapy (PLT)

A type of psychotherapy
in which the
causes of present physical and psychological problems are traced to alleged pastlife traumas and death experiences. Pastlife therapy (PLT) has been claimed to be
effective in treating phobias, fears, aversions, cravings, guilt, sexual dysfunctions,
anger, insomnia,
depression,
insecurity,
low energy, chronic headaches and other
pains, physical disorders, and weaknesses
of parts of the body. PLT sometimes

Past-life recall

brings relief when other methods of psychotherapy fail; phobias seem to be particularly responsive, sometimes after a
single session. "Trait guilt" (such as fears
of doom and burning in hell), which is so
deep-seated that it seldom responds to
traditional psychoanalysis, does reportedly respond to PLT. The relief achieved
by PLT is said to be achieved by the release of energy that is trapped in the past
life.
PLT presupposes belief in reincarnation, or at least the acceptance of the possibility of it. However, most past-life
therapists say positive results can be
achieved regardless of belief in reincarnation on the part of the patient; most do
not attempt to prove reincarnation or
convince their patients of the validity of
it. Therapists acknowledge that reincarnation may not be the only explanation;
psychoanalysis has long recognized that
fantasizing imaginary events can have the
same therapeutic benefits as the retrieval
of real memories. Nonetheless, many
therapists feel the experiences of their patients are not likely to be fantasy, or at
least not entirely fantasy, because most
past lives reported are dreary and humdrum, not glamorous and exciting. From
a Jungian perspective, past lives can be
explained as archetypal material, or universal character formations deep within
the psyche, which become projected into
the conscious as "past life." See Archetypes.
PLT began to take form as a therapy
in the 1960s, following the sanctioning of
hypnosis as a clinical treatment by the
British Medical Association in 1955 and
by the American Medical Association in
1958. PLT goes beyond traditional psychotherapy. Psychiatrists Carl G. Jung
and Sigmund Freud both said that the individual's worst fears, pain, and trauma
are buried deep within the unconscious
mind. Freud believed the roots of those
problems could be uncovered in early
childhood experiences. Psychoanalyst

Past-life therapy

(P LT)

Otto Rank advocated going back further,

to the time spent in the womb. With the
increase in hypnotherapy, some therapists
discovered that many patients automatically regressed to what seemed to be previous lives when asked to identify the
source of a problem, thus prompting experimentation with regression.
The use of PLT as an alternative
therapy led to the formation of the Association for Past Life Research and Therapy (APRT) in Riverside, California, in
1980. It is estimated that roughly 80 percent of patients who seek PLT do so in
order to eliminate a phobia, habit, or
negative tendency. The great majority of
patients are adults; therapists are divided
on whether or not past-life therapy is appropriate for children, but agree it is not
appropriate for schizophrenics or those
who have difficulty separating reality
from fantasy. Therapists stress that PLT
does not necessarily replace conventional
treatment, especially medical.
In 1982 psychologist and past-life
therapist Helen Wambach
surveyed
APRT therapists concerning their work.
She obtained data from twenty-six therapists who had been working in the field
for an average of 7.2 years and had regressed a total of 18,463 patients. According to the findings, 94 percent of all
patients regressed to one or more apparent previous lives. A majority said that
they experienced improvement in a physical symptom. Many felt they discovered
past-life karmic ties with individuals in
their present life, and were able to release
suppressed hostility and guilt, resulting in
improvement of present relationships.
Twenty-five therapists reported taking their patients through past-life deaths.
Seventy-two percent of those who went
through the experience observed it while
floating above their bodies; 54 percent
perceived a white light and moved toward it; 15 percent reported a tunnel. Of
those whose physical problems were connected to death experiences, 60 percent

435

reported relief of symptoms after going

through the death.
The apparent ability to relive death
experiences may hold the most promise
for PL T. Most patients
discover that
though circumstances
leading to death
are sometimes traumatic,
death itself is
pleasant. The past-life death experience is
used in alternative treatment of the terminally ill to help them overcome their
fears of dying. It also seems to help people who are not terminally ill to overcome fear of death, and in some cases
helps patients realize how to better fulfill
their soul's purpose. In regression a great
deal of pain in past-life death is associated with regret over opportunities
not
taken.
People who undergo PLT say they
come into contact with their own inner
wisdom, which continues to guide them
long after the therapy. They also often
change their view of their life, seeing it as
part of a spiritual progression
in which
the soul constantly strives for perfection.
They say they become aware of certain
universal
laws, such as karma,
selfresponsibility,
and the right of others to
progress in their own fashion. They learn
there is no "good" or "bad," but that everything is relative, an opportunity
to
learn and advance.
Although remarkable cures and improvements are claimed for PL T, as of the
late 1980s there had been no significant
long-term or follow-up studies to determine if results last. Nor had there been
any systematic
studies
using control
groups. Past-life material that comes out
of PL T usually cannot be proved; but
most clients do not require proof to realize improvement in a condition. See Depossession;
Hypnosis;
Karma; Past-life
recall; Reincarnation.
Sources: Hazel Denning. "Philosophical
Assumptions
Underlying Past-Life Therapy." Journal of Regression Therapy 1, no.
2 (Fall 1986): 67-72; Edith Fiore. You
Have Been Here Before. New York: Bal-

436

lantine Books, 1978; Bruce Goldberg. Past

Lives, Future Lives. New York: Ballantine
Books, 1982; Denys Kelsey and Joan
Grant. Many Lifetimes. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday,
1967; Franklin Loehr, D.D.
"Healing the Dying: Contributions to Thanatology." Journal of Regression Therapy 2,
no. 1 (September 1987): 38-42; Morris
Netherton and Nancy Shiffrin. Past Lives
Therapy. New York: Grosset & Dunlap/
Ace Books,
1978;
Helen
Wambach
(adapted by Chet Snow). "Past-Life Therapy: The Experiences of Twenty-Six Therapists."Journal of Regression Therapy 1,
no. 2 (Fall 1986): 73-80; Helen Wambach.
Life Before Life. New York: Bantam
Books, 1979; Helen Wambach. Reliving
Past Lives. New York: Harper & Row Perennial Library, 1978; Brian L. Weiss.
Many Lives, Many Masters. New York:
Fireside Books, 1988. Roger Woolger.
Other Lives, Other Selves. Garden City,
NY: Doubleday & Co., 1987.

Patanjali
See Yoga.

Paul, St.
Christian
apostle and mISSIOnary, and
one of the most, if not the most, influential figures in the establishment
of the
Christian religion. Paul's conversion to
Christianity
resulted from a profound
mystical experience.
Paul, called Saul in Hebrew, was
born a Jew in Tarsus of Cilicia (Anatolia)
between A.D. 1 and A.D. 10. Since major
events of his life are recorded in his own
letters and in The Acts of The Apostles,
more is known about his life than of
other principal
church.

leaders

of

the

infant

In his early career, Paul studied the

strict observance of Jewish law. He even
participated
in the persecution of Christians. However, about A.D. 36, Paul had a
mystical encounter with the risen Christ,
one of the most dramatic visionary expe-

Past-life therapy

(PLT)

riences recorded in religious journals

(Galatians 1:15-16; Acts 9, 22,26). En
route to Damascus to arrest Christians,
he encountered a dazzling light and heard
a voice say, "Why do you persecute me?"
He saw no figure of Christ, but interpreted the experience as such. See Encounter phenomenon; Mystical experiences.
Paul was blinded by the light and
was led to Damascus. There his vision
was restored by Ananais, and he was
baptized. Thereafter Paul considered himself to be one of the apostles, as were
those who traveled with Christ before his
resurrection.
As the first leader of the early Christian movement beyond the Jewish community, Paul was soon known as the
"apostle to the Gentiles." The thirteen
letters (epistles) in the New Testament attributed to him are from those written
during ten years of missionary journeys
to Anatolia (now the Asian part of Turkey), Cyprus, and Greece. During that
time he changed his name from Saul to
Paul. He advised the new Christian
churches concerning proper behavior as
Christians, and preached that Jesus was
the savior of all nations.
Paul was a pioneer in evolving the
revolutionary concepts of Christianity.
He accommodated Jewish ideas to Gentile traditions and circumstances. He was
also at the heart of controversies within
the church, especially unresolved conflicts
with Peter over the extent to which Gentile Christians had to observe Jewish law.
He argued in favor of protecting Christianity from intrusion by Jewish and Hellenistic ideas and practices.
Acts describes the pattern of his successful but often radical apostolic methods, which often resulted in the conversion of many people but also conflicted
with secular authorities. He was beaten
and arrested on more than one occasion.
In Jerusalem he was arrested and imprisoned for two years, but continued to

Paul, St.

preach. He appealed his case to Caesar

and was sent to Rome to be tried as a
Roman citizen. There he was jailed for
two more years, but probably was acquitted and was set free. Eventually, Paul was
arrested again and was martyred c. 67,
when Nero had him executed. His liturgical feast day, shared with Peter, is
June 29.

Paul's Teachings
All of Paul's major concepts build on
his analogy of the church as the "Body of
Christ." It is used throughout his teaching of the relationship between Christ
andJas the church; it is also the foundation for his theology of justification, redemption, sacraments, and his understanding of the general dynamic of the
entire Christian life. Therefore Paul's frequent use of the phrases "in Christ" and
"with Christ" is especially significant.
However, modern controversies surround
Paul's seemingly contradictory condemnation of the flesh while he used images
of the body to praise the soul, most notably throughout his concept of the Mystical Body of Christ.
Paul's concept of justification by
faith has influenced the key notions of
contrasting philosophies of man, such as
existentialist
philosopher
Jean Paul
Sarte's unconditioned human freedom;
and psychologies such as Carl G. Jung's
individuation, and Abraham H. Maslow's self-actualization, since they each
also focus on the necessity of developing
resources, creative exercise of freedom,
and overcoming self-deception in order to
achieve meaningful existence. See Psychology.
There has been a significant revival
of interest in Paul's theology since the
1960s with the advent of worldwide
charismatic movements. Paul first introduced the word "charisma" (from the
Greek meaning "grace") into theological
terminology and explained the charisma

437

as characteristic of the faithful in general,

who use the special gifts of the Holy
Spirit to build up the community in a special way and to get charismatic movements started. However, Paul emphasized
ethics over miracles, finding the reconciliation of the different social groups
within the churches as more "miraculous" than the miracles recorded in the
gospels. See Charismatic renewal; Christology; Jesus; Mysticism, Christian.
Sources: "An Introduction to the Letters of
Saint Paul." In The Jerusalem Bible. New
York: Doubleday, 1966; Pat Alexander, ed.
The Lion Encyclopedia of the Bible. Rev.
ed. Tring, England: Lion Publishing, 1986;
James L. Breed. "The Church as the 'Body
of Christ': A Pauline Analogy." Theology
Review 6, no. 2 (1985): 9-32; W. D. Davies. Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Elements in Pauline Theology. Minneapolis:
Augsburg Fortress, 1980; Experiences in
Faith, Book III. New York: Herder &
Herder, 1969; John McManners, ed. The
Oxford

Illustrated History of Christianity.

Oxford, England: Oxford University Press,

1990; Nourished with Peace: Studies in
Hellenistic Judaism. Edited by Frederick

Greenspahn, Earle Hilgert, and Burton

Mack. Homage Series no. 9. Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1984.

Peak experiences
Psychologist Abraham H. Maslow's term
for nonreligious quasi-mystical and mystical experiences. Peak experiences are a
sudden flash of intense happiness and
feelings of well-being, and perhaps
awareness of "ultimate truth" and the
unity of all things. They are accompanied
by a heightened sense of control over the
body and emotions, and a wider sense of
awareness, as though one is standing on a
mountaintop. Maslow described peak experiences as having a special flavor of
wonder and awe. The individual, he said,
feels at one with the world and pleased
with it; he or she has seen the ultimate
truth or the essence of all things.

438

Maslow's ground-breaking work on

peak experiences and the innate spiritual
yearnings of all human beings brought a
scientific interest to mysticism that had
been absent since psychologist and philosopher William James's work at the
turn of the twentieth century. See James,
William.
Maslow described peak experiences
as self-validating, self-justifying moments
with their own intrinsic value; never negative, unpleasant or evil; disoriented in
time and space; and accompanied by a
loss of fear, anxiety, doubts, and inhibitions.
There are two types of peak experiences: relative and absolute. Relative
peak experiences are those in which there
remains an awareness of subject and object, and which are extensions of the individual's own experiences. They are not
true mystical experiences, but rather inspirations, ecstasies, and raptures. Probably the majority of peak experiences fall
into this category. Absolute peak experiences are of a mystical nature, and can be
comparable to the experiences of the
great mystics of history. They are timeless, spaceless, and characterized by
unity, in which subject and object become
one.
Maslow said all individuals are capable of having peak experiences. Those
who are not have somehow repressed or
denied them. Individuals most likely to
have peak experiences are self-actualized:
mature, healthy, and self-fulfilled.
Peak experiences have therapeutic
value in that they foster a sense of being
lucky or graced; release creative energies;
reaffirm the worthiness of life; and
change an individual's view of himself or
herself. Maslow cautioned against seeking out peak experiences for their own
sake, echoing the lessons of mystics who
have pointed out that the sacred exists in
the ordinary. Maslow believed that domestic and public violence, alcoholism,
and drug abuse stem from spiritual emp-

Paul, St.

tiness, and that even one peak experience

might be able to prevent, or at least
abate, such ills.
Peak experiences also have been
compared to myth: They fulfill on a personal level what myths historically have
fulfilled for whole peoples. Both embody
truths that are independent of factual
knowledge, and bring about changes of
attitude. Symbols, however, have a more
minimal role in peak experiences than in
myths.
Shortly before his death in 1970,
Maslow defined the term "plateau expe~
rience" as a sort of continuing peak experience that is more voluntary, noetic,
and cognitive. He described it as a witnessing or cognitive blissfulness. The plateau experience can be achieved through
long and hard effort over the course of a
lifetime, he said.
Critics of humanistic psychology see
peak experiences as having a hedonistic
philosophy-a
morality of heightened
pleasure. Psychologist James Hillman observes that peaks and highs say nothing
of the worth of the person having them,
for they can occur among psychopaths
and criminals. Transcendence by means
of a high, he says, is a psychopathological
state in disguise. See Ecstasy; Inspiration;
Mystical experiences; Mythology; Psychology.
Sources: Thomas Armour. "A Note on the
Peak Experience and a Transpersonal Psychology." The Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology 1, no. 1 (Spring 1969): 47-50;
Daniel Goleman. The Meditative Mind:
The

Varieties

of Meditative

Experience.

Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1988;

James Hillman. Re- Visioning Psychology.
New York: Harper & Row, 1975; Edward
Hoffman. "Abraham Maslow and Transpersonal Psychology." The Common Boundary 6, issue 3 (May/June 1988): 3-5;
Abraham H. Maslow. Religion, Values and
Peak Experiences. 1964. New York: Penguin Books, 1976; Abraham H. Maslow.
Toward a Psychology of Being. 1962. 2d
ed. New York: D. Van Nostrand Co.,

Pendulum

1968; Abraham H. Maslow. "The Farther

Reaches of Human Nature." The Journal
of Transpersonal
Psychology
1, no. 1
(Spring 1969): 1-9; Arthur Warmouth. "A
Note on the Peak Experience as a Personal
Myth." Journal of Humanistic Psychology
5, no. 1 (Spring 1965): 18-21.

Pendulum
A rod-like instrument with a suspended
weight used in divination. The pendulum
is alleged to read energy patterns emanating from beings and objects, and communicate the information to the user by
swinging back and forth or in circles. The
weight is any object-a metal plumb, a
button, a coin, for example-that is hung
from a rod by a thread, string, or wire.
The precursor of the pendulum is the
divining rod or wand, used since ancient
times and referred to in the Bible as Jacob's Rod. Like the divining rod, the pendulum is said to work on the principle
that every organism has an envelope of
positive and negative energies. Each living organism must develop a means by
which it can sense these energies, so that
it can use the positive energies and avoid
the negative. The pendulum serves as a
tool that humans apparently can use to
amplify the signals. The process by which
this takes place is unknown, but users say
they "tune in," perhaps through psi, to
the energy of whatever is being sought.
Most people are able to use a pendulum
with some success, but some individuals
seem to have an innate gift for it.
Uses of the pendulum have been diverse throughout history, but the most
common are the finding of water, minerals, and objects buried in the ground, and
the finding of lost objects, thieves, missing persons, and hidden treasure. Modern
uses include medical diagnosis and treatment, geological prospecting, and military activities. In medical diagnosis, also
called medical radiesthesia, the pendulum
appears to pick up energies emanating
from every cell, tissue, and organ. Nega-

439

tive energies are associated with disease

and positive energies with good health.
These claims are unproved scientifically
and are not accepted by orthodox medicine. The pendulum has also proved useful in the military. During the Vietnam
War, US Marines were trained to use
pendula for locating underground mines,
ammunition dumps, and tunnels, and to
trace enemy movements. During World
War II, British intelligence forces reportedly used pendula to try to divine Hitler's
next moves. The pendulum also has been
used in archaeological digs, and in police
work to locate missing persons, bodies,
and criminals.
T. C. Lethbridge, British archaeologist who became intrigued by dowsing,
conducted considerable research with the
pendulum following his retirement to Devon in 1957. A neighbor, an old woman
reputed to be a witch, advised him that
the pendulum is far more accurate than
the forked-stick divining rods also used
by dowsers. In his experiments Lethbridge discovered that a pendulum appeared to have precise responses to various substances. The responses were
determined by two rate factors: the
length of the string suspending the
weight, and the number of times the pendulum rotated. For example, he found
that the response for silver was twentytwo circular rotations of a pendulum on
a twenty-two-inch string.
Lethbridge discovered the pendulum
was astonishingly accurate. By working
out rate tables, he was able to find a wide
range of things, including truffles. He
also discovered that the pendulum was
sensitive to emotions and thoughts. He
put forth theories that the pendulum
could sense death, time, and other nonphysical dimensions. Lethbridge determined that a pendulum on a forty-inch
string registered death. Beyond that
length objects seemed to respond at their
normal rate plus forty, though the pendulum reacted not over them, but off to

440

one side. Lethbridge proposed that if

forty was death, then rates beyond forty
indicated a parallel dimension beyond
death, in which everything continued to
exist but not in the same position. Still
another dimension appeared to exist beyond the rate of eighty. Lethbridge also
determined that forty was the rate for the
concept of time. Between forty and
eighty, time seemed to exist in an eternal
now, then began to flow again between
eighty and one hundred twenty, when it
stopped again.
Lethbridge's theories about time and
dimensions beyond death remain highly
controversial. His widow, Mina, said excessive work with the pendulum depleted
his vitality and contributed to his death
of a heart attack. See Dowsing; Psychic
archaeology; Psychic criminology.
Sources: ]. Havelock Fidler. Earth Energy:
A Dowser's Investigation of Ley Lines. 2d

ed. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire,

England: The Aquarian Press, 1988; Greg
Nielsen and Joseph Polansky. Pendulum
Power.
Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England: Excalibur Books, 1984; T.
C. Lethbridge. The Power of the Pendulum.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976;
T. C. Lethbridge. Ghost and Divining-Rod.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963;
Colin Wilson. Mysteries. New York: Perigee Books/G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1978.

Penn, William
See Society of Friends.

Pentecostals
Members of various denominational Protestant Christian churches who seek a
personal relationship with God through
baptism in the Holy Spirit, often characterized by speaking in tongues.
Pentecostalism
arose
in
latenineteenth- and early twentieth-century

Pendulum

America in reaction to the secularization

and rigid traditionalism of the established
churches. According to Norwegian religious scholar Nils Bloch-Hoell, the
breakdown of the old order occasioned
by the Industrial Revolution, the optimism of the nineteenth century, the rise
in science, and particularly the diversity
and tolerance of American religion made
disaffected Protestants prime candidates
for a more individual worship characterized by the "proof" of Spirit baptism:
speaking in tongues, interpretation of
tongues, and the gifts of prophecy and
healing.
"Pentecostal" comes from the Jewish
celebration of Pentecost, seven weeks after Passover. Since Jesus Christ was crucified and resurrected during Passover,
Christians measure Pentecost seven weeks
after Easter Sunday. In Acts 2:2--4 of the
New Testament, the gathered apostles experienced "a sound [came from heaven]
like the rush of a mighty wind, and it
filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues
as of fire, distributed and resting on each
one of them. And they were all filled with
the Holy Spirit and began to speak in
other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance."
For a Pentecostal true communion
with Christ has not been achieved until
he or she has received the Holy Spirit
and, like the apostles, spoken in tongues
to announce that joyous event. After the
days of the twelve apostles and St. Paul,
however, the rapidly growing church began moving away from the gifts of
tongues, prophecy, and healing, believing
them miracles of earlier times. Various
groups sought to reinstate these practices
as evidence of true Christian faith, often
to be branded as heretics, such as the
Waldensians, Montanists, Jansenists, and
French Camisards. By the fifteenth century, anyone speaking in an "other
tongue" was believed bewitched and possessed by the Devil.

Pentecostals

In the nineteenth century, however,

religious revivals sparked by the Great
Awakening in Europe and America led to
the establishment of new denominations
and independent religious thinkers, many
of whom wanted proof of the Lord's existence and humankind's relationship to
him. Baptists and Methodists, especially,
believed that people could be made perfect through God's grace. Some of
them-usually
the poorer classes and
those unschooled in the academics of
religion - impatiently sought signs of his
favor and broke away from their established churches.
One such dissident was Charles Fox
Parham, an ordained Methodist minister
who left Methodism in 1894 to become
an itinerant Holiness minister. (The Holiness Movement revived interest in
Methodist founder John Wesley's ideas of
"sanctification" -that once a person had
become a converted Christian, he or she
must experience a second, distinct act of
grace, expressed by receipt of the Holy
Spirit, to become truly saved.) Parham
emphasized God's gift of healing, and finally collected enough followers to found
a Bible college in Topeka, Kansas, to seek
the Holy Spirit.
Parham's thirty-six students gathered
in an unfinished mansion called Stone's
Folly in the summer of 1900. By December the group concluded that no visitations of the Holy Spirit had occurred in
the Bible unless accompanied by speaking
in tongues. All of the students prayed for
such a sign, but with no results. Finally,
on either New Year's Eve 1900 or New
Year's Day 1901 (both dates are credited), Agnes Ozman asked Rev. Parham
to lay his hands upon her, just as the
apostles had received Christ. When he did
Agnes poured forth strange, wonderful
sounds: an unknown tongue. Pentecostals
celebrate this date as the birth of the
modern Pentecostal movement.
Within days all the students and Parham himself began to speak in unknown

441

tongues, a phenomenon now known as

glossolalia. But financial setbacks and accusations of trickery caused Parham to
lose the school, his students, and most of
his money. He left for greener pastures in
Houston, Texas, with only his wife and
sister.
Still able to attract crowds, Parham
met William Joseph Seymour, a former
slave. Pentecostalism appealed to African-Americans, since it emphasized exuberant worship and the chance for anyone to receive God's special blessing.
Although Seymour had not yet received
the Spirit, he took Parham's teachings
with him to Los Angeles, California,
where he was to head an AfricanAmerican storefront church. He told his
congregation that unless they had been
so baptized, they were not full Christians. Disliking such ideas, the congregation fired him. But Seymour continued
preaching anyway, from street corners
and private homes.
Seymour's audiences grew, leading
him to rent a former African Methodist
Episcopal Church at 312 Azusa Street.
On September 9, 1906, an eight-year-old
boy received "the fire" of the Holy Spirit,
and the church's fame spread as more
and more people claimed to speak in
tongues, prophesy, and either heal or be
healed. Revival fever spread like wildfire,
and hostility by the established churches
and in the newspapers only served to
publicize the phenomenon around the
world. Meetings were held day and night,
attracting gamblers, drunks, prostitutes,
mediums, Spiritualists, and mockers, as
well as those truly seeking religious renewal.
Besides an emphasis on sanctification and the initial integration of the
races, the early Pentecostals also were
convinced of "British Israel" -the idea
that Anglo-Saxons are descendants of one
of the missing ten tribes of Israel. This
idea died with the separation of the
church into various white and black

442

groups, and is no longer held by Pentecostals today.

Within twenty years of its founding,
Pentecostalism split into various sects and
denominations, although all Pentecostals
share some tenets of belief. Primary
among these is the emphasis on the active, visible signs of the Lord's work:
speaking in tongues, the laying-on of
hands for healing, divination of spirits,
miracles, and prophesying. Pentecostal
churches now flourish in Europe, Latin
America (especially Brazil and Chile), Africa, Asia, Australia, and even the Soviet
Union.
Pentecostals also believe that if the
Lord is busy, so is the Devil. Pentecostals
guard against demons of sickness, fornication, and divorce, although they disagree on whether a Christian may be possessed or simply obsessed. The exorcism
of such devils is known as "deliverance
ministry," a procedure whereby the minister or healer, often accompanied by the
entire congregation, confronts the demons with prayers and laying-on of
hands. The demons depart under such
pressure, calling themselves by the vice
they exhibit: Lust, Envy, Greed, and so
forth. Although some Pentecostal pastors
reluctantly admit that psychiatric help
may be necessary, the power of prayer is
paramount.
Ironically, German Evangelists in the
early 1900s attempted to defeat the
spread of Pentecostalism by branding it
satanic. In 1911 an unnamed mentally ill
girl claimed to be possessed by a Pentecostal demon, who boasted that Pentecostalism was a plot to put Christianity
into confusion. The girl prophesied that
when her demon was exorcised, Pentecostalism would end. Doctors and psychiatrists attributed her ravings to dementia,
but some Germans still believe Pentecostalism to be diabolically inspired.
The largest American Pentecostal denomination is the Assemblies of God, established about 1914. The most famous

Pentecostals

members of this denomination are television evangelists Jimmy Swaggart, who

left the church in 1988 under the cloud of
scandal, and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, who were forced out of their ministry in 1987 in scandal. Both Swaggart
and Jim Bakker were accused of sexual
improprieties, and the Bakkers also were
accused of financial mismanagement of
their evangelical empire. Jim Bakker was
convicted on charges of the latter and
was sent to federal prison. Other large
Pentecostal sects include the Church of
God in Christ; the Pentecostal Holiness
Church; the International Church of the
Foursquare Gospel, founded by evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, a former
minister of the Assemblies of God; and
the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee). Oral Roberts, who introduced millions to the Pentecostal message via television and radio, later became a
Methodist minister. See Charismatic renewal; Glossolalia.
Sources: Richard Cavendish, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Unexplained. New York:

McGraw-Hill, 1974; Keith Crim, gen. ed.

Abingdon

Dictionary

of Living Religions.

Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1981;

W. J. Hollenweger. The Pentecostals: The
Charismatic

Movement

in the Churches.

Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House,

1972; Richard Quebedeaux. The New
Charismatics II. San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1983; D. Scott Rogo. The Infinite
Boundary. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.,
1987; John Sherrill. They Speak with Other
Tongues. New York: McGraw-Hill Book
Co., 1964.

Personal mythology
See Mythology.

Peyote
See Drugs in mystical and psychic expenences.

"Philip"

"Philip"
An artificial poltergeist created as an experiment by Canadian parapsychologists
during the 1970s. Their success demonstrates how "real" spirits can be products
of human will, expectation, and imagination.
The experiment was conducted by
eight members of the Toronto Society for
Psychical Research, under the direction of
parapsychologists A. R. G. Owen and Iris
M. Owen. None was psychically gifted.
Their purpose was to try to create,
through intense and prolonged concentration, a collective thought-form.
First, the group fabricated a fictitious identity, physical appearance, and
personal history. "Philip Aylesford" was
born in 1624 in England and followed an
early military career. At age sixteen he
was knighted. He had an illustrious role
in the Civil War, fighting for the Royalists. He became a personal friend of
Prince Charles (later Charles II) and
worked for him as a secret agent. But
Philip brought about his own undoing by
having an affair with a Gypsy girl. When
his wife found out, she accused the girl of
witchcraft, and the girl was burned at the
stake. In despair Philip committed suicide
in 1654 at age thirty.
The Owen group began conducting
sittings to try to conjure Philip in September 1972. They meditated, visualized
him, and discussed the details of his life.
No apparition ever appeared, but occasionally some sitters said they felt a presence in the room. Some also experienced
vivid mental pictures of "Philip."
After months with no communication, the group tried table-tilting through
psychokinesis (PK). This activity, made
popular in Spiritualism seances, involves
sitting around a table and placing fingertips lightly upon the surface. Spirits allegedly move or tilt the table; but a modern
theory, proposed by British psychologist
Kenneth J. Batcheldor, holds that the ef-

443

fects are created by the sitters' expectations.

After the Owen group conducted
several sessions, the table top began to
vibrate, resound with raps and knocks,
and move seemingly of its own accord.
Philip then began to communicate by rapping in response to questions.
Philip answered questions consistent
with his fictitious history, but could provide nothing beyond what the group had
conceived. Philip also gave other historically accurate information concerning
real events and people. The Owen group
theorized this material came from their
own collective unconscious.
Sessions with Philip continued for
several years. A levitation and movement
of the table were recorded on film in
1974. Efforts to capture Philip's voice on
tape were inconclusive. Members of the
group thought whispers were made in response to questions, especially those
made by Iris Owen, who seemed to have
a special rapport with Philip. See Electronic voice phenomenon.
The Philip results encouraged other
groups in Toronto and Quebec to try
similar experiments. These groups created "Lilith," a French-Canadian spy
during World War II; "Sebastian," a medieval alchemist; and "Axel," a man from
the future. All personalities communicated by their own unique raps.
Encouraged by their success in producing poltergeist effects in "PK by committee," as they called it, the Owen group
sought to create a visual apparition. But
after 1977, with no further progress, interest waned and the experiment eventually was discontinued. See Poltergeist;
Psychokinesis (PK).
Sources: Iris M. Owen with Margaret Sparrow. Conjuring Up Philip. New York:
Harper & Row Publishers, 1976; Iris M.
Owen. "'Philip's' Story Continued." New
Horizons Journal of the New Horizons Research Fund 2, no. 1 (April 1975): 14-20;

Iris M. Owen. '''Philip's' Fourth Year."

444

New Horizons Journal of the New Horizons Research Fund 2, no. 3 (June 1977):
11-15; D. Scott Rogo. Minds and Motion
...
The Riddle of Psychokinesis.
New

York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1978;

Colin Wilson. Poltergeist! A Study in Destructive Haunting. London: New English
Library, 1981.

Phone calls from the dead

Literally, a telephone call from someone
who has died, usually one with whom the
recipient shared a close emotional relationship.
In such a call, the telephone usually
rings normally, but may sound flat and
abnormal. The connection usually is bad,
and the voice of the dead one fades. The
voice is recognizable, however, and the
speaker may use pet names and words.
The call is terminated abruptly, either by
the caller hanging up or the line going
dead. If the voice is too faint, the recipient may hang up in frustration.
If the recipient knows the caller is
dead, he or she is too shocked to speak,
and the call abruptly ends. If the recipient
does not know the caller is dead, he or
she may chat for up to thirty minutes.
Most phone calls from the dead occur
within twenty-four hours of the death of
the caller, though some have been reported as long as two years from the time
of death.
The purpose of these mysterious
calls seems to be to leave either a farewell
message, a warning of impending danger,
or information needed by the living. Actress Ida Lupino received a telephone call
from her father six months after his
death; he told her the whereabouts of
some papers needed to settle his estate.
Some calls are made in apparent observance of holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries. The caller may do nothing
more than repeat a phrase, such as,
"Hello, Mom, is that you?"
There are cases of phone calls being
placed to the dead as well. The caller con-

"Philip"

ducts a normal conversation and discovers later the person was dead at the time
of the call.
No satisfactory explanation exists to
explain phone calls from the dead, but
several theories have been put forward.
One holds that the dead do place the calls
by supernatural manipulation of the telephone mechanisms and circuitry. Another
holds that they are hallucinations caused
in part by psychokinesis done subconsciously by the recipient. A similar theory
suggests the calls are entirely fantasy. Still
another theory holds that they are tricks
played on the living by low-level spirits.
Phone calls from the dead are not
taken seriously by most modern parapsychologists. In the early twentieth century,
investigators modified the telegraph and
wireless in hopes of communicating with
the dead. Thomas Edison, whose parents
were Spiritualists, worked on but did not
complete a telephone that he hoped
would connect the living and the dead. In
the 1940s "psychic telephone" experiments were conducted in England and
America to try to reach the dead. Interest
rose in the 1960s, when Konstantin Raudive announced that he had captured
voices of the dead on electromagnetic
tape. See Electronic voice phenomenon.
Sources: Stanley R. Dean, ed. Psychiatry
and Mysticism.
Chicago: Nelson-Hall,
1975; S. Ralph Harlow. A Life after Death.

Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961; Elizabeth McAdams and Raymond Bayless.
The Case for Life after Death. Chicago:
Nelson-Hall, 1981; D. Scott Rogo and
Raymond Bayless. Phone Calls from the
Dead. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
1979; Susy Smith. The Power of the Mind.
Radnor, PA: Chilton Book Co., 1975.

Piper, Leonora E. (1857-1950)

One of the most important mental mediums in the history of psychical research.
Leonora E. Piper, a Boston housewife,
unexpectedly became a medium in 1884

Piper, Leonora

E. (1857-1950)

when she consulted J. R. Cocke, a blind

healing medium, and passed into a trance
herself. In trance she wrote an impressive
message for one of the other clients present, a judge, which purported to come
from his deceased son. A succession of
spirit guides began to appear, and Piper
set up her own sittings, attracting the attention of prominent psychical researchers. She entered trances with much teeth
grinding and spasms. Her voice changed
dramatically as different spirits spoke
through her.
Her first spirit control was a Native
American girl named, improbably, Chlorine, who introduced a cast of discarnate
heavyweights that included Johann Sebastian Bach, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Commodore Vanderbilt. Chlorine soon gave way to a French doctor,
Dr. Phinuit (pronounced "finney"). He
was a colorful character who, oddly,
knew little French and only a little about
medicine. Nor could he ever give a coherent or verifiable account of his alleged
life on earth. Although these controls appeared to be fictitious, they usually managed to produce accurate information for
the sitters. Phinuit tended to be unreliable
and did not always come through for
Piper.
In 1885 Piper attracted the attention
of psychologist and philosopher William
James. He attended a number of sittings,
some with his wife, at which personal information was given. James was impressed with Piper, and felt lucky guesses
and previous knowledge on the part of
Piper could not explain all of her performances.
For years Piper was investigated by
both the Society for Psychical Research
(SPR) in England and the American Society for Psychical Research. Richard
Hodgson, secretary of the American
branch of the SPR in Boston, kept numerous full records and administrated
many sittings. The investigators hired private detectives to shadow Piper to make

445

certain she did no research that would

enable her to give personal information
to her sitters. Hundreds of sitters were
introduced to her anonymously. Investigators never uncovered any hint of
fraud.
In 1892 Dr. Phinuit was replaced by
a new control, George Pellew, known as
GP. Pellew said he was a young New
York man who had recently died, and
who had attended one of Piper's sittings
five years before as an anonymous sitter.
GP recognized anonymous sitters who
had known the living Pellew, and carried
on intimate conversations with them.
GP lasted until 1897, when the tenor
of Piper's seances began to change. She
did more automatic writing. She apparently inherited the controls of English medium William Stainton Moses, who died
that year. The spirits that came through
identified themselves to Piper only as
great historical figures who preferred to
remain anonymous with such names as
"Doctor" and "Imperator," but their descriptions of themselves and the information they gave corresponded with information recorded about Moses's controls.
Messages received through Piper became
increasingly more spiritual and much less
personal. In 1905 Hodgson died and allegedly became one of her controls.
Piper ended her trance mediumship
in 1911 but continued to do automatic
writing. One of her more significant messages came on August 8, 1915, when she
received a communication from Hodgson
for Sir Oliver Lodge, intimating the impending death of his son, Raymond, in
World War 1.
During her mediumship career, Piper
traveled to London on three occasions in
order to be tested by psychical researchers while out of her natural setting. Investigators attempted to explain her impressive successes by advancing theories
of telepathy and super-ESP, but could not
account for many of her sittings. See
Control; Cross correspondence; Medium-

446

ship; Super-ESP. Compare to Leonard,

Gladys Osborne.
Sources: Alan Gauld. Mediumship and Survival. London: William Heinemann Ltd.,
1982; Sir Oliver Lodge. Raymond or Life
and Death. 12th ed. London: Methuen &
Co. Ltd., 1919; Edgar D. Mitchell. Psychic
Exploration: A Challenge for Science. Ed-

ited by John White. New York: Paragon

Books, 1974; Aha L. Piper. The Life and
Work of Mrs. Piper. London: Kegan Paul,
Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1929; Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook of Parapsychology.
New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold, 1977.
PK
See Psychokinesis (PK).
PK party
An informal gathering of people for the
purpose of psychokinetic metal bending,
or the willing of metal to bend. The party
is led by an experienced individual and
helpers who teach the participants how to
create a "peak emotional experience" by
focusing a unified mental energy on silverware, rods, saw blades, drill bits, or
other metal objects. A group of fifteen to
forty people is said to be the best number
for the most effective results.
Interest in psychokinetic metal bending arose from the feats of Uri Geller,
who received a great deal of media attention in the 1970s for his alleged ability to
psychically bend keys and silverware.
A procedure for psychokinetic metal
bending is to create an intense point of
concentration in the mind, bring the
point down through the arm and hand
and into the metal, command the metal
to bend, and release the energy. The actual process by which this takes place is
not known.
Participants say they initially feel the
metal become warm and sticky, then soft
enough to bend with little pressure. This

Piper, Leonora

E. (1857-1950)

state, called "warm forming," typically

lasts from five to twenty seconds. The
heat seems to come from within the
metal. In rare cases both metal and surrounding air drop in temperature, a phenomenon similar to the temperature
drops reported in some poltergeist cases.
Some researchers believe psychokinesis
(PK) is responsible for some poltergeist
disturbances.
Participants can try various levels of
metal bending, the most advanced of
which is getting metal to bend of its own
accord without being touched. Silverplated silverware works best; sometimes
the silver plating splits with a popping
sound. Copper seems to be resistant to
bending, and in some cases becomes so
hot that it must be dropped. Metal that is
annealed or cast is difficult to warm
form.
Participants also may attempt to pop
open or sprout seeds held in the hand.
Geller, who allowed himself to be
tested under controlled circumstances,
performed psychokinetic metal bending
for two professional magicians, Artur
Zorka and Abb Dickson, in 1975. Zorka
gave Geller a forged steel fork with a nylon handle, which was especially resistant
to physical stress. Geller took hold of it
and within moments the fork exploded
into pieces. Geller also bent a key; Zorka
reported seeing the bending taking place.
The magicians concluded that no trickery
was involved. See Geller, Un; Psychokinesis (PK).
Sources: Jack Houck. "PK Party History."
Psi Research 3, no. 1 (March 1984): 6777; Charles Panati, ed. The Geller Papers:
Scientific Observations on the Paranormal
Powers of Uri Geller. Boston: Houghton

Mifflin, 1976.

Planchette
A nineteenth-century precursor to the
Ouija, designed to open the user to automatic writing and drawing. Planchette

Planetary

consciousness

means "little board" in French, and the

invention of the device is generally credited to a French Spiritualist by the same
name, M. Planchette. Another account
credits the invention to a German milkmaid. The planchette began appearing in
Europe in the 1850s, and quickly became
popular as part of the Spiritualist movement. Mediums used it to communicate
with the dead and with spirit guides, and
to divine the future or find lost persons
and objects.
The planchette consists of a thin,
heart-shaped platform with three legs,
two of which are on wheels and one of
which is a pencil. The medium or user
places fingertips on the platform and invites spirits to communicate by writing
out messages or drawing pictures. The
medium may be in a state of altered consciousness during the process and unaware of the message. In some cases the
medium produces what appears to be an
exact replica of the handwriting of a deceased person.
Around the turn of the twentieth
century, the planchette was supplanted in
popularity by the Ouija. It is still used,
and is popular as a toy. See Automatisms;
Ouija.
Sources: Gina Covina. The Ouija Book.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979;
Stoker Hunt. Ouija: The Most Dangerous
Game. New York: Harper & Row, 1985;
Into the Unknown.
Pleasantville, NY:
Reader's Digest, 1981.

Planetary consciousness
An outgrowth of the ecology movement
of the 1960s, expanded with the concept
of the Earth as a living, self-regulating organism. Planetary consciousness takes on
spiritual dimensions with an awareness of
the delicately balanced and interconnected relationships between all things
and sentient beings on the planet, not

447

only with each other, but with Mother

Earth herself, and presages the possible
emergence of a global consciousness.
However, if present abuses of the planet
are not abated, no such evolutionary leap
in consciousness will take place; instead,
the human race may snuff itself out of
existence.
The need to solve ecological problems took on renewed urgency in the
1980s with evidence of the disastrous
consequences of the destruction of the
rain forests; the contamination of the
soil, potable water, and oceans; depletion
of energy reserves; global warming
through the greenhouse effect; and depletion of the protective ozone layer in the
atmosphere.
The pollution of the Earth is the
product of the Industrial Revolution,
barely two hundred years old, though the
roots of an abusive attitude toward the
planet are much older. Some scholars
blame early Western thought: the simplistic dualism of Platonic philosophy, which
separates the ideal from the phenomenal
world; and the Christian religion, whose
transcendent God exists apart from nature. Furthermore, the redemption theme
of Christianity, by emphasizing a salvation into the spiritual realm, turns attention away from the natural world. In contrast, it is pointed out, Eastern religions
and philosophies conceive of an interconnected web of life on Earth and throughout the cosmos, in which nature and all
sentient beings are sacred. Societies with
animistic beliefs also venerate the natural
world.
Other scholars, such as Thomas
Berry, American historian and Passionist
priest and a leading spokesperson for
planetary consciousness, observe that a
general Christian sensitivity to the natural world and cosmology existed through
the Middle Ages. But in the fourteenth
century, and especially in the wake of the
Black Death that depopulated Europe, redemption became the driving force in the

448

Christian experience. The rise of science

in the secular world focused attention on
improving the world by controlling nature.
In the seventeenth century, science
and religion split. Science saw the natural
world, and the universe, as separate and
mechanical, and devoid of an immanent
God. German astronomer Johannes Kepler stated in 1605 that his aim was to
show that the universe was like a clockwork. English philosopher Francis Bacon
stated that one should come to know nature in order to control her. A significant
contribution to this split was the almost
complete dualism of French philosopher
Rene Descartes, who held the reality of
the physical world to be mechanistic and
divorced from any inner life principle.
Regardless of religion and philosophy, people are polluting the Earth and
using up its resources at a frightening
pace. Industrialized nations both East
and West are guilty of deplorable environmental records.
An effective presentation to the general population of the consequences of
the chemical poisoning of the global environment was the seminal book by
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962). Carson's book, and other important works
that followed, helped fuel the environmental movement. Another milestone
was biologist and ecologist Barry Commoner's The Closing Circle (1971),
which holds that industrialized societies
have replaced natural and biodegradable
substances with synthetics, which strain
the ecosystem.
In 1982 the United Nations General
Assembly formulated the document entitled "World Charter for Nature," which
Berry has called "one of the most impressive documents of the twentieth century."
The charter presents twenty-four "principles of conservation by which it proclaims all human conduct affecting nature is to be guided and judged," and
includes these fundamental truths:

Planetary consciousness

Mankind is a part of nature and life

depends on the uninterrupted functioning
of natural systems which ensure the supply of energy and nutrients.
Civilization is rooted in nature,
which has shaped human culture and influenced all artistic and scientific achievement, and living in harmony with nature
gives man the best opportunities for the
development of his creativity, and for rest
and recreation.
Despite such reports, warnings, and
proclamations, the decreases in pollution
have been insufficient to reverse what is
now perceived as the rising cumulative effect of earlier abuses. At the same time, a
new awareness of the Earth has developed: one Berry calls the "ecological age"
to reflect the interdependence of all living
and nonliving systems of the earth.

The Gaia Hypothesis

The "Gaia hypothesis," that the
Earth is a self-regulating organism, was
put forward in the early 1970s by James
E. Lovelock, a British biologist. Lovelock
began to conceive the idea in the early
1960s, while working as a consultant for
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Pasadena, California.
Lovelock made a number of discoveries that indicated the presence of a biological
self-regulating
mechanism,
whereby: (1) the amount of methane and
oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere has remained nearly constant for hundreds of
millions of years, despite the fact that
methane and oxygen interact to destroy
each other; (2) the oceans have contained
approximately 3.4 percent salt; and (3)
the planet has sustained a fairly constant
surface temperature, despite the fact that
the sun is now radiating 25 percent more
heat than it did 3.5 billion years ago
when life on the planet first appeared. A
homeostasis seemed to be at work.

Planetary consciousness

Lovelock acknowledges he was not

the first to conceive the idea of biological
regulation: as early as 1958, the hypothesis was put forward by Alfred Redfield
that the chemical composition of the atmosphere and oceans was biologically
controlled. Other scientists undoubtedly
had considered the same hypothesis,
Lovelock said, but the idea never gained
much audience.
The name Gaia, after the Greek
Earth Mother goddess, was proposed to
Lovelock by novelist William Golding.
Lovelock and evolutionary biologist Lynn
Margulis's coauthored papers on the hypothesis, published in scientific journals,
went largely unnoticed, but Lovelock's
1979 book, Gaia: A New Look at Life
on Earth, caught attention.
According to the hypothesis, humankind is part of an overall complex biosphere organism. People, along with all
other life forms on the planet, make
an integral contribution to Gaia's homeostasis, which in turn makes life possible.
Critics of the Gaia hypothesis contend that life on the planet was created by
and is maintained through a series of fortuitous events. Proponents of the hypothesis see it as much more: evidence of the
Earth as a living, conscious entity, an idea
with profound spiritual implications.
Lovelock maintains that his hypothesis
does not suppose the existence of a purposeful planetary self-regulation.
Even supposing an automatic selfregulation has serious ramifications for
pollution. Human abuse of the planet is
throwing the homeostasis out of kilter
and seriously jeopardizing the organism
as a whole, as though the human race is
a cancer. There are three solutions hypothesized: (1) the organism of Gaia will
die, taking the cancer and everything else
with it; (2) Gaia will restore balance by
ridding itself of the cancer, and humankind will become extinct; or (3) humankind can instead begin to function as a

449

planetary nervous system for Gaia, working in harmony with the organism.
The latter possibility lies at the heart
of the Gaia hypothesis. Technology already has turned the world into a global
village. Lovelock says that Gaia, through
human technology, has awakened and is
aware of herself, and has seen herself
through the eyes of space cameras. He
suggests that the collective intelligence of
humans constitutes a Gaian brain and
nervous system that can anticipate environmental changes. The result may be
that in the future, nationalism will disappear in the face of the need "to belong to
the commonwealth of all creatures which
constitute Gaia."
The evolutionary leap into a unified
human consciousness was envisioned by
the French priest and philosopher, Pierre
Teilhard de Chard in. Teilhard coined the
term "noosphere" (from the Greek noos,
or "mind"), to describe this "planetization of the Mind." Noogenesis, the evolutionary genesis of the mind, will culminate in the Omega Point, when the
noosphere will be created. Similarly, the
Indian mystic and philosopher, Sri Aurobindo, saw the next stage of evolution
as the "Supermind," a product of the increasing'spiritual development of individual consciousness, which would manifest
on both an individual and collective level.
Still another possibility is put forward by British physicist Peter Russell,
who hypothesizes the evolution of a completely new and planetary level of consciousness, "Gaiafield," a self-reflective
consciousness that emerges from the interactions of all the minds within the social superorganism. Gaiafield, says Russell, would have new characteristics
unimaginable to present human consCIOusness.
Whether or not any evolutionary
leap of consciousness happens will depend on changes in human behavior.
Teilhard saw the Omega Point from a
cosmic perspective, perhaps thousands or

450

even millions of years away, while Aurobindo projected the Supermind within
a century; neither, however, was living in
a time of ecological crisis. Russell and
others collapse the timeframe to decades.
The changes deemed necessary to
prevent disaster and instead make the
leap require fundamental shifts away
from self-centered consumer life-styles
and commerce. Lovelock also advocates
the establishment of a new planetary science, geophysiology, to bring all natural
sciences together in a Gaian perspective.
Berry says we must realign ourselves with
bioregions, identifiable geographical areas that are self-sustaining. Berry also
states that the European culture could
learn about the Earth from Native Americans, whose culture has retained within
its collective unconscious intimate psychic bonds with the Earth.
From a spiritual perspective, Berry
says that what is needed is a "New
Story," a creation myth for the universe
and the planet Earth in all their unfolding
levels of expression. The American mythologist, Joseph Campbell, also saw the
need for a planetary mythology of the
world as a whole, with no national
boundaries.
Russell says the individual raising of
consciousness through meditation may
have a collective effect of unifying and
raising the consciousness of humanity as
a whole. Studies of Transcendental Meditation groups have shown a synchronization of brain activity during meditation. If an increasing number of people
meditate, the effect may be felt on the human race as a whole.
Sources: Elias V. Amidon and Elizabeth J.
Roberts. "Gaian Consciousness." ReVision
9, no. 2 (Winter/Spring 1987): 3-5;
Thomas Berry. The Dream of the Earth.
San Francisco: Sierra Club Nature and Natural Philosophy Library, 1988; Thomas
Berry. "The Viable Human." ReVision 9,
no. 2 (Winter/Spring, 1987): 75-82; Peter
Borrelli, ed. Crossroads: Environmental

Planetary consciousness

Priorities for the Future. Washington, DC:

Island Press, 1988; Lester R. Brown. State
of the World: A Worldwide Institute Report on Progress Towards a Sustainable Society. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988;
Rachel Carson. Silent Spring. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1962; Jean Hardy. A
Psychology with a Soul: Psychosynthesis in
Evolutionary Context. London: Routledge

& Kegan Paul, 1987; James E. Lovelock.

The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our
Living Earth. New York: W. W. Norton,
1988; J. E. Lovelock. Gaia: A New Look at
Life on Earth. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1979; Philip Novak. "Tao How?

Asian Religions and the Problem of Environmental Degradation." ReVision 9, no. 2
(Winter/Spring, 1987): 33-40; Peter Russell. The Global Brain: Speculations on the
Evolutionary Leap to Planetary Consciousness. Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, 1983; Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The Phenomenon
of Man. 1955. New York: Harper & Row,

1965; Anne Lonergan and Caroline Richards, eds. Thomas Berry and the New Cosmology. Mystic, CT: Twenty-third Publications, 1987; George Trevelyan. A Vision of
the Aquarian Age: The Emerging Spiritual
World View. Walpole, NH: Stillpoint,

1984; Ross Evan West. "Gaia: The New

Mother Earth." New Realities 10, no. 1
(September/October 1989): 16-23.

Plants, psychism of
The theory that plants are sensitive to the
thoughts and emotions of people around
them, and have themselves emotions,
memory, and powers that enable them to
communicate with people. This notion
harks back to ancient times, when plants
were perceived to possess magical powers. Modern researchers have experimented with plant psi since the 1960s,
but results have been largely inconclusive.
Nonetheless, many people who have
cared for plants attest to their sensitivity
to their environment and caretakers.
George Washington Carver, the agricultural chemist who developed the peanut and sweet potato into scores of inde-

Plants, psych ism of

pendent products, attributed his success

with plants to love. Botanist Luther Burbank once stated that he could make a
plant grow according to his own design
simply by willing his thoughts and love.
Burbank said he developed the spineless
cactus in this way.
Studies have shown that plants are
surrounded by energy fields that may be
dowsed and which respond to radionics
treatments. Plants also seem to be influenced by human thought, emotion, and
intent; the well-being or demise of other
living things around them; and to music.
Many scientists, however, reject the idea
of plant sensitivity and attribute unusual
growth to carbon dioxide exhaled in human breath and inhaled by plants. Nevertheless, some cases of plant growth
have defied scientific explanation. At
Findhorn, a small community of people
living on the harsh North Sea coast of
Scotland, the flourishing plants have baffled agronomists. The community attributes its success to its communication
with spirits called devas and to members
who meditate and talk directly to the
plants about their beauty and the community's gratitude and love for them. See
Deva; Findhorn.
Intriguing but inconclusive research
on the possible psychic properties of
plants was conducted during the 1960s
by polygraph expert Cleve Backster. After attaching lie detector electrodes to the
leaf of a dracaena, Backster observed that
the plant seemed to respond emotionally
to care, such as watering, and to threats,
such as attempts to burn it and even to
think about burning it. He concluded that
plants would go into defensive faint in
the presence of human hostility, but
would respond positively to the heartbeat
of a loving person.
Backster attempted to determine
whether plants have their own extrasensory perception and are capable of communicating with other living things. He
measured the electrical resistance on leaf

451

surfaces in response to the killing of distant brine shrimp by random dumping

into boiling water. Backster achieved significant results, but other researchers
were unable to replicate them, leading
some to conclude that the "experimenter
effect" played a role in Backster's outcome. See Experimenter effect.
Other of Backster's experimentsthe reactions of plants to human
emotions-were
replicated in the early
1970s by Marcel Vogel, a research chemist for International Business Machines.
Vogel said that plants sent out their own
energy in response to loving thoughts; he
could feel this energy on his palms. He
also said plants seemed to respond to
thoughts from a distance, and theorized
that plants stored energy from thoughts
in some form of memory.
Russian scientists also found evidence for a plant memory. A geranium
attached to electrodes reacted negatively
to the mere presence of a person who had
previously pinched and burned it for several days, but reacted positively to the
presence of a person who had previously
cared for the plant.
Experiments with prayer have shown
that praying over seeds and plants seems
to influence faster and more luxuriant
growth than control seeds and plants that
do not receive prayer.
Psychic healers also have been
shown to have a positive effect on plants.
Ambrose and Olga Worrall, for example,
directed their healing energy to rye seedlings six hundred miles distant, resulting
in a spectacular growth rate 84 percent
faster than normal. The healer Oskar Estebany seemed to impart beneficial energies to water he held in a flask in his
hand, and which then was poured on barley seeds.
Experiments with music have demonstrated that plants thrive in a background of classical music but suffer when
rock and heavy metal are played.
In the 1950s researchers discovered

452

that plants responded to radionics treatments for the elimination of pests. The
US Department of Agriculture, however,
considered the evidence insufficient. Radionics remains illegal in most states in
the United States.
Although the psi properties of plants
remain scientifically inconclusive, researchers have discovered that plants do
have ordinary ways of communicating
with humans. Plants that do not get
enough water emit a high frequency noise
as their cell structure breaks down. Monitoring plant noise might benefit farming
by telling farmers precisely when to water
crops, and could be used by researchers
in the development of more hardy strains
of crop plants. Compare to Animal Psi.
Sources: Edgar D. Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science. Edited by

John White. New York: G. P. Putnam's

Sons, 1974; Sheila Ostrander and Lynn
Schroeder. Psychic Discoveries Behind the
Iron
Curtain.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970; "Scientists Listen
to Noises of Plants in Droughts." The New
York Times (September 4, 1988): 29; Peter
Tompkins. The Secret Life of Plants. New
York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1973;
Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook of
Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold, 1977.

Plateau experience
See Peak experiences.

Plato (c. 428 B.c.-347

B.C.)

Greek philosopher and one of the most

important thinkers in Western history.
Plato's work has had a huge impact on
the development of Western philosophical, religious, and mystical thought. He
lived during a time of great transition in
classical Greece, when the city states were
failing. Although many of his writings

Plants, psychism

of

dealt with politics, they were based on a

spiritual philosophy concerned with the
nature of the truly Real. He believed that
philosophy was the greatest good given to
humankind by God.
Plato was born in Athens c. 428 B.C.
to an established and prestigious family.
He harbored political ambitions, but
dropped them following the trial and suicide of his friend Socrates in 399 B.C.
Plato left Athens and traveled widely
through Greece, Italy, and Egypt. He began to write dialogues in defense of Socrates. The elder philosopher had not actually been his tutor, but Plato admired
him greatly. It is debated how much of
Plato's work reflects Socrates and how
much was Plato's own infusion. Plato
also was influenced by Pythagoreanism.
After leaving Athens Plato met
Archytas of Tarentum, a Pythagorean
mathematician, and was influenced by his
views on the value of mathematics as a
research tool in science. According to occult lore, in Egypt he was initiated into
the mysteries in a rite in a subterranean
hall of the Great Pyramid.
Plato returned to Athens and
founded the Academy, the first university, in 387 B.C., which he intended would
explore all fields of knowledge and their
interrelation. His greatest pupil was Aristotle.
Plato wrote in the form of dialogues,
for he felt discussion was the best way to
learn. The key figure in the dialogues is
Socrates. The dialogues form three major
groups: (1) inquiry, a presentation and
defense of Socrates' views; (2) speculation, the development of a systematic philosophy that apparently derives from
both Socrates and Plato; and (3) criticism, appraisal, and application, in which
the philosophy is tested.
Meno, from the early group, and
Phaedo, Symposium, Phaedrus, and Republic, from the middle group, outline
Plato's philosophy, central to which is the
Theory of Forms (or Theory of Ideas) and

Plato (c. 428 B.c.-347 B.C.)

Plato
a belief in the immortality of the soul as
existing separately from the body and the
mind before and after death. These works
also offer discussions on the nature of
love, the dialectic method, the form of the
Good, and the ideal society. Phaedo has
been called "the Magna Carta of Western
mysticism." Republic contains the fullest
exposition.
According to the Theory of Forms,
given in Phaedo, the material world is an
imperfect copy of the real and true perfect world. Forms are like original
blueprints-the ideas or concepts behind
the material world. We see an object for
what it is, but its essence, its "is-ness," is
the idea of the object, which holds the
perfect vision of Beauty, Goodness, and
Love, which together constitute the One.
Form constitutes real identity, and can be
applied to concepts as well as objects.
Forms do not change and are the same
for every observer.
The ultimate reality and the source
of reality of everything else is the Form of
the Good, which Plato likened to the illuminating sun. The Form of the Good is

453

ineffable, yet explains all else. To become

aware of it is to have a mystical experience in which one understands why all
other forms are what they are.
According to Aristotle in Metaphysics, the Theory of Forms is derived from
the Pythagorean theory of numbers: the
forms are the same as numbers. Aristotle
said that Plato differed from the Pythagoreans on two points. The Pythagoreans held that numbers have as constituents the unlimited and the limit, while
Plato said forms have as constituents the
one and the great and the small. The
Pythagoreans said things are numbers,
but Plato placed mathematics between
forms and things.
Plato regarded the world of forms as
the highest reality, which subsequently
has been named the Self or Higher Self.
The Theory of Forms anticipated psychiatrist Carl G. Jung's concept of archetypes. See Archetypes. Many of Plato's
followers derogated the physical world in
favor of the world of forms.
In Republic Plato advanced the idea
that most people go through life asleep
and in a dream; it is the job of the philosopher to waken them. Plato illustrated
this with his famous metaphor of the
cave:
Imagine mankind as dwelling in an
underground cave with a long entrance
open to the light across the whole width
of the cave; in this they have been since
childhood, with necks and legs fettered,
and they can only look forward, but light
comes to them from a fire burning behind
them higher up at a distance. Between the
fire and the prisoners is a road above
their level, and along it imagine a low
wall has been built, as puppet showmen
have screens in front of them over which
they work their puppets ...
Plato went on to say that the prisoners would name the shadows they saw
as things, and that someone brought into

454

the brilliant sunlight would not be able to

see the things that were truly real, and
would avert his eyes back to the shadows.
The cave image made a profound impression on psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli,
who made it a fundamental of Psychosynthesis. See Psychology. The theme of
being asleep through life has been echoed
by others, such as Theosophist Rudolf
Steiner and mystic G. 1. Gurdjieff.
Plato was influenced by the Pythagorean teaching that humans, separate
from God (the Monad), must work to purify themselves in preparation for the return to God. To free the soul for this
task, Plato advocated repression of bodily
desires.
Plato died in Athens at about age
eighty. His disciples split into two camps:
the Academics, who continued to meet at
the Academy, and the Peripatetics, who
followed Aristotle. The Academy remained in operation until A.D. 529, when
the Emperor Justinian closed the schools
of Athens.
During the first centuries A.D., Neoplatonism developed out of Platonic
thought, most notably under the Hellenic
philosopher Plotinus (204/205-270), and
later under Porphyry and Iamblichus. It
absorbed Christian, Jewish, and Eastern
religious elements, as well as Pythagorean, Aristotelian, and Stoic philosophy
elements, and placed more emphasis on
mystical vision. Neoplatonism was at a
peak from about 250 to 550, then died
out under pressure from orthodox Christianity.
In the Neoplatonic view, the cosmology was seen as ordered and based on
One, or Unity. The soul could become
more unified with Unity through purification and simplification. Every doctrine
was considered to be only a shell for a
spiritual truth that could only be discovered through meditation and mystical exercises. The corporeal bodies of religion
and philosophy had little value, and material science was not emphasized at all.

Plato (c. 428 B.c.-347 B.C.)

Plotinus established that the goal of

humankind is the vision of and union
with God, which is achieved through the
withdrawal from everything that is external and finite, in order to concentrate on
immutable and perfect Reality. He also
firmly established that the ultimate nature of the universe is spiritual, and from
it flows a material world. From a World
Soul, individual souls descend to the material world and forget their divine origins, thus becoming caught in the bondage of rebirth. Souls can liberate
themselves only by turning away from the
material toward God in a transcendent
ecstasy.
Plotinus disagreed with the dualism
of the Gnostics that matter is inherently
evil; rather, he said, matter is base, but
the universe is inherently good. Later
Neoplatonic thought absorbed Gnostic
elements.
In one form or another, Platonic
thought dominated philosophy, science,
and theology until the thirteenth century.
It influenced the development of Christian mystical thought, to a limited extent
through Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and to a great extent through
Augustine, who was influenced by Plotinus (see Augustine, St.) and Dionysius the
Areopagite, the latter of whom developed
the foundation of medieval mystical theology and angelo logy. In the thirteenth
century, Aristotle was rediscovered and
given predominance, especially in the
works of St. Thomas Aquinas. Platonic
thought has had revivals periodically
throughout history. See Mysticism.
Sources: Manly P. Hall. The Secret Teachings of All Ages. 1928. Los Angeles: The

Philosophical Research Society, 1977; F. C.

Happold. Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology. Rev. ed. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1970; Jean
Hardy. A Psychology with a Soul: Psychosynthesis in Evolutionary
Context. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987; Edouard Schure. The Great Initiates: A Study

Poltergeist

of the Secret Religions of History. San

Francisco: Harper & Row, 1961; Samuel
Umen. The World of the Mystic. New
York: Philosophical Library, 1988; The
Republic of Plato. Translated with introduction and notes by Francis MacDonald
Cornford. London: Oxford University
Press, 1941; The Works of Plato. Selected
and edited by Irwin Edman. 1928. New
York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1934.

Plotinus
See Plato.

Podmore, Frank
See Apparition; Society for Psychical Research (SPR).

Polarity
See Bodywork.

Poltergeist
A spirit, usually mischievous and sometimes malevolent, which manifests by
making noises, moving objects, and assaulting people and animals. "Poltergeist" comes from the German pol tern,
"to knock," and geist, "spirit." Some
cases of poltergeists are unexplained and
may involve actual spirits. In other cases
the phenomena seem to be caused by subconscious psychokinesis (PK) on the part
of one individual.
The most common poltergeist phenomena are rains of stones, dirt, and
other small objects; throwing and moving
of objects, including large pieces of furniture; loud noises and shrieks; strange
lights; apparitions; and vile smells. With
the development of technology, poltergeists have adapted to interfering with
telephones and electronic equipment, and

455

turning lights and appliances on and off.

Some poltergeists are said to pinch, bite,
hit, and sexually assault the living.
Poltergeist activity usually begins
and stops abruptly. A typical occurrence
lasts several hours to several months;
some have been reported to last several
years. Activity almost always occurs at
night when someone is present-typically
an "agent," an individual who seems to
act as a focus or magnet for the activity.
The agent is a factor in most cases, both
those that seem paranormal or that may
be caused by human PK. Agents usually
are females under age twenty.
Poltergeist disturbances have been
reported around the world since ancient
times. A computer analysis of five hundred cases from 1800 to the present, collected from around the world, was done
in the late 1970s by parapsychologists
Alan Gauld and A. D. Cornell. They
identified sixty-three general characteristics, including the following: 64 percent
involved the movement of small objects;
58 percent were most active at night; 48
percent featured raps; 36 percent involved the movement of large objects; 24
percent lasted longer than one year; 16
percent featured communication between
poltergeist and agent;, 12 percent involved the opening and shutting of doors
and windows.
Prior to the nineteenth century, poltergeist occurrences were blamed on the
Devil, demons, witches, and the ghosts of
the dead. The Gauld-Cornell analysis
found only 9 percent of cases attributed
to demons, 7 percent to witches, and 2
percent to spirits of the dead. Most of the
demonic and witch attributions occur in
non-Western cases. Poltergeist activity at
seances is attributed to spirits of the dead.
The development of psychical research in the late nineteenth century
brought scientific scrutiny to the phenomenon. Among early investigators
were two founders of the Society for Psychical Research, Sir William Barrett and

456

Frederic W. H. Myers. Myers believed

that some poltergeist cases were genuine,
and observed that poltergeist phenomena
were distinct from ghost hauntings.
In the 1930s psychologist and psychical researcher Nandor Fodor advanced
the theory that some poltergeist disturbances were caused not by spirits but by
human agents who were suffering from
intense repressed anger, hostility, and
sexual tension. Fodor successfully demonstrated his theory in a number of cases,
including the famous "Thornton Heath
Poltergeist" in England, which he investigated in 1938. The case involved a
woman whose repressions caused a poltergeist outbreak and apparent vampire
attack. Fodor was severely criticized by
Spiritualists, and in turn won a libel suit
against a Spiritualist newspaper.
The research of William Roll, project
director of the Psychical Research Foundation in Durham, North Carolina, has
supported the psychological dysfunction
theory. Beginning in the 1960s, Roll studied written reports of 116 poltergeist
cases spanning four centuries and more
than one hundred countries. Roll identified patterns of what he called "recurrent
spontaneous
psychokinesis"
(RSPK),
which are inexplicable, spontaneous
physical effects. He found that the most
common agent was a child or teenager
whose unwitting PK was a way of expressing hostility without fear of punishment. The individual usually was unaware of being the cause of the
disturbances, but was secretly or openly
pleased with their occurrence.
Other investigators have found that
agents often are in poor mental or physical health and thus are vulnerable to
stress. Patients with unresolved emotional
tensions have been associated with
houses where poltergeist activity took
place. In studying the personalities of
agents, psychologists have found anxiety
reactions, conversion hysteria, phobias,
mania, obsessions, dissociative reactions,

Poltergeist

and schizophrenia. In some cases psychotherapy eliminates the poltergeist phenomena.

The psychological dysfunction theory has been disputed by other researchers, including Gauld and Cornell, who
said that the psychological tests used
were invalid. Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson
has proposed that spirits of the dead may
account for more poltergeist cases than
realized. In studying a number of cases
attributed to living agents and to spirits
of the dead, Stevenson noted significant
differences. The phenomena in living
agent cases was without purpose and often violent, while cases involving spirits
of the dead featured intelligent communication, purposeful movement of objects, and little violence.
See Apparition; Haunting; Mediumship; "Philip."
Sources: Loyd Auerbach. ESP, Hauntings
and Poltergeists:
A Parapsychologist's
Handbook.
New York: Warner Books,
1986; Alan Gauld and A. D. Cornell. Poltergeists. London: Routledge & Kegan

Paul, 1979; Elizabeth E. McAdams and

Raymond Bayless. The Case for Life after
Death. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981; Edgar
D. Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science. Edited by John White.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1974;
Frederic W. H. Myers. Human Personality
and Its Survival of Bodily Death. Vols. 1
and 2. 1903. New ed. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1954; A. R. G. Owen.
Can We Explain the Poltergeist? New
York: Garrett Publications/A Helix Press
Book, 1964; D. Scott Rogo. On the Track
of the Poltergeist. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1986; William Roll. The Poltergeist. Garden City, NY: Nelson Doubleday, Inc., 1972; Ian Stevenson. "Are Poltergeists Living or Are They Dead?" The
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 66, no. 3 (July 1972): 23352; Keith Thomas. Religion and the Decline of Magic. New York: Charles

Scribner's Sons, 1971; Peter Underwood.

The Ghost Hunter's Guide. Poole, Dorset,
England: Blandford Press, 1986; Lyall

Possession

Watson. Beyond Supernature. New York:

Bantam Books, 1987; Colin Wilson. Poltergeist! A Study in Destructive

Haunting.

London: New English Library, 1981.

Positive imaging
See Creative visualization.

Positive thinking
See Creative visualization.

Positive visualization
See Creative visualization.

Possession
The taking over of a person's mind, body,
and soul by an external force perceived to
be a deity, spirit, demon, entity, or separate personality.
Possession generally is unwanted and
troublesome. It has been recognized since
antiquity, and has been blamed for virtually every conceivable problem of luck,
health, wealth, love, and sanity. Some
types of possession, such as by gods or
the Holy Spirit, are desirable and voluntary. Some types of mediumship, such as
direct voice and channeling, are forms of
temporary possession by spirits of the
dead or nonphysical entities. The cure for
unwanted possession is exorcism, performed according to a specified ritual.
Voluntary possession, on the other hand,
terminates at the end of a religious ceremony, healing ritual, or sitting.
Except for possession by the Holy
Spirit, Christianity regards possession lls
the work of Satan. Medieval theologians
devoted considerable attention to demonic possession. The Devil was said to

457

possess a person by entering the mind

and soul or by using an intermediary,
such as a witch or wizard, to send a demon into the victim. Bewitched food
was a favored explanation. Possession
caused the victim to behave in a vile manner and renounce God. The only way to
rid the person of the demon or Devil was
to perform ritual exorcism. Cases of
demonic possession continue to be reported in modern times, and formal exorcisms sometimes are performed by
priests.
In Judaism the most feared and evil
possession is by a dybbuk, a doomed soul
that enters a person's body and causes
abominable behavior and great mental
and spiritual anguish. The dybbuk is exorcised by aba' al shem, a miracleworking rabbi.
In many societies possession is a fact
of daily life that ranges from a nuisance
to a serious problem. The victim is most
often a woman from the lower classes
who believes her personal problems (such
as illness, menstrual pain, barrenness, the
death of children, miscarriage, abuse by
husbands or fathers, or her husband's infidelities) are caused by the intervention
of evil spirits. She seeks out an exorcist as
one might seek out a psychotherapist.
The exorcism provides a way to gain social stature as well as to relieve the problems.
In the West possession is not always
viewed as demonic but also as an encounter with confused spirits. It is held that
some possessing spirits may be souls of
the dead who do not realize they are dead
and try to return to a body; these spirits
may depart willingly upon being told or
invited to leave. In other cases possession
may be caused by spirits who are attempting to communicate specific messages or warnings. In either case the victim may experience severe headaches,
sleep disorders, strange noises or lights,
voices, poltergeist phenomena, and perhaps temporary insanity.

458

Possession and Mental Illness

The idea that mental illness may be
caused by possessing spirits is ancient. It
has modern adherents but is not endorsed
by the medical establishment.
Early in the twentieth century, Dr.
James H. Hyslop, an early president of
the American Society for Psychical Research, wrote in his book Contact with
the Other World (1919) that if people believe in telepathy, then long-distance invasion of a personality, possibly of a low
or malevolent nature, is possible. Hyslop
also believed that many people suffering
from hysteria, multiple personality, dementia praecox, or other mental disturbances showed signs of invasion by discarnate entities. His call to the medical
establishment to take such situations into
account went largely unheeded. His views
were shared by some, most notably Dr.
Titus Bull and Carl A. and Anna Wicklund. See Depossession.
More recently, M. Scott Peck,
a self-described "hardheaded scientist,"
graduate of Harvard University, and
practicing psychiatrist in Connecticut,
has said that two of his multiple personality patients also suffered from possession by evil spirits that were intent on destroying their victims' minds. The spirits
were exorcised. Peck wrote about the
cases in his book The People of the Lie
(1983).
California psychiatrist Ralph Allison
has stated that many cases of multiple
personality are the result of spirit possession, both nonthreatening and demonic.
His controversial book, Minds in Many
Pieces (1980), discusses some of these patients and the paranormal occurrences
surrounding them.
Other psychiatrists have found that
only exorcism, such as invoking the
Lord's name, eliminates one or more of
the multiple personalities. The efficacy of
a religious exorcism probably is due to
the patient's own religious beliefs.

Possession

In parts of Latin America where

Spiritism
beliefs are strong,
disorders
such as epilepsy,
schizophrenia,
and
multiple personality
may be treated as
possession cases. Allen Kardec, the pseudonymous,
French
nineteenth-century
founder of Spiritism, believed certain illnesses caused by spirits or by fragments
of a person's past lives could be treated
with the help of spirit guides.
Kardec's theories were fashionable in
France for a while, but did not catch on
in the rest of Europe. They took root in
Latin America, particularly Brazil, where
they were compatible with existing traditions.
Brazilians still practice healing according to "Kardecismo,"
as Spiritism is
called, or similar practices such as Umbanda or Candomble.
Many physicians
and psychiatrists are Spiritists. See SpiritIsm.

Voluntary Possession
In many non-Western cultures, communication with spirits and deities is central to religious worship. Possession by a
god shows the possessed to be worthy of
the god's notice and protection.
In such
ceremonies, worshipers chant and dance
until they are "mounted"
by a god, becoming the god's "horse," and take on
that god's personal characteristics.
For as
long as possession lasts-perhaps
several
hours-the
worshiper exhibits the speech,
habits, and behavior of the god. He or
she becomes oblivious to pain or extremes in temperature,
and may issue
prophecies.
See Macumba;
Santeria;
Vodoun.
The most similar counterpart
in
Christianity
is voluntary
possession
by
the Holy Spirit. The origin is the possession experienced by the apostles of Christ
on the first day of Pentecost. The Book of
Acts describes
how flames appeared
above their heads, and that they spoke in
tongues unknown to them. Speaking in

Power point

(also power

place, power

center)

unknown tongues and other ecstatic communion with God characterized

early
Christian worship, but was replaced by
more austere practices. See Glossolalia.
Ecstatic communion
has been revived in modern times by the Pentecostal
movement,
founded
in 1901 when a
group of Kansas worshipers were filled
with the Holy Spirit. Pentecostals
may
speak in tongues, perform faith healing,
and writhe on the floor. The largest
group of Pentecostals in the United States
is the Assemblies of God, with thousands
of members worldwide. See Charismatic
renewal;

Exorcism;

Pentecostals.

Sources: Martin Ebon. The Devil's Bride,

Exorcism: Past and Present. New York:
Harper & Row, 1974; Adam Crabtree.
Multiple Man: Explorations in Possession
and Multiple Personality. New York: Praeger, 1985; Richard Cavendish, ed. Mysteries of the Unexplained.
New York:
McGraw-Hill,
1974; D. Scott Raga. The
Infinite Boundary.
New York: Dodd,
Mead & Co., 1987; Bruce Kapferer. A Celebration of Demons. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1983; Melita Denning and
Osborne Phillips. Voudoun Fire: The Living Reality of Mystical Religion. St. Paul,
MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1979; J. Gordon Melton. Encyclopedic Handbook
of
Cults in America. New York and London:
Garland Publishing Inc., 1986; Malachi
Marrin. Hostage to the Devil. New York:
Harper & Row, 1976; Guy Lyon Playfair.
The Unknown Power. New York: Pocket
Books, 1975.

Postcognition
See Retrocognition.

Power point (also power place,

power center)
A location, site, object, or edifice believed
to be sacred, or to possess magical or supernatural energies, or to be the dwelling
place of spirits of the dead, nature spirits,

459

or gods. The "power" at power points

emanates from an ineffable spiritual
source, identified as cosmic in origin or
part of the living Earth. Coming in contact with it instills feelings of wonder,
awe, fear, fascination, and mystery.
Thousands of power points exist all
over the Earth, dating to antiquity. Many
are natural, such as mountains, streams,
rivers, lakes, springs, forests, and caves,
which are places where the universal life
force, the force that sustains all things in
the cosmos, is believed to be concentrated.
Mountains in particular are holy
places; their elevations take them nearer
to the heavens and make them ideal
abodes of gods and centers of the cosmos.
For example, the Himalayas are the embodiment of the Hindu god, Himalaya;
the most sacred peak, Mt. Kailas, is occupied by Shiva, god of destruction, who
sits on the summit in meditation. The
summit of Mt. Fuji is the divine mandala
of the Buddha Sengen Dainichi. The
Greek pantheon lived on Mt. Olympus.
The Hopi venerate the San Francisco
Peaks as the abodes of ancestral spirits
and kachinas. Accordingly, to be closer to
the life force and to the gods, the human
race throughout history has erected
shrines, temples, monasteries, churches,
and other holy places on or near sacred
peaks.
Water is associated with life-giving
and healing, and numerous water sources
are venerated for their healing powers,
such as the Ganges River in India and the
spring at Our Lady of the Lourdes in
France, which attract thousands of pilgrims every year. See Marian apparitions.
Water sources, including wells, are
widely believed to be gates to the underworld, occupied and guarded by nature
spirits who may bestow good fortune if
propitiated or addressed with a charm.
Many of the greatest power points
have had some kind of structure erected
over them, such as the pyramids of Egypt

460

and Central America, megalithic sites,

burial mounds, temples, astronomical
sites, and Gothic cathedrals. Early builders perhaps either intuited the genius loci
(the spirit of a place) where they felt energized, or determined it through observation and measurement of forces. According to the theory of leys, various
ancient sacred sites are connected by lines
of earth energy, and certain sites are vortices that radiate multiple lines. According to another theory, developed after
World War II by a German doctor, Ernst
Hartmann, the Earth has a grid pattern of
telluric energy lines influenced by underground streams. See Dowsing; Feng shui;
Leys.
Many manmade edifices at power
points are believed to have been constructed according to sacred geometry
(also called sacred architecture), thus
adding to their power. In sacred geometry
perfect forms may be made visible
through mathematical formulae. Pythagoras is known for articulating sacred geometry, though he was not the first to use
it. The pyramids of Egypt, the Greek Parthenon, and nearly all the Romanesque
and Gothic cathedrals throughout Europe
were designed according to this mystical
philosophy of numbers. See Pyramids;
Pythagoras.
Dowsers get reactions at power
points, including the indication that sacred sanctuaries may be built over blind
springs. Scientific instruments placed at
sites have recorded anomalous levels of
electromagnetic or radioactive energies. It
is not known whether such energies occur
naturally, or whether they were created
(at least in part) by the erection of monuments such as megaliths and temples.
Paranormal phenomena are frequently reported at power points, including apparitions, earth lights, and poltergeist disturbances. Some sites are believed
to emit noises and ultrasound signals; one
of the Colossi of Memnon, Egypt, once
was said to issue a musical note at dawn

Power point (also power place, power center)

each day. In addition, individuals have reported psi phenomena

such as clairvoyance and retrocognition,
as well as outof-body experiences. Statistical evidence
indicates a possible link between geomagnetic field activity and some psi activity in
humans, thus suggesting that the phenomena are caused by the energies at the
sites.
Mystical experiences often occur at
power points, thus drawing spiritual pilgrims. For example, the Lakota undertake vision quests at the sacred Bear Butte
in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where
they spend three days fasting and praying. Sometimes ecstasies come unexpectedly: John Muir, the founder of the Sierra
Club, and Henry David Thoreau
recorded some of their experiences while
out in the wilderness.
In 1977 the Dragon Project Trust
was founded in Britain to research energetic and paranormal
phenomena at ancient sites. Research involves psychic archaeology using psychics, sensitives, and
dowsers, and individuals with scientific,
technical, and geomantic skills. Paul Devereux, founding director of the Dragon
Project Trust, has theorized that understanding these phenomena may lead to an
understanding
of, and possibly communication with, a planetary intelligence or
spirit, which he calls "Earthmind."
See
Avebury;
Earth
lights;
Glastonbury;
Medicine wheels; Megaliths;
Planetary
consciousness;
Psychic archaeology;
Sedona, Arizona; Stonehenge; Universal life
force.
Sources: Edwin Bernbaum. "Sacred Mountains." Parabola 13, no. 4 (Winter 1988):
12-18; Paul Devereux. Places of Power.
London: Blandford, 1990; Paul Devereux
and John Steele, David Kubrin. Earthmind:
A Modern Adventure in Ancient Wisdom.
New York: Harper & Row, 1989; Jamake
Highwater. "Spirit Dwellings." Omni (May
1988): 64-75; Blanche Merz. Points of
Cosmic Energy. Saffron Walden, England:
C. W. Daniel Co., Ltd., 1985; Patrick F.

Prayer

Sheeran. "Place and Power." New Realities

13, no. 1 (Summer 1990): 28-32; Jim
Swan. "Magical Places of Power." New Realities 7, no. 1 (September/October
1986):

56-62.

Prayer
An act of communing with the Divine or
the supernatural.
There are numerous
types of public and private prayers, which
are universal in religions. Prayer, said
philosopher
and psychologist
William
James, "is the very soul and essence of
religion" (Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902). Depending on the religion,
prayers may acknowledge a supreme deity; a pantheon of deities, saints, and divine personages; ancestral spirits; or the
spirits and forces of nature.
The simplest forms of prayer are petitions for oneself or for others, thanksgivings, and intercessions. These are directions
of psychic
energy
toward
accomplishment
of a goal, and involve
words, symbols, and images. Petitions
and intercessions
are enormous sources
of power and energy, and have been credited with great accomplishments
and miraculous healings. Their driving force is
love; prayers that are selfish or offered by
unbelievers are ineffective. Norman Vincent Peale is one of the best-known Christian advocates of the power of prayer.
Healer Ambrose
Worrall
said all
thoughts are prayers. The accepted idea
of prayers-memorized
phrases and verse
learned in church-are
good mind cleansers, he said, but lack the dynamism to be
effective. An effective prayer concentrates
not on the elimination of an existing condition, but on the creation of a desired
condition.
The highest forms of prayer are mystical in nature and are contemplative and
meditative; these constitute higher states
of awareness and being, the highest of
which is union with the Divine. In such
states

words,

symbols,

and

images

fall

461

away. Mystical prayer opens up aspects

of realiry beyond rational thought; it is a
movement of mind and soul into the
Source of all being. As Christian mystic
Julian of Norwich observed, "Prayer
oneth the soul with God." See Mystical
experiences.
Various definitions of the rypes of
prayer have been made. St. Teresa of
Avila described four stages of prayer: (1)
recollection, a process of concentration
and withdrawal; (2) quiet, the first stage
of union with God, in which the mind is
open to the Divine and the desire for material things falls away; (3) tumescence, a
state of wisdom arising from inspiration;
and (4) union with the Divine.
Prayer and Psi
Psychic phenomena and powers are
associated with both prayer and meditation. The literature of Western mystics
describes clairvoyance, clairaudience, levitation, precognition, prophecy, and so
on as unsought by-products of mystical
prayer. St. Anthony clairvoyantly saw
one man dead and his brother dying a
day's walk away; he directed monks to
the spot to save the dying man. St. Francis, the thirteenth-century founder of the
Franciscan Order, reportedly levitated
many times while in rapture, as did the
seventeenth-century Franciscan St. Joseph
of Cupertino, who could "fly" short distances and stay aloft for a considerable
time. Such phenomena may be compared
to the siddhis of Eastern meditation and
yoga. See Levitation; Siddhis; Transcendental Meditation (TM); Yoga.
Early in the history of parapsychology, attention was directed to the relationship between psi and prayer. Frank
Laubach's popular book, Prayer: The
Mightiest Force in the World (1946), advocated ceaseless prayer, which Laubach
believed had the power to change the
world. In the 1950s Reverend Franklin
Loehr, a chemical engineer who founded

462

the Religious Research foundation in Los

Angeles, conducted experiments on the
power of prayer on seeds and seedlings.
He found that the prayed-for seeds and
seedlings usually sprouted faster and
grew more quickly than those which had
no prayer. Similar studies were conducted
by others with healers who prayed over
seeds, plants and water for plants. See
Plants, psychism of.
In the late 1960s, Karlis Osis, then
director of research for the American Sociery for Psychical Research, conducted
an informal research of religious practices
and psi with small groups of meditators.
Participants often were in apparent telepathic communication and shared the
same vIsIons.
Prayer done in a group is attested to
be far more powerful than prayer done
by an individual, for a synergy takes
place in group dynamics. The Osis participants, for example, shared a buoyancy
of mood, feelings of openness and meaningfulness, and intense love. The synergy
may be due to the synchronization of
brain waves, as shown in some studies of
meditators. See Healing, faith and psychic; Meditation.
Sources: John Ferguson. An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mysticism and the Mystery
Religions. New York: Seabury Press, 1976;
F. C. Happold. Mysticism: A Study and an
Anthology. Rev. ed. Harmondsworth, Mid-

dlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1970; F.

C. Happold. Prayer and Meditation: Their
Nature
and Practice. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1971;
William James. The Varieties of Religious
Experience. 1902. New York: Modern Library, 1936; Geddes MacGregor. Gnosis:
A

Renaissance

in

Christian

Thought.

Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing

House, 1979; Thomas Merton. Contemplative Prayer. Garden Ciry, NY: Image
Books, 1971; Norman Vincent Peale.
"Your Prayers Will Get Results." Plus: The
Magazine of Positive Thinking 38, no. 2,
part 1 (March 1987): 1-10; Ry Redd.
"Can Prayer or Meditation Invoke Benefits

Prayer

of Psi?" Journal of Religion and Psychical

Research 10, no. 1 (January 1987): 1-12;
D. Scott Raga. "Researching the Power of
Prayer." Science of Mind (June 1988): 3034+; Ambrose Alexander Worrall. "Essay
on Prayer." Self-published, 1952.

Precognition
The direct knowledge or perception of
the future, obtained through extraordinary means. Precognition is the most frequently reported of all extrasensory perception (ESP) experiences, occurring most
often (60 percent to 70 percent) in
dreams. It also happens spontaneously in
waking visions, auditory hallucinations,
thoughts that flash into the mind, and a
sense of "knowing." Precognitive knowledge also may be induced through trance,
channeling, mediumship, and divination.
The majority of spontaneous precognitive experiences happen within fortyeight hours of the future event, particularly within twenty-four hours. A rare
few happen months or even years before
the actual event takes place. Severe emotional shock seems to be a major factor in
precognition. By a four-to-one ratio,
most concern unhappy events, such as
death and dying, illness, accidents, and
natural disasters. Intimacy also is a key
factor; 80 to 85 percent of such experiences involve a spouse, family member or
friend with whom one has close emotional ties. The remainder involve casual
acquaintances and strangers, most of
whom are victims in major disasters such
as airplane crashes or earthquakes.
The difference between precognition
and premonition is rather blurry. In general precognition involves knowledge of a
specific event, while premonition is a
sense or feeling that some unknown event
is about to happen. See Premonition.
While all prophecy is precognition,
not all precognition is prophecy; the latter involves an element of divine inspiration. See Prophecy.

Precognition

Precognition has been known and

valued since ancient times, when prophets and oracles were sought for their access to the future. The Greeks considered
the future immutable. Free will, however,
changes the perceived future, as seen in
the many cases of people saving their
lives and avoiding disasters by changing
their plans based upon precognitive information. Psychical researchers estimate
that one-third to one-half of all precognitive experiences may provide useful information to avert disasters.
This apparent ability to alter the perceived future makes precognition difficult
to understand. If precognition is a
glimpse of the true future, then the effects
are witnessed before the causes. Such
conditions do occur in quantum physics.
The most popular theory holds that precognition is a glimpse of a possible future
that is based on present conditions and
existing information, and which may
be altered depending upon acts of free
will. That theory implies that the future can cause the past, a phenomenon
called "backward causality" or "retrocausality. "
Another and controversial theory
contends that the precognitive experience
itself unleashes a powerful psychokinetic
(PK) energy, which then brings the envisioned future to pass. Such self-fulfilling
prophecies were examined in the 1960s
by London psychiatrist J. A. Barker, who
contended in his book, Scared to Death,
that people who died in the manner and
at the time predicted by fortune-tellers
were literally "scared to death" and contributed somehow to their own demise.
Barker studied more precognitions concerning the Aberfan, Wales, coal slide disaster in 1966, which killed 144 people.
He established the British Premonitions
Bureau, which collected precognitive data
in an attempt to avert disasters. Barker
succeeded in finding a number of "human
seismographs" who tuned in regularly to

463

disasters but could not accurately pmpoint times.

Despite the difficulty in understanding precognition, it is the easiest form of
extrasensory perception to test in the laboratory. The first systematic study of precognition was undertaken in the early
twentieth century by J. W. Dunne, a British aeronautics engineer, who published
his findings and theories in 1927 in the
classic, An Experiment with Time. Dunne
based his study on his own precognitive
dreams, which involved both trivial incidents in his own life and major news
events that appeared in the press the day
after a dream. When he first realized he
was seeing the future in his dreams,
Dunne worried that he was "a freak."
His worries eased when he discovered
that precognitive dreams are common; so
common, he concluded, that many people
have them without realizing it, perhaps
because they do not recall details or fail
to properly interpret dream symbols.
Dunne's Theory of Serial Time proposes that time exists in layers of dimensions, each of which may be viewed in
different perspectives from different layers. The origin of all the layers is Absolute Time, created by God. Dunne's theory later was rejected by the scientific
community.
The next significant systematic research of precognition was begun in the
1930s by J. B. Rhine and Louisa Rhine at
the Parapsychological Laboratory
at
Duke University. J. B. Rhine's original
goal was to prove telepathy, but his experiments with ESP cards also revealed
precognition and PK. See ESP cards. Following Rhine's work other researchers
have conducted a variety of experiments
for precognition in ongoing research.
One peculiarity of precognition is
that one seldom foresees one's own
death, perhaps because the trauma is too
great for the ego to accept. Some notable
exceptions
exist: Abraham
Lincoln
dreamed of his own death six weeks be-

464

fore he was assassinated. His dream was

not of being shot and dying, but of being
an observer after the fact. He saw a long
procession of mourners entering the
White House. Going inside, he saw the
mourners file past a coffin, and was
shocked to see that the coffin contained
his own body. American presidents John
Garfield and William McKinley also experienced foreknowledge of their violent
deaths. See Dreams; Prediction.
Sources: J. W. Dunne. An Experiment with
Time. 1927. London: Faber & Faber Ltd.,
1973; Herbert B. Greenhouse. Premonitions: A Leap into the Future. New York:

Bernard Geis Assoc., 1971; Edgar D.

Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge
for Science. Edited by John White. New
York: Paragon Books, 1974; Gardner
Murphy. "Direct Contacts with Past and
Future: Retrocognition and Precognition." Journal of the American Society for
Psychical Research 61, no. 1 (January
1967): 3-23; Sheila Ostrander and Lynn
Schroeder. Psychic Discoveries Behind the
Iron Curtain.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1970; Louisa Rhine. ESP in
Life and Lab. New York: Collier Books,
1967; Louisa Rhine. Hidden Channels of
the Mind. New York: William Sloane Assoc., 1961; Russell Targ and Keith Harary.
The Mind Race. New York: Villard Books,
1984; Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff.
Mind-Reach:
Scientists Look at Psychic
Ability. New York: Delacorte Press, 1977;
Lyall Watson. Beyond Supernature. New

York: Bantam Books, 1987; Joan Windsor.

The Inner Eye: Your Dreams Can Make
You Psychic.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

Prentice-Hall, 1985; Benjamin B. Wolman,

ed. Handbook of Parapsychology. New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977;
Danah Zohar. Through the Time Barrier:
A Study in Precognition and Modern Physics. London: William Heinemann Ltd.,

1982.

Prediction
A type of prophecy in which information
about future events is obtained through
psychic gifts, divine inspiration, the read-

Precognition

ing of signs, or the altering of consciousness. While prophecy is of a grand scale,

relating to large groups or nations of people, predictions concern the individual.
The majority of psychic readings are devoted to questions about probable events
in an individual's future.
Predictions are based on precognition, or direct knowledge of the future.
This knowledge is sought through many
ways: intuition, dreams, or visions in
scrying; or through the reading of signs,
such as in astrology, the Tarot, palmistry,
numerology, and other methods of divination. In shamanic and oracular cultures, mind-altering drugs sometimes are
taken to induce prophecy from a divine
or supernatural source.
Predictions may be colored by the
perceptions and prejudices of the individual. They often are difficult to pinpoint in
time, because time is not linear but exists
in an ever-present now. See Displacement; Precognition; Psychic reading;
Stained-glass window effect.
Sources: June G. Bletzer. The Donning International Encyclopedic
Psychic Dictionary. Norfolk, VA: The Donning Co.,
1986; Mary Ellen Carter. Edgar Cayce on
Prophecy. New York: Warner, 1968; Jane
in Consciousness.
Roberts. Adventures
New York: Bantam Books, 1979; Mysteries of the Unexplained. Pleasantville, NY:

Reader's Digest, 1982.

Premonition
A type of prophecy that is a sense of forewarning or foreboding of a probable future event, characterized by a state of
anxiety, unease, and a gut-level feeling.
Premonitions tend to occur before disasters, accidents, deaths, and other traumatic and emotionally charged events.
There is no clear-cut line between
premonition and precognition, which is
direct knowledge of the future. In general
premonition is sense-oriented, dominated

Premonition

by a syndrome of physical unease, depression, or distress that has no discernible

source or reason. "I feel like something
bad is going to happen" is a typical expression of a premonition. Precognition,
on the other hand, is more precise, involving visions or dreams of the event
that is yet to take place.
For example, in 1948 the prominent
Soviet psychic Wolf Messing traveled to
Ashkhabad to give several public performances of his abilities. As he walked
along the streets of the city, he was seized
with a terrible dread and an intense desire
to get out as soon as possible. The feelings were so strong that he canceled his
shows-the only time in his entire life
that he did so-and left the city. Three
days later a massive earthquake leveled
Ashkhabad and killed 50,000 people.
Messing's premonition saved his life;
however, he had no specific forewarning
of an earthquake.
On October 21, 1966, twenty-eight
adults and 116 children were killed when
a landslide of coal waste tumbled down a
mountain in Aberfan, Wales, and buried
a school. Up to two weeks beforehand, at
least two hundred people experienced
both premonitions and precognitions
about the disaster, according to three surveys taken afterward. Premonitions included depression, a feeling that "something bad" was about to happen (some
people accurately pinpointed the day),
sensations of choking and gasping for
breath, uneasiness, and impressions of
coal dust, billowing black clouds, and
children running and screaming.
While most premonitions occur in a
waking state, some occur in dreams.
Since the language of dreams is symbols,
the premonition may go unnoticed. If
premonitions occur often enough in
dreams, the individual may learn to recognize distinguishing symbols or emotional tone.
Premonitions are an intuitive early
warning system, probably occurring fre-

465

quently but too subtly to be noticed by

the conscious mind. Some premonitions
apparently register on the subconscious
and cause people to act, without knowing
why. In the 1960s W. E. Cox examined
rail passenger loads on American trains
that had accidents between 1950 and
1955. He compared passenger loads on
the same runs on the day of the accident,
each of the preceding seven days, the preceding fourteenth day and twenty-eighth
day. He found a remarkable drop-off in
passenger counts on some but not all accident days. One, the Chicago & East Illinois Georgian, was carrying only nine
passengers on the day of its accident on
June 15, 1952; five days beforehand it
had carried a more typical sixty-two passengers. Cox concluded that many people
who had intended to travel on disasterbound trains had unconsciously altered
their plans or missed the trains by being
late.
The same factor may prevent many
people from sailing on doomed ships. The
Titanic carried only 58 percent of its passenger load on its disastrous maiden voyage in April 1912, in which 1,502 of
2,207 passengers perished when the ship
sank after colliding with an iceberg. A
group of twenty-two stokers may have
been saved by collective subconscious
premonition. They arrived late at the
Southampton dock, and Captain Smith
declared the Titanic would sail without
them. When the Empress of Ireland sank
in the Lawrence River in 1914, its firstclass was two-third~ empty and its
second-class half-empty.
Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson recorded
more than nineteen cases of premonitions
and precognitions about the Titanic in
England, America, Canada, and Brazil,
which occurred during the two weeks
prior to the ship's sailing date of April
10. Between April 3 and 10, several people, including J. Pierpont Morgan,
abruptly canceled their passage. Some
people canceled after dreaming the ship

466

was doomed; others said it was bad luck

to sail on a ship's maiden voyage. Some
of the survivors said they experienced uneasy feelings but sailed anyway.
No one knows why some people are
alerted to danger through premonitions,
while others are not. Premonitions may
be affected by an individual's overall psychic openness.
Following the Aberfan disaster, a
British Premonitions Bureau was established in January 1967 to collect and
screen early warnings in an effort to avert
disasters. A year later the Central Premonitions Bureau was established in New
York City for the same purpose. Though
called "premonitions"
bureaus, they
sought specific precognitive information,
not vague feelings of unease. Both bureaus struggled along for years on low
budgets and with public relations obstacles. Most of the tips they received did
not come to pass; those that did often
were inaccurate in terms of time, rendering them equally useless. See Clairsentience; Precognition.
Rustie Brown. The Titanic, the
the Sea. Lomita, CA: Blue Harbor Press, 1981; W. E. Cox. "Precognition:
An Analysis, II." Journal of the American
Society for Psychical Research 50, no. 1
(January 1956): 99-109; Herbert B.
Greenhouse. Premonitions: A Leap into the
Future. New York: Bernard Geis Assoc.,
1971; Henry Gris and William Dick. The
New Soviet Psychic Discoveries. Englewood Cliffs, N]: Prentice-Hall, 1978;
Edgar D. Mitchell. Psychic Exploration.
Edited by John White. New York: G. P.
Putnam's Sons, 1974; Mysteries of the Unexplained. Pleasantville, NY: Reader's Digest Assn., 1982; Jane Roberts. The Nature of Personal Reality. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974; Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook of Parapsychology.
New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold,
1977; Danah Zohar. Through the Time
Barrier. London: William Heinemann Ltd.,
1982.
Sources:
Psychic

&

Premonition

Prophecy
A divinely inspired vision or revelation of
great events to come, which are of such
magnitude as to affect races, groups of
people, and countries. All prophecies
come from precognition, or knowledge of
the future, but not all precognitive experiences are prophecies; the key difference
is the divine spark or inspired element.
Sometimes, however, little or no distinction is made between a prophecy and a
prediction. In religions prophecies are
made by prophets, gceat men :md women
divinely chosen to preach the divine message, such as Jesus, Muhammad, and Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha). In another
sense prophecies are psychic readings of
the collective unconscious, the anticipation of the manifestations of the collective
will.
In ancient times prophecies were
made by oracles, prophets and prophetesses who went into ecstatic trances and
allowed deities to speak through them.
The ecstasy was induced through various
methods, such as by inhaling the smoke
of sacred wood or drinking the blood of
a sacrificed animal. The ancient Egyptians used cult statues that spoke. The
Greeks placed great store in oracles, and
considered their prophecies unchangeable.
The ancient Hebrews had many
prophets, or navi, a term which comes
from the root for "to well up, to gush
forth." The Old Testament contains numerous prophets and prophecies; eighteen of the thirty-nine books are ascribed
to prophets. The origin and nature of
prophecy is not clear, but it is evident
from the Old Testament that men appointed by God to become prophets
could not resist doing so, sometimes becoming transformed in the process, as
was Saul, who became St. Paul. Moses,
who initially resisted his calling, was described as a prophet unequaled for his
acts and mighty deeds in Deuteronomy

Prophecy

34:10-12. Some prophets had priestly

functions (Samuel and Ezekiel), and Isaiah was a member of the nobility; but
many prophets were removed from the
functions of church and state, and challenged both whenever the need arose.
The Hebrew prophets formed a professional class. Their primary concern
was adherence to the path of righteousness by both individual and nation,
though some were often sought for menial divination matters such as the location of a farmer's lost asses. Elijah established the Sons of the Prophets, an order
which lived to prepare for the birth of the
Messiah.
The Hebrews sometimes used divination methods to prophesy, usually the observation of natural phenomena and patterns. Many prophesied in ecstatic states,
in which the spirit of Yahweh was believed to possess them. Some used alcohol
and music to induce states of ecstasy
when important prophetic visions were
required.
The Didache, an early Christian
manual written in the first century A.D.,
uses the terms "apostle" and "prophet"
interchangeably, and gives instructions
for telling the difference between true and
false prophets.
In Islam the prophet Muhammad received divine inspiration so that he could
renew the guidance given prophets before
him, including those in Judaism and
Christianity. Muslims believe that all
peoples throughout history have had
prophets to guide them; the number of
prophets throughout history is as high as
240,000 by some estimations.
Muhammad was chosen as the Seal
of the Prophets, the last of all prophets
for the rest of time. The Koran is the
product of divine revelations given him
by an angel over a twenty-year period.
Mormonism got its start in 1823
when Joseph Smith, Jr., became the
prophet of a new religious order during a
mystical experience in which he learned

467

of an ancient book recorded by prophets

and written on plates of gold by the
prophet-historian Mormon. Smith was
led to the plates after a series of revelations; the book, known as The Book of
Mormon, is the gospel for the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. See
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, the.
Throughout
history
psychically
gifted laypeople also have been called
prophets. Nostradamus (1503-1566) believed his visions were inspired by God.
Thomas the Rhymer, a thirteenth-century
Scot, said he was given his gift of prophecy by the Queen of Elfland. Another
Scottish prophet, Odhar Coinneach of
the' sixteenth century, also said he obtained his gift from the fairies, who gave
him a magic holed stone. Edgar Cayce
(1877-1945) is often called the "prophets' prophet." Cayce left a legacy of more
than 14,000 trance readings. Jeane
Dixon, American psychic, prophesied the
death of President John F. Kennedy. See
Cayce, Edgar; Dixon, Jeane; Nostradamus; Oracle; Prediction.
Sources: Mary Ellen Carter. Edgar Cayce
on Prophecy. New York: Warner Books,
1968; Jean-Charles de Fontbrune. Nostradamus: Countdown to Apocalypse. New

York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980;

James G. Frazer. The Golden Bough: The
Roots of Religion and Folklore. New York:
Avenel Books, 1981; Michael Loewe and
Carmen Blacker. Oracles and Divination.
Boulder, co: Shambhala, 1981; Edgar D.
Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge
for Science. Edited by John White. New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1974; Geoffrey
Parrinder, ed. World Religions from Ancient History to Present. New York: Facts
On File, 1971; Merlin Stone. When God
Was a Woman. San Diego: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1976.

Prophet, Elizabeth Clare

See Alternative religious movements.

468

Prophet, Mark
See Alternative religious movements.

Psi
The twenty-third letter of the Greek alphabet, generally used in parapsychology
to include extrasensory perception (ESP)
and psychokinesis (PK). In 1946 English
psychologist Dr. Robert Thouless and his
colleague, Dr. W. P. Weisner, suggested
"psi" as a designation for ESP and PK
because both are so closely related. The
term has since inaccurately expanded in
popular usage to include almost any
paranormal experience or phenomenon.
Theories

of Psi

Despite decades of research, psi continues to elude physical and quasiphysical theories of how it functions; it
operates outside the bounds of time and
space. No physical variable influences psi
test results in the laboratory. Various theories that psi is some type of wave, particle, force, or field have been proposed
and discarded. Psi is not, nor is it affected
by, the four forces of physics: strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, gravitational force, or electromagnetic force. Psi
is not subject to the laws of thermodynamics or the law of gravity. It requires
no exchange of energy, which is particularly remarkable in the case of apparent
PK: for example, according to the mechanicallaws of physics, the dematerialization of a copper penny would require
the energy of a small nuclear bomb. Nor
is psi governed by the theory of relativity,
which holds that no particle or object can
move faster than the speed of light, or
186,000 miles a second.
Failure to explain psi in physical
terms has forced researchers to look for
alternative explanations. Some occultists
believe psi is a "vibration" that manifests
throughout the universe, but scientists regard that view with great skepticism.

Prophecy

Physiological Characteristics
Associated with Psi
Since psi is intangible, one way scientists have attempted to identify it is
through measurements of involuntary
physiological processes in the autonomic
nervous system of laboratory test subjects. The most common measures are the
galvanic skin response (GSR), which
records sweat gland activity, and the plethysmograph, which measures changes in
blood volume in the finger that are
caused by dilation or constriction of
blood vessels. Less frequently used is the
electroencephalograph
(EEG), which
measures brain-wave activity. The GSR
and plethysmograph indicate emotional
arousal, and are used in psi tests of emotionally charged versus emotionally neutral targets. Autonomic activity increases
when information that is emotionally
charged for the percipient appears to be
conveyed psychically.
Studies with ganzfeld stimulation
show that an alpha state of brain-wave
activity appears to be conducive to psi.
Psi performance also improves with positive mood and expectation and a friendly
atmosphere provided by the experimenter. It decreases with anxiety, negative mood and expectation, boredom,
and a hostile environment provided by
the experimenter. See Altered states of
consciousness; Animal psi; Decline/
incline effects; Dreams; Experimenter
effect; ESP (extrasensory perception);
Ganzfeld stimulation; Mysticism; Parapsychology; Plants, psychism of; Psychic;
Psychokinesis (PK); Sheep/goat effect.
Sources: Alfred Douglas. Extrasensory
Powers: A Century of Psychical Research.

London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1976; Hoyt

L. Edge, Robert L. Morris, John Palmer,
and Joseph H. Rush. Foundations of Parapsychology. Boston: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1986; Lawrence LeShan. The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist: Toward a General Theory of the Paranormal.

New York: Viking Press, 1974; Lawrence

Psychic

LeShan. Alternate Realities. New York: M.

Evans & Co., 1967; Edgar D. Mitchell.
Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science. Edited by John White. New York:
Paragon Books, 1974; J. B. Rhine. The
Reach of the Mind. New York: William

Sloane Assoc., 1947; Benjamin B. Wolman,

ed. Handbook of Parapsychology. New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977.

Psi hitting and psi missing

Terms characterizing responses on laboratory tests of psi guessing games. An accurate response is called a "psi hit" and
an inaccurate response a "psi miss." Results of hits and misses are figured against
chance. The performance of a test subject
may be affected his or her overall attitude
toward psi (see Sheep/goat effect), the
comfort or discomfort established by the
experimenter, or by distortions in psi reception (see Displacement). Boredom
with repetitive testing increases psi missing. In some experiments the subject is
directed to deliberately miss the targets,
called "low aiming." In that respect the
"miss" becomes a "hit." See Psi.
Sources: Gertrude Schmeidler, ed. Extrasensory Perception. New York: Atherton

Press, 1969; Benjamin B. Wolman, ed.

of Parapsychology. New York:
Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977.

Handbook

Psilocybin
See Drugs in mystical and psychic experiences; Leary, Timothy; Ram Dass.

Psionics
See Applied psi.

Psychic
A person with exceptional ability to acquire information through extrasensory

469

perception (ESP) and/or affect objects

with psychokinesis (PK) on demand.
Some psychics use their talent in a professional capacity. Psychics are not necessarily the same as mediums, who obtain
their information from spirits of the dead
through temporary trance possession. A
psychic may have mediumistic abilities,
and vice versa. Some psychics also possess healing ability.
Many people claim to be "psychic"
because they have occasional ESP or PK
experiences, or because they are highly
intuitive (see Intuition). Most such experiences are spontaneous. However, even
professional psychics are not 100 percent
accurate, nor can they always perform on
demand.
Psychics generally acquire their talent in one of two ways: They are born
with it and manifest their abilities in
childhood; or they suffer a severe or lifethreatening emotional or physical trauma
that triggers the ability. The subsequent
experiences can be unsettling, even frightening, especially when they are precognitive dreams or visions of death and disaster. Some psychics who fall into the
second category at first fear they are suffering insanity. Most, however, find that
they cannot rid themselves of their gifts
and thus learn to live with them and use
them. Every psychic develops a unique
method of accessing and controlling his
or her power.
Throughout history psychics have
filled various roles: priest or priestess,
prophet, soothsayer, seer, diviner, fortuneteller, healer, shaman, wizard, and
witch. In some societies psychics have occupied high positions in state or religion.
In the modern West, in the latter part of
the twentieth century, some efforts have
been made to apply psychics to a host of
professional fields. See Applied psi.
Any person can develop at least
some psychic ability with training and
practice. Success varies, however, and seldom reaches the level of extraordinary

470

psychics whose gifts are innate or acquired through trauma.

Fears of Psychic Abilities
The opening of psychic powers often
brings fears about the consequences of
possessing or using them. Psychics must
learn to overcome fears and adjust to psychic ability as a normal part of life.
According to studies of psychics,
common fears include: the unknown; loss
of control of the process, resulting in possession; loss of control of liie direction;
sickness and depression resulting from
empathy to others; forced and unalterable self-changes; isolation from ordinary
people; confusion over "reality"; inability to communicate experiences; frightening others; temptations to misuse powers; and being defined and validated by
powers. Parapsychologists who have
an unconscious fear of psi may unwittingly skew their experimentation results
through the "experimenter effect." See
ESP (extrasensory perception); Experimenter effect; Psi; Psychic reading.
Sources: Hugh Lynn Cayce. Venture Inward. New York: Harper & Row, 1964; J.
B. Rhine. New Frontiers of the Mind. New

York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1937; "You Can

Be Your Own Psychic." Virginia Beach,
VA: ARE Press, 1987; Charles T. Tart.
"Psychic's Fears of Psychic Powers." The
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 80, no. 3 (July 1986): 279-

92; U. S. Williams. "Laurie Mcquary:

From Coma to Psychic Aid for Business."
Northwest
Women in Business (March!
April 1987): 16-18.

Psychic archaeology
The application of clairvoyance and other
psychic skills to the field of archaeology,
especially in the location of dig sites and
the identification of artifacts. Sometimes
called "intuitive archaeology," psychic
archaeology is controversial despite some
ImpreSSive successes.

Psychic

The primary psychic skill employed

is psychometry, in which a psychic handles objects or photographs to receive
clairvoyant impressions related to an object, its history, and its uses and users. See
Psychometry. Other psychic skills employed are dowsing, used for locating optimum dig sites; retrocognition, or seeing
into the past; and automatic writing, in
which information is channeled from entities or the dead. See Automatic writing;
Dowsing; Retrocognition. Psychics who
are experienced in remote viewingclairvoyance of remote sites based upon geographic coordinates-have
been
shown to be well-suited to psychic archaeology. See Remote viewing.
In the broadest sense, psychic archaeology is employed by virtually all archaeologists and anthropologists who use
their intuition, and even dreams, to guide
them. One of the more dramatic cases of
the latter is that of Herman V. Hilprecht,
who in 1893 was able to decipher a cuneiform inscription following a dream in
which an ancient temple priest gave him
key information.
Perhaps the first, best-known case of
deliberate psychic archaeology was Frederick Bligh Bond's use of automatic writing in the excavations of the ruins of
Glastonbury Abbey in England. Bond, an
architect, was appointed by the Church
of England in 1907 to find the remains of
two chapels. According to records the
chapels had once existed but had been destroyed after Henry VIII closed all monasteries following his break with the
Catholic church.
Unbeknownst to the Church of England, Bond was an occultist. He sought
the services of his friend John Allen Bartlett, who was an automatic writer, and
with him petitioned spirits associated
with the abbey to help him locate the
chapels' ruins. Bond received information
in Latin and Old English, as well as
drawings, from an entity who identified
himself as "Gulielmus Monachus," or

Psychic archaeology

"William the Monk." The monk, plus

other spirits who collectively called themselves the "Watchers from the Other
Side" and the "Company of Glastonbury," provided details of the Edgar and
Loretto Chapels. The spirits said they obtained their information from a "Universal Memory." They said Henry VIII had
brought about the downfall of the abbey
out of his greed, and it was their desire to
see Glastonbury rise once again to spiritual prominence. Bond did not assume
the Watchers were the spirits of the dead,
but thought they might have been part of
his own deep unconscious.
In the ensuing excavations, Bond
found everything exactly as the spirits
had indicated. He kept the source of his
success secret until 1917, when he published his full account in The Gate of Remembrance. The Church of England was
angered and embarrassed, and forced
Bond out by 1922, when excavations
were stopped. Bond went to America,
where he continued to receive information from spirits about Glastonbury, King
Arthur (who reportedly was buried
there), and the Holy Grail. All of Bond's
books continue to be banned from the
Glastonbury Abbey bookshop. See Glastonbury.
In the 1930s the psychometry feats
of Stefan Ossowiecki, a Polish chemical
engineer who received psychic training
from a Jewish mystic, led to psychic archaeology experiments by Polish scholars. Until his death in 1945 at the hands
of the Nazis, Ossowiecki participated in
various experiments with artifacts. Some
of his information was not verified for
years; for example, he stated that the
Magdalenian people, who existed about
15,000 years ago, had possessed the bow
and arrow, which archaeologists at the
time disputed. It has since been proved
that the bow and arrow date much earlier, to the Neanderthals.
Ossowiecki believed he got his information from the Akashic Records. Edgar

471

Cayce believed likewise; in his many

trance readings, he provided information
about ancient Egypt, the Sphinx, and the
Great Pyramid, some of which has been
verified. Cayce also spoke a great deal
about the legendary Atlantis, the existence of which remains unproven. See Atlantis.
Since the 1970s psychic archaeology
has been used to find dig sites in North
America, Egypt, and elsewhere. One academic supporter has been Canadian archaeologist J. Norman Emerson, who has
worked with psychic George McMullen.
McMullen has said he sees movie-like images while holding artifacts, and is aided
in his work by beings of light. In the late
1970s, McMullen was part of a team put
together by the Mobius Group, a consulting service in Los Angeles, which went to
Egypt to test the viabiliry of psychic archaeology. McMullen and psychic Hella
Hammid provided information
that
helped locate the buried ciry of Marea,
the ruins of Marc Antony's palace, and
the probable sites of the library of Alexandria, Cleopatra's palace, and Marc
Antony's tomb. The team also found the
underwater ruins of a temple and the
lighthouse of Pharos in the eastern harbor
of Alexandria.
Although some researchers claim
high and reliable success rates with psychics, others have conducted experiments
with wrapped and unwrapped artifacts
that show psychic archaeology is not reliable. One seemingly insurmountable
drawback to psychic archaeology is the
reliabiliry of psychically obtained information about past cultures that cannot be
verified through other sources. Nonetheless, it may continue to be valuable as an
aid to locating dig sites. See Applied psi;
Intuition.
Sources: Frederick Bligh Bond. The Gate of
Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
Remembrance.

1921; Hoyt L. Edge, Robert L. Morris,

John Palmer, and Joseph H. Rush. Foundations of Parapsychology. Boston: Rout-

472

ledge & Kegan Paul, 1986; Jeffrey Goodman. Psychic Archaeology: Time Machine
to the Past. New York: G. P. Putnam's
Sons, 1977; David Jones. Visions of Time:
Experiments

in

Psychic

Archaeology.

Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing

House, 1979; Stephan A. Schwartz. The Secret Vaults of Time. New York: Grosset &
Dunlap, 1978; Stephan A. Schwartz. The
Alexandria Project. New York: Delacorte
Press, 1983; Alan Vaughn. "Intuition, Precognition, and the Art of Prediction." The
Futurist (June 1982): 5-10; Colin Wilson.
The Psychic Detectives. San Francisco:
Mercury House, 1985.

Psychic attack
An allegedly paranormal assault upon
humans or animals that causes physical
or mental distress, injury, illness, or even
death. Psychic attack is said to happen by
two means: (1) the human direction, such
as by a sorcerer, of nonphysical agents
such as malevolent spirits, demons, or
thought-forms; and (2) a human assault
accomplished by out-of-body projection
of a double or astral form.
In sorcery the equivalent of psychic
attack is a curse. Some tribal sorcerers are
renowned for their alleged abiliry to magically kill others with a wasting disease
that seems to resist medical help and reportedly leaves some victims virtually
bloodless by the time of death. Some
magical rituals involve "sending," in
which the curse is fatally delivered to the
victim by an animal familiar in the form
of a snake or scorpion or other fearsome
creature. In other rituals a substitute for
the victim, such as a doll or snip of the
victim's hair, serves as a sympathetic
magical link that transmits the attacks.
The occultist Dion Fortune wrote extensively on psychic attack, and said it is
much more common than believed. In her
classic work on the subject, Psychic SelfDefence (1930), Fortune described her
own experiences combating psychic attack. The first occurred when she was

Psychic archaeology

twenty and was nearly psychologically

destroyed by an employer whom she believed was adept in occultism. Fortune
suffered a nervous breakdown and believed her aura had been depleted in
much the same way that a battery can be
drained.
The most common symptom of psychic attack is the "hag syndrome," in
which the victim awakens feeling a crushing weight on the chest accompanied by
paralysis. In some attacks the victim may
see a form, hear noises, or smell vile
odors. Nightmares occur in some cases.
The hag syndrome has been documented since ancient times and occurs
presently in an estimated 15 percent of
the adult population worldwide. There
are no definitive explanations for it. The
second-century Roman physician Galen
attributed it to indigestion. In the Middle
Ages, incubi and succubi were blamed.
The modern Freudian psychoanalyst Ernest Jones said sexual repression was the
cause. Another modern theory suggests
sleep disorders are responsible. Various
folklore traditions attribute hag attacks
to witchcraft and sorcery.
The hag syndrome also resembles
some cases of alleged vampirism recorded
in Eastern Europe dating to about the fifteenth century. Nocturnal attacks upon
the living were blamed upon the restless
spirits of certain dead. The attacks
stopped when the suspected corpses were
disinterred (they were reportedly found
to be incorrupt) and were staked, dismembered, or burned.
Other symptoms of psychic attack,
according to Fortune, include feelings of
overwhelming dread and fear, which deteriorate to nervous exhaustion, mental
breakdown, and a physical wasting away
of body tissue; the presence of bruises on
the body after nighttime astral attacks;
odd footprints about the area; inexplicable outbreaks of fire; poltergeist phenomena; and the precipitation of slime, as
though armies of slugs had crawled

Psychic attack

across the floor. Philosopher William

James, writing in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), records a man's
description of an apparent hag attack
characterized by an invisible presence
evoking a feeling of horror, a sensation of
pressure on the chest, and "a large tearing vital pain."
To be most effective, psychic attacks
are supposed to be launched during the
waning moon and especially at the new
moon. The moon is said to govern psychic forces, and these phases rule the socalled left-hand path, or evil path, of
magic. See Moon.
According to Fortune psychic vampirism, another form of psychic attack, is
rare. She defines a psychic vampire as a
person with sharp canine teeth who travels astrally at night to bite victims and
suck the life force out of them. The term
has degenerated in more recent occult use
to mean any person whose presence is tiring and seems to sap the energy of others.
The prescribed defenses against psychic attack are: (1) to sever all contact
with the suspected people, places, or
paths of study; (2) to avoid going to the
sea, for water is the element of psychic
forces; (3) to keep the stomach full,
which shuts down the psychic centers,
which serve as ports of entry; (4) to get
plenty of sunshine; (5) to avoid being
alone; and (6) for those trained in occultism, to undertake certain protective and
banishing rituals. See Church of Christ,
Scientist; Fortune, Dion; Hermetic Order
of the Golden Dawn; Thought-form.
Dion Fortune. Psychic Self1930. 6th ed. York Beach, ME:
Samuel Weiser, 1957; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The Encyclopedia of Witches and
Witchcraft. New York: Facts On File,
1989; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. Vampires
Among Us. New York: Pocket Books,
1991; David J. Hufford. The Terror that
Sources:
Defence.

Comes in the Night: An ExperienceCentered Study of Supernatural Assault

Traditions.
Philadelphia: University of

473

Pennsylvania Press, 1982; William James.

The

Varieties

of

Religious

Experience.

1902. New York: The Modern Library,

1936; Janet and Stewart Farrar. A Witches'
Bible-Compleat.
New York: Magickal
Childe, 1984.

Psychic criminology
The use of psychics in the investigation
and jury selection of civil and criminal
cases. A controversial field, psychic criminology nonetheless has grown in the decades following World War II due to the
publicized successes of various celebrity
psychics.
Since antiquity seers and dowsers
have been sought out to help locate missing persons and solve crimes. The field of
modern psychic criminology began taking
shape in the mid-nineteenth century,
when Joseph R. Buchanan, an American
physiologist, coined the term "psychometry" and said it could be used to measure the "soul" of all things. Buchanan
further said that the past is entombed in
the present. Researchers who followed
Buchanan theorized that objects retain
imprints of the past and their ownersvariously called "vibrations," "psychic
ether," "aura," and "odic force" -that
could be picked up by sensitives. Psychics
who handled objects belonging to crime
victims were found to provide information that often could help solve the crime.
See Psychometry.
Psychic detection was used in Europe
during and after World War 1. Professor
Antal Hermann, a Hungarian sociologist,
argued for a wider acceptance of metaphysics and of "suggestive powers" and
their use in modern criminology. In the
early 1930s, the matter was taken up by
the Viennese Criminological Association
but was not decided.
In 1925 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
creator of Sherlock Holmes, predicted
that the detectives of the future would be
clairvoyants or, if they were not, they

474

would all use clairvoyants. By the latter

part of the twentieth century, hundreds of
psychics were working regularly with police in North America, Britain, and Europe, though their success was erratic.
Many professional psychics who
work in the field prefer to be called "intuitives" or "viewers" to avoid a perceived taint on the term "psychic." Most
work pro bono for law enforcement, although some accept donations from, or
charge fees to, private parties involved in
a case.
Law enforcement agencies remain divided over the effectiveness of psychics.
Some departments make regular use of
selected individuals and have established
written procedures for doing so; others
feel psychics make no difference in solving cases. Departments that do use psychics often are reluctant to admit it publicly. When sensational cases break,
police are overwhelmed with tips from
people claiming to be psychic. In the
1980 to 1981 investigation of child murders in Atlanta, Georgia, police received
more than 19,000 letters from alleged
psychics. All tips were analyzed, but police said none was instrumental in solving
the case.

Techniques
Most psychic detection involves psychometry of personal items belonging to
the victim-undergarments
often are preferred because they seem to yield the
strongest "vibrations" -or items found at
the crime scene. By handling these psychics say they see images or receive information pertaining to the crime. For example, they may see a reenactment of the
crime, or the location of a body or murder weapon, or the location of a suspect's
whereabouts. Some feel as though they
have entered the perpetrator's mind.
Some also receive information through
intuitive flashes, dreams, auras, automatic writing, channeling, hypnosis,

Psychic attack

dowsing, and graphology. Psychics often

visit crime scenes to pick up additional
information.
Sometimes the information is cryptic-numbers,
letters, and vague descriptions-and
cannot immediately be
deciphered. Psychically obtained information is not always reliable and does not
always lead to a solution of a case. Most
psychics who work in this field have not
been tested scientifically; thus no baseline
exists by which to measure the effectiveness of psychic detection work. At the
least, however, it provides psychological
solace to individuals and can provide law
enforcement agencies with more latitude .
in pursuing leads.

Psychics in the Courtroom

Lawyers sometimes use psychics in
selecting juries and in preparing their
cases. Psychics predict which prospective
jurors will be beneficial for a lawyer's client, and which witnesses for the opposition will prove most damaging to a case.
They also advise lawyers when clients or
prospective witnesses are lying, and when
settlement offers will be made by the
other side. Results are mixed, but many
lawyers remain open-minded about future use of psychics; some feel the presence of a psychic during selection keeps
potential jurors honest in their answers to
questions. Defense lawyers for Jean Harris, convicted in 1981 of murdering Dr.
Herman Tarnower of Scarsdale, New
York, used a psychic in the jury selection.
The psychic accurately predicted Harris
would be convicted if she testified. Attorney Melvin M. Belli of San Francisco said
he has used psychics in jury selection.
The testimony of psychics is inadmissible in court.
Psychic criminology has raised the issue of violation of constitutional rights. It
is argued that psychics who pick up information from a suspect's mind might
conceivably violate constitutional privacy

Psychic reading

guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.

As long as psychics stay off the witness
stand, that contention may never be
tested; rather, psychics may continue to
play behind-the-scenes roles. In 1986
lawyers interviewed by The National
Law Journal foresaw continued and increasing use of psychics in law enforcement. See Applied psi; Croiset, Gerard;
Hurkos, Peter; Remote viewing.
Sources: Joseph P. Blank. "The Woman
Who Sees through Psychic Eyes." The
Reader's Digest (December 1978): 107-12;
Norma Lee Browning. Peter Hurkos: I
Have Many Lives. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1976; Geraldine Cummins.
Unseen Adventures. London: Rider & Co.,
1951; Mary Ann Galante. "Psychics: Lawyers Using Seers to Help Select Juries, Find
Missing Children." The National Law
Journal 8, no. 20 (January 27, 1986): 1+;
Whitney S. Hibbard and Raymond W.
Worring. Psychic Criminology: An Operations Manual for Using Psychics in Criminal Investigations. Springfield, IL: Charles

C Thomas, 1982; Jeffrey Mishlove and

William H. Kautz. "An Emerging New Discipline!" Applied Psi 1, no. 1 (March/April
1982): 1; Arthur Lyons and Marcello
Truzzi, Ph.D. The Blue Sense. New York:
Mysterious Press/Warner Books, 1991;
Paul Tabori. Crime and the Occult. New
York: Taplinger, 1974; Colin Wilson. The
Psychic Detectives. 1984. San Francisco:
Mercury House, 1985; Richard and Joyce
Wolkomir. "Clairvoyant Crime Busters."
McCall's (October 1987): 162-64; Kenneth L. Woodward. "The Strange Visions
of Dorothy Allison." McCall's (September
1978): 28-:)8; "Visions of the Dead."
Newsweek (April 17, 1978): 52; Dixie Yeterian. Casebook of a Psychic Detective.
New York: Stein and Day, 1982.

Psychic reading
A sitting with a psychic or medium in
which psychic ability is used to answer a
client's questions. Most people seek psychic readings for information about the

475

future, advice on how to handle problems

and relationships, communication with
departed loved ones, and divination for
finding missing persons and objects. Such
services have been rendered by psychically gifted people since ancient times.
A typical reading lasts for thirty to
sixty minutes. Fees vary from voluntary
contributions of a few dollars-typical of
psychic fairs-to
hundreds of dollars
charged by famous psychics.
Methods vary according to the individual psychic. The most popular in the
present day are astrology, Tarot, numerology, psychometry, palmistry, aura reading, access to the so-called Akashic
Records, and trance channeling. Another
widely used method is scrying, in which
the psychic gazes into a crystal, mirror,
other reflective surface, or flame.
Characteristics of psychic reading
also vary according to the psychic. The
session may begin with an overview provided by the psychic, followed by questions and answers, or may be entirely
question and answer. In Tarot readings it
is customary for the client to come with a
single question, which is thought or written down prior to the reading.
The settings for readings also vary.
Mediumistic seances typically take place
in dimly lit or darkened rooms. Many
psychics prefer comfortable rooms with
low light or candle light and incense,
which they say enhances their "attunement." Some channelers lie down. Some
give readings over the telephone.
Responsible psychics do not encourage their clients to seek frequent readings.
They believe clients should not become
dependent upon readings to make decisions; instead, readings should be used as
one of many tools for inner growth and
self-reliance. See Channeling; Divination;
Mediumship; Prophecy.

476

Psychic surgery
The alleged performing of paranormal
surgery with bare hands, in which the
body is opened and closed without use or
benefit of surgical instruments; or paranormal surgery done with simple objects
such as kitchen knives. Patients remain
fully conscious and allegedly experience
no pain. The surgeon reputedly uses paranormal powers or is guided by spirit helpers. While some observed surgeries remain unexplained, many have been
exposed as fraud, accomplished by
sleight-of-hand tricks known to most
stage magicians.
Psychic surgery received much Western media attention in the 1960s and
1970s, prompting thousands of people
suffering from chronic, debilitating, or
terminal illnesses to seek treatment in the
Philippines and Brazil, where psychic surgery largely is practiced by Spiritists.
Some patients have reported cures that
are supported by medical diagnosis, but
many have not been cured. Most psychic surgeons resist scientific and medical investigation, thus raising suspicion
about their purported paranormal abilities. Some practitioners have allowed
themselves to be photographed
and
filmed.
Psychic surgery is performed under
septic conditions, yet patients claim not
to suffer postoperative infections. Some
psychic surgeons say they operate only on
the etheric body, or "perispirit" of the
patient; they do not touch the flesh, but
make hand passes and motions in the air
just above the body. Others claim to penetrate the body with kitchen knives, scissors, or their fingers in order to remove
tumors and growths. Such operations are
accompanied by spurting blood and the
production of stringy or lumpy masses
said to be tumors; the incisions are closed
without stitches and leave faint or no
marks. The patient walks out and resumes normal activity.

Psychic reading

Psychic surgeons also give "spiritual

injections," in which the surgeon points
his finger at the patient and "injects"
medicine. Patients report feeling tingling
or jabbing sensations. Drops of blood appear on the flesh as though it has been
pricked with a needle. In some cases the
blood has been shown to be animal
blood.
Some of the "tumors" removed from
patients have been found to be chicken or
pig organs, other lumps of animal flesh,
or balls of cotton wool palmed by the
surgeon. Kidney stones have been exposed as ordinary pebbles. Animal blood
is concealed in little cellophane bags in
the palm or in false thumbs; in some
cases the blood is already congealed when
it allegedly spurts out of the patient. Using the blood, wads of cotton, and sheets
for diversion, the appearance of penetration can be created by folding the knuckles against the skin. Many psychic surgeons demonstrate
on obese patients,
whose fatty skin is easy to manipulate.
If patients
complain
of pain, no
cures, or other postoperative
problems,
psychic surgeons often blame them on the
spirits, past-life karma, or a lack of harmony between the patient, healer, and
magnetic vibrations in the room.
One of the most famous psychic surgeons was "Ze Arigo," the pseudonym of
Jose Pedro de Feitas of Brazil. A peasant
with a third-grade education, Arigo allegedly treated up to three hundred patients
a day for nearly two decades, correctly
diagnosing their ailments and writing out
medically correct prescriptions. He reputedly could stop blood flow with verbal
command. His trademark was his rusty
jackknife, which he used in operations.
He said he was guided by a "Dr. Fritz,"
the spirit of a long-dead German doctor
whom he had never met in life. Arigo was
sued by the Brazilian Medical Association
and Catholic church for illegal practice of
medicine and witchcraft; he was jailed in
1958 and 1964.

Psychic surgery

In 1968 Andrija (Henry K.) Puharich, an American doctor, led a team of

doctors to Brazil to investigate Arigo.
Electroencephalograph
tests showed he
had no yogi-like ability to control his
own blood flow, body temperature,
or
brain waves. Nonetheless,
Puharich believed that Arigo controlled an unknown
form of life energy.
Arigo was killed in an auto accident
on January 11, 1971. "Dr. Fritz" reappeared in 1980 as the spirit guide to a
Brazilian obstetrician
and gynecologist,
Edson de Quieroz.
The fraud and controversy
of psychic surgery precludes its serious investigation by many parapsychologists.
Nonetheless, it is possible that paranormal
processes occur among some psychic surgeons, who typically have strong mediumistic ability, a deep religious belief, a
vivid imagination,
a weak ego, and an
undeveloped intellect. They may be adept
at stimulating
the natural
self-healing
processes of the patient. See Healing,
faith and psychic; Spiritism.
Sources: Milbourne Christopher. Mediums,
Mystics, and the Occult. New York:
Thomas Y. Crowell, 1975; Martin Ebon,
ed. The Psychic Reader. New York: The
World Publishing Co., 1969; John G.
Fuller. Arigo: Surgeon of the Rusty Knife.
New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1974;
Stanley Krippner and Alberto Villoldo. The
Realms of Healing. 3d ed. Berkeley, CA:
Celestial Arts, 1986; George W. Meek, ed.
Healers and the Healing Process. Wheaton,
IL: The Theosophical
Publishing House,
1977; Guy Lyon Playfair. The Unknown
Power. New York: Pocket Books, 1975;
James Randi. Flim-Flam! Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1982; Harold Sherman.
"Wonder" Healers of the Philippines. Los
Angeles: DeVorss & Co., 1967; D. Scott
Rogo and Raymond Bayless. "Psychic Surgery." Correspondence. The Journal of the
Society for Psychical Research 44, no. 738
(December 1968): 426-28; Ian Stevenson.
"Tests Prove This 'Psychic Surgery' Was
Fraudulent."
Psychic News
(July 18,

477

1970): 3; Tom Valentine. Psychic Surgery.

1973. New York: Pocket Books, 1975.

Psychic vampirism
See Psychic attack.

Psychokinesis

(PK)

A form of psi that is the apparent influence of mind over matter through invisible means, such as the movement of objects, bending of metal, and the outcome
of events. The term "psychokinesis"
comes from the Greek words psyche,
meaning "breath," "life," or "soul," and
kinein, meaning "to move." PK occurs
spontaneously and deliberately, indicating that it is both an unconscious and
conscious process.
What PK is and how it operates remain an enigma, though many theories
have been put forward. It cannot be explained in terms of physics, nor is it affected by any of the forces or laws of
physics. It has been held to be a supernatural ability, a human ability possessed
only by extraordinary individuals, and a
human ability possessed by all people. If
one assumes the existence of extrasensory
perception (ESP), then PK is a necessary
consequence. In physics, if information is
obtained from a system (as with ESP),
then that system is disturbed (rdulting in
PK).

PK has been observed since ancient

times. Levitations, miraculous healing"
invisibility, luminosities, apports, and
other physical phenomena have been attributed to adepts and holy people
around the world. Many of the remarkable phenomena reported in the Bible
may be viewed in terms of PK. The New
Testament, particularly Acts, contains
many possible psi events, including PK.
For example, Paul and Silas, imprisoned
in Ephesus, prayed and sang hymns; at
midnight their shackles fell off and the
prison doors swang open (Acts 16:1940).

478

Magic spells, curses, and rituals to

control the weather also may involve PK.
For example, the evil eye, a universal belief that certain individuals possess the
power to harm or kill with a look, could
involve the psychic projection, consciously or unconsciously, of ill will. See
Evil eye.
PK manifests in mediumship in alleged materializations and dematerializations, apports, levitations, table-tipping,
raps, and the manifestations of ectoplasm
and pseudopods. The nineteenth-century
medium Daniel Dunglas Home was renowned for his ability to handle hot coals
without being burned, and to levitate. See
Home, Daniel Dunglas. During Home's
time there were also "electric people"
who experienced a "high-voltage syndrome": They could make knives and
forks cling to their skin, and could by
their touch send furniture flying across a
room.
Another medium renowned for PK
was Rudi Schneider, whose materializations and telekinetic movement of objects
was intently studied by psychical researchers during the first part of the
twentieth century.
Since the 1930s PK has been of major research interest, and it has become
the fastest-growing field of parapsychology, particularly in the United States and
the Soviet Union. Statistical findings from
controlled laboratory studies, however,
have resulted in contradictory findings.
Some experiments have been attacked for
their methodologies, or tainted with accusations of fraud.
In the final analysis, PK can be said
to occur, but it is not known under what
conditions or by what requirements. Patterns have been identified according to
experimenters and subjects, but these patterns cannot be applied to all circumstances. There is evidence that PK is adversely affected by a subject's boredom or
anxiety. See Experimenter effect; Sheep/
goat effect.

Psychic surgery

Psychokinesis experiment at University of California at Los Angeles: Subject

attempts to affect spin of silver dollar and make it land heads.

American parapsychologist J. B.
Rhine began studying PK in 1934 with
dice tests done under controlled laboratory conditions at Duke University in
North Carolina. Rhine was by no means
the first to study PK; but his work, which
followed on the heels of his groundbreaking research in ESP, yielded significant findings. Rhine conducted an experiment with a gambler who claimed that
he had the power to influence falling dice
to turn to specific numbers or number
combinations. Early results were beyond
the probabilities of chance, which startled
Rhine, but subsequent
experiments
yielded uneven results. Rhine did not immediately publish his findings for several
reasons: PK suffered from a dubious reputation at the time; he had used himself
as an occasional subject; and the studies

Psychokinesis (PK)

were too insufficiently controlled.

Rhine finally agreed to publish when
an assistant, Betty Humphrey, noted that
subjects scored significantly better with
the dice early in the experimental sequence rather than toward the end. This
effect was attributed to lessening interest
on the part of the subjects, similar to
what was found in studies with ESP subjects. (Further studies by other Duke researchers sought to have subjects land the
dice in a specified place, but these tests
also were criticized for lack of rigorous
methods of control.)
Rhine observed that PK does not
seem to be connected to any physical processes of the brain, or to be subject to any
of the mechanical laws of physics.
Rather, it seems to be a nonphysical force
of the mind that can act upon matter

479

in statistically measurable ways. It produces results that cannot be explained by

physics.
Rhine also found that PK is similar
to ESP in its independence of space and
time. He concluded further that ESP is a
necessary part of the PK process, and one
implies the other. In order to exert an influence upon matter, such as the outcome
of tossed dice, ESP must come into play
at precisely the right point of space and
moment of time, Rhine said. He also observed that both ESP and PK were adversely affected by drugs and were influenced by hypnosis and the mental state of
the subject. See ESP (extrasensory perception); Psi.
Rhine was of the opinion that faith
healing and folk magic healing were PK
phenomena, in which a psychogenic effect, sometimes at a distance, was exerted
upon the body. See Healing, faith and
psychic.
Rhine's research marked the beginning of a significant new phase in PK research. Before 1940, research of observable PK was largely limited to physical
mediumship, which usually was performed in the dark during seances. Thus
scientific controls were difficult and the
possibility of fraud was high. After
Rhine's exploratory work, PK research
fell into two classes: macro-PK, or observable events; and micro-PK, weak or
slight effects usually not visible to the naked eye and requiring statistical evaluation. Emphasis was given to micro-PK.
In the late 1960s, a new method for
testing micro-PK was devised by American physicist Helmut Schmidt. His apparatus was the "electronic coin flipper,"
which operates on the random decay of
radioactive particles. As decay occurs
particles or rays are emitted at rates that
are unaffected by temperature, pressure,
electricity, magnetism,
or chemical
change. The rate of emission is completely unpredictable and cannot be manipulated by fraud. Subjects were asked

480

to exert their mental energy on flipping

the coin to heads or tails so that bulbs
on the device would light up in one
direction or another; some did successfully influence the coins. The electronic
coin flipper was the prototype for random event generators, computerized
techniques that have since played a
major role in tests for both ESP and
PK, and have yielded significant PK test
results.
Schmidt also was interested in learning if animals had powers of PK. In
experiments where animals produced positive results, Schmidt found the interpretation difficult. He theorized that the researcher could playa role in influencing
findings by using his own PK on the experimental subjects. This has proved to
be a major obstacle in all psi tests with
animals, because it is virtually impossible
to tell if it is the animals or the researchers who are using PK abilities. Since
Schmidt's work there has been very little
research conducted in animal PK, but
most studies follow the guidelines he developed. See Animal psi.
Macro-PK began to make a comeback in research in the 1960s, with individuals who performed PK feats not in
the dark but in the light, and under controlled laboratory conditions. Israeli psychic Uri Geller dazzled television audiences with his alleged powers to bend or
break metal with a few taps of his fingers
and mental concentration. Geller's powers were said to be so intense that while
performing on television, some viewers
noted their own household objects undergoing similar changes. Efforts to test
Geller in laboratory conditions largely
were not successful. Critics, most notably
professional magicians, claimed that Geller used sleight-of-hand, though these
charges were never proved. See Geller,
Uri.
The most famous Soviet PK subject
was Nina Kulagina, a housewife from
Leningrad, born in the mid-1920s, whose

Psychokinesis

(PK)

abilities were revealed to the West in

1968. Kulagina was observed by Western
scientists, who witnessed such phenomena as the movement of many different
sizes and types of stationary objects; the
altering of the course of objects already in
motion; and impressions upon photographic film. Kulagina also reportedly exerted PK upon a frog's heart that had
been removed from the animal, first by
changing its rate of beating and then
stopping it altogether. She also was photographed apparently levitating objects.
During the 1970s PK was the focus
of more research, with increasingly sophisticated methods applied to both
micro-PK and macro-PK. Some researchers turned their attention to the use of
psychics, mediums, and others who apparently could influence static objects
and materials. One subject was Ingo
Swann, a New York artist and psychic
who could change the temperature of
nearby objects by one degree, and could
also affect the magnetic field of a magnetometer. Others have pursued PK healing experiments with animals and plants.
Tests in which healers handled wounded
mice, and water to be applied to barley
seeds, showed impressive results. PK effects also have been observed on microorganisms and enzymes. In some cases results are marginal or have not been
successfully replicated; yet researchers believe the area holds promise for discoveries that can shed further light on the healmg process.
Researchers have noticed a "linger
effect" in many experiments. For example, temperatures influenced by an agent
continue to rise or fall for a period of
time after the agent leaves the premises.
Water that has been held by healers and
seems to influence the growth of plants
continues to exert the influence even after
being boiled.
Among other areas of research interest are the role of meditation and other
altered states of consciousness in PK, and

Psychokinesis

(PK)

the existence of retroactive PK, or "retroPK," in which the subject attempts to influence the event-such as a sequence of
numbers produced by a random event
generator-after it has already happened.
However, it is not possible to rule out
conclusively that either the subject or the
experimenter unconsciously exerted PK
on the generator at the time the numbers
were selected.
Beyond the laboratory some researchers have studied spontaneous or
unconscious PK, such as hauntings, apparitions, poltergeists, and physical phenomena associated with death and dying.
See Apparition; Apport; Deathbed visions; Electronic voice phenomenon;
Haunting; Levitation; Materialization;
Plants, psychism of; Poltergeist; Thoughtography.
Sources: "Body and Soul." Newsweek (November 7, 1988): 88-97; Hoyt L. Edge,
Robert L. Morris, John Palmer, and Joseph
H. Rush. Foundations of Parapsychology.
Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986;
Renee Haynes. The Society for Psychical
Research: 1882-1982, A History. London:
Macdonald & Co., 1982; H. H. J. Keil,
Benson Herbert, J. G. Pratt, and Montague
Ullman. "Directly Observable Voluntary
PK Effects: A Survey and Tentative Interpretation of Available Findings from Nina
Kulagina and Other Known Related Cases
of Recent Date," Proceedings of the Society
for Psychical Research 56, part 210 (January 1976): 197-235; Elizabeth E. McAdams and Raymond Bayless. The Case for
Life after Death. Chicago: Nelson-Hall,
1981; Edgar D. Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science. Edited by
John White. New York: Paragon Books,
1974; Sheila Ostrander
and Lynn
Schroeder. Psychic Discoveries Behind the
Iron
Curtain.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1970; J. B. Rhine. The Reach
of the Mind. New York: William Sloane
Assoc., 1947; Louisa E. Rhine. Mind Over
Matter: Psychokinesis. New York: Collier
Books, 1970; D. Scott Rogo. Psychic
Breakthroughs
Today.
Wellingborough,
Northamptonshire, England: The Aquarian

481

Press, 1987; Russell Targ and Harold E.

Puthoff. Mind Reach: Scientists Look at
New York: Delacorte
Psychic Ability.
Press, 1977; Lyall Watson. Beyond Supernature. New York: Bantam Books, 1987;
Robert Winterhalter. "Is There a Relationship Between God and Psi?" The Journal of
Religion and Psychical Research 10, no 3
(July 1987): 158-68; Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook of Parapsychology.
New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977.

Psychology
The science of human behavior. "Psychology" is derived from the Greek
psyche, for "breath," "spirit," or "soul."
Psychotherapy is therefore the nurturing
of the spirit or soul. The discussion here
shall focus on the emergence of humanistic and trans personal psychologies,
which emphasize human potential and
transcendence of self, and seek to blend
traditional Western therapies with Eastern philosophy, behavioral medicine, and
the experience of altered states.
Psychology did not emerge from philosophy as a separate, experimental science until the late nineteenth century. It
had been shaped by the mechanistic, dualistic ideas of Rene Descartes in the seventeenth century, that mind exists separate from body but interacts with it at a
point in the brain. The classical psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud became established around the turn of the twentieth
century. Freud focused on pathology-his
works contain more than four hundred
references to neuroses but none to
health - and emphasized the need for a
strong ego. He also presumed that humans are forever in mental conflict that
can be reduced but never resolved. See
Freud, Sigmund.
Behaviorism, another school that
arose in the early twentieth century, emphasized measurement of observable behavior without consideration of consciousness. The chief exponent of Behav-

482

lOrISm was psychologist B. F. Skinner,

whose experiments with animals led to
his principles of programmed learning via
reinforcement and reward.
Carl G. lung, who broke away from
Freud, was the first Western psychiatrist
to see the importance of transpersonal experience in mental health. He stated that
the approach to the numinous, not the
treatment of neuroses, was the real therapy, and that by experiencing the numinous one is "released from the curse of
pathology." He termed the process of becoming whole as "individuation." To
that end lung explored the inner psychic
landscape of the contents of the unconscious, both personal and collective. See
Archetypes;
Collective
unconscious;
lung, Carl Gustav.
At about the middle of the twentieth
century, there was growing evidence that
psychology needed to address behavior
associated with health and well-being
rather than only pathology, and that psychology had underestimated the human
potential for psychological growth and
well-being. A major breakthrough developed to make psychology "the study of
man" by regarding the human being as a
whole organism and not a synthesis of
parts. This shift brought together science,
medicine, the humanities, and religion.

Humanistic Psychology
The "third force" of psychology, as
humanistic psychology is called, is an orientation toward the whole of psychology
rather than a school or area. It is most
identified with Abraham H. Maslow
(1908-1970). Trained as an experimental
psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, Maslow decided after the start of
World War II that he would transform
psychology into an instrument for world
peace and improvement of the human
condition.
Maslow believed that all human beings have innate spiritual yearnings to ex-

Psychokinesis

(PK)

perience the sacred and fulfill themselves

to their maximum potential of goodness.
Maslow called these yearnings "Bvalues," the B standing for cognition of
Being, or a fully integrated and holistic
state. B-values include truth, goodness,
beauty, wholeness, dichotomy-transcendence, aliveness, uniqueness, perfection,
necessity, completion, justice, order, simplicity, richness, effortlessness, playfulness, self-sufficiency, and so on.
Maslow was dlsmrbed by what he
observed as the total collapse of societal
values throughout the modern world. He
deplored the devaluation of spiritual experiences, tender emotions, marriage,
parenthood, and friendships. He said the
collapse of values has created a spiritual
emptiness that breeds increasing violence,
alcoholism, and drug abuse.
The root of this collapse is dichotomy, the Cartesian view that subject and
object are forever separate, which prevents a holistic outlook. Religion and science have been dichotomized since the
seventeenth century. The result, Maslow
said, is that both have become too narrowly defined, literally crippled. Science
could not deal with the transcendent and
the sacred, with values and ethics. Religion, cut away from knowledge and further discovery, was forced to take the
stance that it had nothing more to learn:
that its founding revelations were complete and eternal truths. As the exclusive
jurisdiction of a priesthood, religion has
become removed from both human nature and the world of nature; that is, it
has been taken out of the ordinary, which
is where all the great mystics attest that
the sacred lies.
Maslow said that phenomenology
and existentialism had much to offer psychology by providing it the underlying
foundation of philosophy it lacked. Existentialism, he said, would lead to the establishment of another branch of psychology of the fully evolved and authentic
Self and its way of being.

Psychology

While human beings do possess inherently pathological natures, which are

dealt with in Freud's psychology, they
also posses< inherently good inner natures, Maslow said. This good inner nature manifests as a natural striving for
healthy living, honesty, creativity, compassion, unselfishness, and so on. A truly
fulfilled and "self-actualized" individual
(a term Maslow coined), who was mature, healthy, and filled with a zest for
living, is one who has successfully integrated his or her lower, animalistic, "instinctoid" self with his or her higher, godlike self. Neither
self is denied,
repudiated, or "overcome."
The self-actualized individual is happier, healthier, and more creative.
(Maslow did not equate creativity with
great talent-which
he said is independent of goodness and health of character- but merely with an ability to do anything, even routine things, creatively.)
Self-actualization is not a Iranscendence
of problems, for all people suffer tragedies, pain, and problems in addition to
joy and health. Self-actualization, rather,
makes more possible the transcendence of
the self.
Maslow found that self-actualized
people, who cut across the spectrum of
society, are more likely to experience
B-cognition. They are also )nore likely tp
have "peak experiences," the nonreligious equivalent of a mystical experience
of sorts. Peak experiences reinforce the
holistic outlook and enhance creatiVity.
See Peak experiences ..
Maslow said that self-knowledge is
the major but not the only path to selfimprovement. He said the new force in
psychology did not deny behaviorism and
Freudianism but supplemented and expanded them.
Maslov' advanced his alternative
theories during the 1940s. In 1954 the
publication of his book Motivation and
Personality had a major impact. This was
followed in 1956 by The Self, edited by

483

Clark Moustakas. In 1957 Maslow,

Moustakas, and others organized the first
formal meetings to discuss the launching
of the new psychology, which was called
by a variety of names: holistic-dynamic
psychology, positive psychology, selfpsychology, organismic psychology, orthopsychology, ontopsychology, axiopsychology, metapsychology, autonomous
psychology, self-directive psychology,
and person psychology. More meetings
were held in 1958. The American Association for Humanistic Psychology and
the Journal of Humanistic Psychology
came into being in 1961. Later "American" was dropped from the name in order to reflect an international scope.
(Originally, the organization's name was
the American Association of Orthopsychology, but the Association of Orthopsychiatry protested that the name
was too similar to its own. "Humanistic
psychology" was proposed by Maslow's
son-in-law, Stephen Cohen.)
Interest in human potential was further fueled by Maslow's books Religion,
Values and Peak-Experiences (1964) and
Toward a Psychology of Being (1968).
Humanistic psychology is now recognized as a division of psychology by the
American Psychological Association.
Transpersonal

psychology

Humanistic psychology barely had

been organized when Maslow recognized
yet a "fourth force" emerging from it,
which overlapped with humanistic psychology but went beyond it. In 1967 he
called this force "transhumanistic psychology," borrowing a term coined in
1957 by English biologist Sir Julian Huxley. It concerns transcendent experiences
and values, called variously ultimate purpose, ultimate meaning, point Omega,
unitive consciousness, and so on. Its emphasis, Maslow said, is on the experiencing individual, and it recognizes the sa-

484

credness of all things. In 1968 he said

that humanistic psychology was transitional, paving the way for a higher fourth
psychology.
The new area was officially named
"transpersonal psychology." The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology was
launched in 1969, and was then made
part of the newly formed Transpersonal
Institute. A Transpersonal Center was
formed as a second division of the Institute in 1970. In 1971 the Institute's
board of directors decided to form a new
membership association, the Association
for Transpersonal Psychology.
Essentially, transpersonal psychology is an empirical investigation of consciousness, the groundwork for which
was laid at the turn of the twentieth century by psychologist and philosopher
William James, but which was not developed for some fifty years. In transpersonal psychotherapy ego is illusion,
something to be transcended so that the
individual can identify with the total Self.
Body and mind are not separate, but subsystems of each other. Transpersonal psychology assumes everyone has the capacity for self-healing.
The distinctions between humanistic
and transpersonal psychologies are often
blurry, but there are significant differences. For example, humanistic psychology addresses development of personality
and achievement of ego goals, which are
considered obstacles to transpersonal realization in transpersonal psychology.
Transpersonal psychotherapy, which
requires an experiential foundation on
the part of the therapist, includes both
Eastern and Western methods of working
with the consciousness, including traditional Western methods such as dream
analysis and imagery; Eastern meditation
and yoga; behavioral medicine; bodywork; and the transpersonal experience
of altered states of consciousness as a
means of achieving higher states.

Psychology

In a transpersonal experience, the

consciousness is expanded to overcome
space and/or time to identify with other
consciousnesses, phenomena, or states.
Various phenomena, including telepathy,
out-of-body experiences, clairvoyance,
precognition, clairaudience, and space
and time travel, are transpersonal expenences.
Psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, who has
conducted extensive research with LSD,
divides transpersonal experiences into
two major categories. The first includes
phenomena related to the material world,
such as people, animals, plants, inanimate objects, and processes. It is further
divided into subgroups characterized by
either separateness or the limitations of
linear time. The second category goes beyond Western objective reality to include
experiences of "archetypal visions, mythological sequences, experiences of divine
and demonic influences, encounters with
discarnate or suprahuman beings, and experiential identification with the Universal Mind or Supracosmic Void." The latter is described by Grof as "the ultimate
of all experiences ... the mysterious primordial emptiness and nothingness that
is conscious' of itself and contains all existence in germinal form." (Beyond the
Brain, 1987) See Drugs in mystical and
psychic experiences.
Experiences that traditional psychiatry would label pathological are being explored in transpersonal psychology for
their therapeutic value. Transpersonal
psychology is still in its infancy and is
still controversial. Critics say it is not sufficiently defined, has too few practitioners, and infringes too much upon religIOn.

Jung's work plays a prominent role

in transpersonal psychology, especially
his concept of archerypes. Jung's work
has a lesser role in humanistic psychology, which emphasizes the empirical
rather than the spiritual.

Psychology

Psychosynthesis
Psychosynthesis, a humanisticltranspersonal psychology, actually preceded
Maslow; and as it developed parallel to
humanistic and transpersonal psychologies, it absorbed elements of both. Psychosynthesis is perhaps the most mystical
of modern psychologies, but is not as well
known, perhaps because its founder, Italian psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli (18881974), did not like to write.
Assagioli, a contemporary of Freud
and Jung, was raised in an intellectual
household. His father was Jewish and his
mother was a Catholic with strong mystical interests; she was the first Italian
Theosophist. Whereas Freud found an interest in Greek myths and Jung in alchemy, Assagioli gravitated to Eastern
philosophy and religion. He studied
Hindu and Buddhist mysticism, as well as
Christian mysticism. He also was particularly influenced by Plato, especially Plato's image of the soul awakening in a
dark cave and discovering that the world
that had been taken for granted is but a
shadow or illusion. See Plato.
Assagioli brought the work of both
Freud and Jung into Italy, but saw limitations in both. He felt Freud neglected
the higher consciousness, while Jung was
too preoccupied with the unconscious,
where, Assagioli said, one could get lost.
In developing Psychosynthesis Assagioli
placed emphasis on strengthening the
consciousness and putting the repressed
parts of the psyche back together. He
viewed himself as playing a role similar to
that of Gautama Buddha, dedicating himself to helping others achieve enlightenment.
Assagioli drew on various philosophies and mystical traditions, and on his
own mystical experiences, as well as on
the psychologies that preceded him. He
was vague about the exact origins of Psychosynthesis, and presented no systematic

485

framework
of it in his two books, Psychosynthesis: A Manual of Principles and
Techniques (1965) and The Act of Will

(1973), and numerous articles and booklets. (The Act of Will resulted from spiritual guidance he received while seriously
ill with a high fever. After his fever broke,
he informed his secretary that "'They'
want me to write a book.")
Assagioli believed the conscious personality is but a small part of the whole
being. The unconscious exists in four levels, including the superconscious, a reflection from the Higher Self and containing
potential. As one becomes more aware of
the superconscious, one becomes more
attuned to spiritual forces. Elements and
functions coming from the superconscious, such as intuition, inspiration, and
aesthetic, ethical, religious, and mystical
experiences, are effective in changing
both inner and outer worlds.
Assagioli also placed great emphasis
on the importance of values, and on the
strengthening and use of the will.
Psychosynthesis is a conscious and
planned reconstruction of the personality.
It makes use of a wide range of techniques, including those borrowed from
other psychologies. Critics contend that
Psychosynthesis is superficially optimistic
and not sufficiently grounded in intellectual discipline.

Sacred Psychology
This experiential psychology was developed by Jean Houston, psychologist
and past president of the Association for
Humanistic Psychology. It is based on exercises steeped in myth, the mysteries,
and archetypes, with the goal of realizing
one's full potential and knowing the High
Self.
Houston defines three realms of experience: the THIS IS ME, which is ordinary reality; the WE ARE, the realm of
the collective unconscious; and the I AM,
the realm of God, which is immanent in

486

the High Self. By learning to access the

WE ARE through "ritual theater," the
THIS IS ME becomes placed in the service of the I AM. According to Houston
training in sacred psychology reorganizes
one's neurological circuitry so that one is
receptive to powerful forces from the
deep psyche and the universe.

Toward a Western Yoga

All of these modern psychologies
comprise the overall "human potential
movement," which may provide the
means for the development of a truly
Western yoga. In the 1960s and 1970s,
attention was turned toward the philosophies and religions of the East; in the
1980s some attention began to shift back
to the Western tradition. While crossfertilization is both beneficial and essential to spiritual growth, the Western tradition cannot be ignored, but must be
explored and revitalized. See Mysticism.
Sources: Roberto Assagioli. Psychosynthesis: A Manual of Principles and Techniques. 1965. New York: Penguin Books,
1976; Roberto Assagioli. The Act of Will.

New York: Penguin Books, 1973; J. F. T.

Bugental. "The Third Force in Psychology." Journal of Humanistic Psychology 4,
no. 1 (Spring 1964): 19-26; Piero Ferrucci.
What We May Be: Techniques for Psychological and Spiritual Growth Through Psychosynthesis.
Los Angeles: Jeremy P.

Tarcher, 1982; Tom Greening. "The Origins of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and the Association of Humanistic
Psychology." Journal of Humanistic Psychology 25, no. 2 (Spring 1985): 7-11;
Stanislav Grof. Beyond the Brain: Birth,
Death and Transcendence in Psychutherapy. Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press, 1985; Jean Hardy. A Psychology with a Soul: Psychosynthesis in Evolutionary Context. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1987; James Hillman. ReVisioning Psychology. New York: Harper
& Row, 1975; Edward Hoffman. The
Right to Be Human: A Biography of Abra

Psychology

ham Maslow. Los Angeles: Jeremy P.

Tarcher, 1988; Jean Houston. The Search
for the Beloved: Journeys in Sacred Psychology. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher,

1987; Geraint ap Iorwerth. "Humanistic

Psychology and the Judeo-Christian Heritage." Journal of Humanistic Psychology
25, no. 2 (Spring 1985): 13-34; Abraham
H. Maslow. Religion, Values and Peak Experiences.
1964. New York: Penguin
Books, 1976; Abraham H. Maslow. Toward a Psychology of Being. 1962. 2d ed.
New York: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1968;
Abraham H. Maslow. The Farther Reaches
of Human Nature. New York: The Viking
Press, 1971; Anthony J. Sutich. "Some
Considerations Regarding Transpersonal
Psychology." The Journal of Transpersonal
Psychology 1, no. 1 (Spring 1969): 11-20;
Anthony J. Sutich. "Association for
Transpersonal Psychology." The Journal of
Transpersonal Psychology 4, no. 1 (1972):
93-97; Charles T. Tart, ed. Transpersonal
Psychologies. New York: Harper & Row,
1975; Frances Vaughan. The Inward Arc:
Healing & Wholeness in Psychotherapy &
Spirituality. Boston: New Science Library/

Shambhala, 1986; Miles Vich and Rollo

May. "Debating the Legitimacy of Transpersonal Psychology." The Common
Boundary 4, issue 4 (July/August 1986):
5+; Roger N. Walsh and Frances Vaughan,
eds. Beyond Ego: Transpersonal Dimensions in Psychology. Los Angeles: Jeremy P.
Tarcher, 1980.

Psychometry
A psychic skill in which information
about people, places, and events is obtained by handling objects associated
with them. The percipient receives impressions through clairvoyance, telepathy, retrocognition, and precognition.
The act of reading an object in this manner is called "psychometrizing." Psychics
say the information is conveyed to them
through vibrations imbued into the objects by emotions and actions in the past.
The term "psychometry"
comes
from the Greek words psyche, "soul,"

Psychometry

and metron, "measure." It was coined in

1840 by Joseph R. Buchanan, an American professor of physiology who saw psychometry as a means to measure the
"soul" of objects. Buchanan conducted
experiments in which students could
identify drugs in vials by holding the vials. He kept his research quiet out of fear
of ridicule, and did not publish his findings until 1849 in his book, Journal of
Man.
Buchanan's work interested a contemporary, Professor William F. Denton,
an American professor of geology, who
conducted his own experiments in 1854
with his sister, Ann Denton Cridge. When
Cridge placed wrapped geological specimens to her forehead, she experienced
vivid mental images of their appearances.
Denton, who did not consider the possibility of telepathy between himself and
his sister, recorded his experiments in a
book, The Soul of Things. He defined
psychometry as a "mysterious faculty
which belongs to the soul and is not dependent upon the body for its exercise."
Early Spiritualist mediums used psychometry at seances. One popular psychometry feat was billet-reading, also
called "cryptoscopy," in which the medium handled a sealed envelope and revealed the contents of the letter inside.
British medium Geraldine Cummins
called psychometry "memory divining,"
and coupled it with automatic writing in
a dissociated state. Cummins would hold
an object and concentrate upon the word
"stillness," or visualize a dark pool, until
an inner voice or images prompted her to
begin writing. She said she was not aware
of what she wrote; she described the
process as taking dictation. Sometimes
the images made her feel as though she
were in a theater watching a play.
Gustav Pagenstecher, psychical researcher, conducted more than one hundred psychometry experiments from
1919 to 1922 with a medium identified
as Sr. Maria Reyes de Z. Given an object,

487

Maria would fall into a cataleptic trance

and produce information from the present and past that involved all physical
senses. Pagenstecher did not believe telepathy was at work, but only the medium's
ability to pick up vibrations that were
condensed in the objects. The vibrations,
he said, were imbued by the thoughts of
the objects' owners.
Supposedly the best "psychically
conductive" materials are metals. If an
object has been owned by more than one
person, such as an antique, a percipient
may pick up information about different
people.
People as well as objects may be psychometrized. The percipient focuses on
an individual and attempts to pick up images and sensations. In flower psychometry a person picks a flower and holds it
while meditating upon a problem. A psychic or percipient then holds the flower
and receives impressions from the flower's aura. See Psychic archaeology; Psychic criminology.

The International Association for Psychotronic Research held its first international congress in Prague in 1973.
The term "psychotronics" was coined by Czechoslovakian researchers in the
1960s as a replacement for "parapsychology." A Czech manifesto presented at a
parapsychology conference in Moscow in
1968 described psychotronics as "the
bionics of man." Psychotronics assumes
that the universe is triadic, not dualistic,
and is comprised of humankind, universe, and psychotronic energy, which is
claimed to be the aura or vital force that
emanates from all living things. This energy may be the basis for all psychic phenomena. See Universal life force.
Psychotronics includes research for
ways to apply this energy to other fields,
such as medicine, physics, biophysics, biology, psychophysiology, anthropology,
and psychology. See Applied psi. Particular attention has been devoted to finding
ways to harass cosmic energies in devices.

Sources: W. E. Butler. How to Develop

Psychometry. London: The Aquarian Press,
1971; Geraldine Cummins. Unseen Adventures. London: Rider & Co., 1951; Sheila
Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. The ESP
Papers: Scientists Speak Out from Behind
the Iron Curtain. New York: Bantam

Psychotronic Generators and

Other Devices

Books, 1976; Sheila Ostrander and Lynn

Schroeder. Handbook of Psi Discoveries.
New York: Berkley, 1974; Gustav Pagenstecher. "Past Events Seership: A Study in
Psychometry." Edited by Walter Franklin
Prince. Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research 16, part 1 (January 1922): 1-107; Benjamin B. Wolman,
ed. Handbook of Parapsychology. New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977.

Psychotronics
The interdisciplinary study of the interactions of matter, energy, and consciousness. Psychotronics was developed in
Eastern Europe, but has a following elsewhere in Europe and in the United States.

488

The belief that psychic energy can be

transferred from humans to objects dates
back to the ancient Polynesian Huna. In
the eighteenth century, Baron Karl von
Reichenbach, a German chemist, believed
the energy could be stored. In 1921
Charles Russ, a British doctor, demonstrated a device that, when gazed upon,
apparently caused a solenoid to move. At
about the same time in France, Paul Joire
designed a device with a needle that
turned when a person stood near or
stared at it.
In the late 1960s Robert Pavlita, a
Czech inventor and design director for a
textile plant, produced small devices
which he said were psychotronic generators. Pavlita, who claimed to have spent
more than thirty years in private research
to develop the devices, said he had been
inspired by certain "ancient manu-

Psychometry

scripts, " which he declined to name. A few

Western researchers were shown the devices and films of them in operation. The
nature of their operation was kept secret.
Pavlita's generators resembled small
machine parts, humanoid figures, fat
writing utensils, and Easter Island monoliths. They allegedly collected energy
from any biological source. This energy
was then used to enhance plant growth,
purify polluted water, kill insects, and
cause lower life forms such as snails to go
into a state of hibernation.
In the United States, a psychotronic
generator allegedly activated by visual energy was developed by Woodrow W.
Ward of Houston in 1970. Ward's device, called a psionic generator, was activated directly by energy streaming from
the eyes. It responded more quickly to
children, and during certain planetary
configurations and full phases of the
moon.
The United States Psychotronics Association, founded in 1975 in Chicago,
sells an array of psychotronics devices.
Sources: John P. Boyle. The Psionic Generator Pattern Book. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1975; Martin Ebon. Psychic
Warfare: Threat or Illusion? New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1983; Ron McRae. Mind
Wars. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984;
Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970;

"Second International Congress on Psychotronic Research." Monte Carlo, June
3D-July 4, 1975, proceedings; US Psychotronics Association.

Pursel, Jach
The channel since 1974 of Lazaris, said
to be a highly evolved consciousness who
has never incarnated in physical form.
Lazaris is known for wit, warmth, and
practical guidance on a wide range of
emotional and spiritual topics. He has an
international following, including many
celebrities.

Pursel, Jach

Jach Pursel
Pursel was raised in Lansing, Michigan, and met his future wife, Peny, in a
ninth-grade class. Both attended the University of Michigan and graduated with
degrees in international relations and political science. They planned to go to law
school and start their own law firm, but
instead Pursel went to work for State
Farm Insurance and entered its executive
program. By age twenty-seven Pursel was
a regional supervisor in Florida.
Pursel had little interest in metaphysics, but had learned to meditate with
Peny's encouragement. Usually, he fell
asleep. One night during a business trip
in early 1974, Pursel meditated and
found himself in a dense forest with a
brook and a thatch-roofed log cabin. He
entered the cabin and saw a man dressed
in a white robe standing next to a
counter. Behind the man there was a
blackboard, and there was a fire lit in the
fireplace. The man introduced himself as
"Lazaris" and began talking about the
universe and reality.

489

Jach Pursel channeling Lazaris

After the first encounter, Pursel tried
to contact Lazaris again but could not.
On the night of October 3, 1974, Peny
had an intuitive feeling that Pursel should
meditate; she would ask questions of him
in his meditative state. Pursel thought he
fell asleep. When he awoke he was told
that Lazaris had made his first official appearance, and for two hours had answered Peny's questions in a voice and
speech that sounded faintly Chaucerian
Middle English.
Pursel channeled Lazaris daily for the
next two weeks, during which the entity
made "adjustments" to make the transmission of information the clearest possible. Peny was fascinated, but Pursel was
frightened. After hearing Lazaris on tape,
however, he began to get comfortable.
Lazaris, who speaks in the first person plural of "we," explained that he had
appeared in order to talk to Peny; if he
talked only with her he would be satisfied
that he had accomplished his purpose. He
had observed her through many lifetimes
and wanted to help this "gem of energy,"
as he called her. He had prepared for the
channeling by giving Pursel a "nudge" in
several of his lifetimes to follow certain
evolutionary developments.

490

For months the Pursels said nothing

about Lazaris, then confided in a friend,
Michaell Prestini, who joined them in
Florida. Peny decided she wanted to
make Lazaris available to others. Word
spread and Lazaris was sought for consultations. In 1975 Peny began to teach a
course with Lazaris in psychic development.
By 1976 the work with Lazaris had
grown to the point where Pursel left his
insurance job and, with Peny and Prestini, established Concept: Synergy, an organization to handle seminars and tape
production. In 1978 Peny and Prestini realized they were in love. The Pursels divorced; Peny and Prestini married and
later changed their last name to North.
Despite the divorce and marriage, the
three remained good friends.
Shortly after they moved the business to California, first to San Francisco
for a number of years and then to Beverly
Hills. Word about Lazaris continued to
spread. In 1987 Lazaris published his first
book, The Sacred Journey: You and Your
Higher Self, followed in 1988 by Lazaris
Interviews, Book I and Lazaris Interviews, Book II. Pursel and the Norths established Isis Rising, a chain of art galleries in California and Florida, and
Visionary Publishing, an art publishing
company.
In 1988 Pursel and the Norths
moved Concept: Synergy to Palm Beach,
Florida. Pursel travels widely, channeling
Lazaris for workshops and seminars
throughout the United States. Lazaris
counsels clients all over the world, mostly
by telephone. "Friends of Lazaris" have
included celebrities Michael and Pat
York, Shirley MacLaine, Lesley Anne
Warren, Sharon Gless (who thanked Lazaris in her 1986 and 1987 Emmy Award
acceptance speeches), Ted and Casey
Danson, Barry Manilow, and New Age
luminaries Barbara Marx Hubbard and
Marilyn Ferguson.

Pursel, Jach

Lazaris
Accorditig to ~dzaris he has never
been in physical form, nor will he ever be
so. He says that every consciousness,
early in its development, makes a choice
to grow physically or nonphysically, and
he chose to remain nonphysical. He is a
multi leveled consciousness who is aware
of his own various selves in multiple dimensions (the reason for referring to himself as "we"). He says that all consciousnesses, physical or not, have this
multidimensional quality; humans are
not yet aware of their multiple selves, but
someday will be. Lazaris is neither male
nor female, explaining that gender is
transcended at the level on which he
functions.
As a nonphysical being, Lazaris is
outside the space-time continuum, giving
him a perspective not limited by past,
present, and future and the predispositions natural to those who are physical.
He states he is not communicating to be
a guru or master, but to be a friend, to
help empower people to solve their own
problems, to create better realities, and to
reach the highest aspects of their own
Self. He seeks to remind people that pain
and fear are not the only methods of
growth, but that one may grow more elegantly through joy and love; one does
create one's own reality with no exceptions; there is a God/Goddess/All That
Is who loves us and knows our names;
and that "You love-you
love 'good
enough.'''
Lazaris describes his channeling
process:
When you turn on your television set
and watch the evening news, you don't
for a moment suspect that the anchor
person is sitting inside that little box ...
We would liken our communication to
that process. We do not enter the physical
form of the Channel [Pursel). We don't
get anywhere near that Physical Plane of
Reality, but rather, we connect energies

Puthoff, Harold

that are thoughts into a system of vibration that we then transmit through the
cosmos and the various levels. The system
of vibration then enters your reality
through the Mental Plane, then drifts
down, in its way, to the Physical Planemuch as a television signal to the
antenna-and
then is amplified and
comes out of the vocal chords, the
mouth, and the speaking structure of that
which is the Channel.
Lazaris's seminars include lectures,
guided meditations, and "Blendings,"
times when he blends his energy with that
of the participants. In longer workshops
he personally greets the participants and
gives them crystals he has charged with
energy. See Channeling.
Sources: Philip H. Friedman. "The Magic,
Mystery, and Muses of Love." New Realities 7, no. 6 (July/August 1987): 34-35;
William H. Kautz and Melanie Branon.
Channeling: The Intuitive Connection. San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987; Jon
Klimo. "The Psychology of Channeling."
New Age Journal (December 1987): 3240+; Lazaris: Lazaris Interviews, Book I.
Beverly Hills, CA: Concept: Synergy Publishing, 1988; Lazaris, The Sacred Journey:
You and Your Higher Self Beverly Hills,
CA: Concept: Synergy Publishing, 1987;
Katherine Lowry. "Channelers." Omni
(October 1987): 47-50+; Katherine Martin. "The Voice of Lazaris." New Realities
7, no. 6 (July/August 1987): 26-33; "New
Age Harmonies." Time (December 7,
1987): 62-72; "The Sacred Journey: You
and Your Higher Self." Body Mind Spirit 7,
no. 1 (January/February 1988): 23; Paul
Zuromski. "A Conversation with Jach
Pursel and Lazaris." Body Mind Spirit 7,
no. 1 (January/February 1988): 17-22;
Jach Pursel/Lazaris on The Merv Griffin
Show. July 25, 1986.

Puthoff, Harold
See Remote viewing.

491

Pyramids
Four-sided conical structures, the ancient
remains of which are found throughout
the world. According to prevailing scientific theories, ancient peoples used pyramids either as ceremonial structures or
burial chambers. Various occult theories
suggest they were used for initiations into
the mysteries, as repositories or transformers of cosmic energy, or as records of
the history of the Earth, including messianic prophecies.
The greatest popular attention has
been focused on the Great Pyramid
(Cheops) of Gizeh in Egypt. Pyramid
building took place primarily from the
Third to Sixth Dynasties of the Old Kingdom (3100 B.c.-2181 B.C.). Approximately eighty known major pyramids
were constructed, most of which are now
rubble. By the end of the Sixth Dynasty,
all arts and crafts were in decline. A resurgence of pyramid building occurred in
the Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasties.
There is no evidence of any original burial in any pyramid, indicating that burials
were incidental to a primary purpose.
The Great Pyramid is believed to
have been constructed c. 2700 B.C. by
Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops in Greek). It covers 13.1 acres, has a base of 756 square
feet, and rises 450 feet in height. It is estimated to have originally been 481.4 feet
high. It is missing its capstone, if it ever
had one.
One of the most perplexing mysteries of the pyramids is how they were constructed. The blocks of the Great Pyramid's quarried stone average 2.5 tons.
Eighteenth-Dynasty tomb paintings show
construction by manual labor, hauling
the stones with ropes along wooden
planks. According to the historian Herodotus (484 B.c.-425 B.C.), 100,000 men
labored for twenty years to build the pyramid, which was a monument to Cheops.
The pyramid contains an interior room
called the King's Chamber, which has a

492

lidless box and an empty box that could

have been a sarcophagus. No mummy of
Cheops has been found. Later Arabic historians said the pyramid was built by
Hermes to preserve scientific knowledge
during the Flood. See Hermetica.
Some modern speculative theories
propose that the stones were levitated
into place by Atlanteans or extraterrestrials. Edgar Cayce, during his trance readings, said the Great Pyramid is 10,000
years old and was built by a consortium
of Egyptians, Atlanteans, and itinerant
Caucasians from southwest Russia. The
consortium was led by Hermes, an Egyptian high priest named Ra Ta (a past incarnation of Cayce), and an adviser
named Isis. The pyramid served as a storage place for all of human history and
prophecies up to the year 1998 (the time
of the Second Coming of Christ, according to Cayce), recorded in the languages
of mathematics, geometry, and astronomy. Cayce said it also was an initiation
temple where, thousands of years later,
Jesus was initiated during his "missing
years" as preparation for his public career.
According to philosopher Manly P.
Hall, the Great Pyramid was built by survivors of Atlantis as the first temple of
the mysteries, where initiates entered as
humans and left as gods. The initiation of
the "second death" took place in the
King's Chamber, where the initiate was
symbolically crucified upon the cross of
the solstices and equinoxes and buried in
the coffer. The initiate's soul, the ka, left
the body as a human-headed hawk and
traveled through celestial realms to learn
cosmic truths. There is no known evidence of such rites.
The geometry of the pyramid is alleged to generate supernatural powers.
According to the Egyptian Book of the
Dead, the power of the pyramid awakens
the god who sleeps in the soul. In 1959
Karl Drbal, a Czech radio engineer,
claimed that razor blades placed in the

Pyramids

cavity of a pyramid modeled on the Great

Pyramid would be sharpened
by some
sort of energy within twenty-four hours.
This eventually created a fad in which
pyramids were credited with reviving ailing plants,
speeding
the healing
of
wounds
and burns, curing headaches,
providing
restful sleep, and enhancing
meditation. Pyramid meditators said their
psychic
faculties
opened,
and some
claimed to communicate with extraterrestrials.
Similar theories are put forth concerning the step pyramids
of MesoAmerica, which are believed to have
served ceremonial, calendric, and astronomical purposes; the Aztecs performed
human sacrifices atop them. Some occultists propose that the pyramids were foci
for cosmic or telluric forces. Cayce attributed Mayan pyramids to Atlanteans and
Lemurians, who used them for rites to
cleanse away undesirable behaviors. See
Ancient astronauts,
theory of; Atlantis;
Cayce, Edgar; Lemuria; Mysteries.
Sources: William R. Fix. Pyramid Odyssey.
Urbanna,
VA: Mercury
Media,
1978;
Manly P. Hall. The Secret Teachings of All
Ages. 1928. Los Angeles: The Philosophical
Research Society, 1977; John Michell. The
New View Over Atlantis. San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1983; Peter Tompkins. Secrets of the Great Pyramid. New York:
Harper & Row, 1978; Peter Tompkins.
Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids. 1976.
New York: Harper & Row, 1987; Max
Toth and Greg Nielsen. Pyramid Power.
New York: Warner Books, 1976.

Pythagoras (c. sixth century

B.C.)

Greek philosopher
and mathematician,
best known for major contributions to astronomy,
geometry, and music theory.
His teachings influenced Socrates, Plato,
Euclid, Aristotle, and thinkers in many
disciplines down to the present day. Iamblichus listed 218 men and seventeen

Pythagoras

(c. sixth century

B.C.)

Pythagoras, by Gafurius,
Musica, 1492

Theorica

women among the most famous of Pythagorean philosophers of ancient times.

Pythagoras achieved such stature during
and after his life that he was virtually deified, and numerous legends sprang up
around him: for example, that he was the
son of God, and that he had a gold shin
bone. It is said that he was the first person to call himself a philosopher.
Pythagoras was born on the island of
Sam as. According
to legend he was
named after the Pythia, the oracle at Delphi, who prophesied his birth and said
that he would be a great contributor
to
the wisdom
of humankind.
Little is
known about his early life. Pythagoras
left Samos about 530 B.C. to escape Polycrates' tyrannical rule. It is said that he
traveled widely throughout
the ancient
world, and was initiated into the mysteries of Isis in Thebes, and to the mysteries
of Babylonia, Chaldea, Adonis, and probably Eleusis. He may even have gone to
India and studied with the Brahmins.
He settled in the Dorian city of Croton, southern Italy, where he attracted a
community of men and women followers,
some of whom became organized as an
order. He initiated followers with a sa-

493

cred formula based on the letters of his

name. Disciples were ranked by degrees,
and only those of the higher degrees were
allowed into the inner court of his temple, where Pythagoras revealed the most
secret teachings. He was fond of lecturing
at night.
At age sixty he married one of his
disciples, a young girl named Theano,
and fathered either three or seven children; accounts vary. He wielded great influence over local politics. He believed in
a scientific government similar to the
priesthood of Egypt. Croton had an aristocratic constitution and was governed
by a Council of One Thousand, comprised of representatives of the wealthy
families. Over this body Pythagoras organized the Council of Three Hundred,
recruited from initiates who recognized
Pythagoras as their leader. It was the goal
of the Pythagorean Order to become the
head of state throughout southern Italy.
But around 450 B.C. an anti-aristocracy,
anti-Pythagorean revolt forced out most
of the Pythagoreans, including Pythagoras himself. He went to Metapontium,
where he died, allegedly at the age of
nearly one hundred.
The Pythagorean Order lasted for
about another two hundred and fifty
years, with the founding of centers on the
Greek mainland, and the influence of Pythagorean teachings has lasted to the
present. Since individual Pythagoreans
contributed to the order's philosophy and
contemporary records were not reliable,
it is not possible to identify which of the
order's concepts are specifically those of
Pythagoras himself.
Neopythagoreanism,
a Hellenistic
school of philosophy, was founded in the
first century B.C. by Publius Nigidius
Figulus and was espoused by Apollonius
of Tyana. Neopythagoreanism professed
unbroken lineage from the Pythagorean
Order, and was absorbed into Neoplatonism in the third century A.D. See
Plato.

494

Major Teachings
Pythagoras is best known for the
fundamental geometric theorem named
for him, which states the square of the
hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to
the sum of the squares of the sides containing the right angle. The theorem's
corollary states that the diagonal of a
square is incommensurable with its side.
Pythagoras conceived of the universe
as a living being, animated by a great
Soul and permeated by Intelligence. He
called God the Monad, the Supreme
Mind. Humankind was separate, save for
the soul, which was a spark of the Monad that was imprisoned in a mortal
body. The task of human beings was to
purify themselves in preparation for return to the Monad.
Pythagoras said all sidereal bodies
were alive and had souls; the planets
were deities. According to Aristotle
Pythagoras also believed that the Earth
had a dual rotation and circled the sun;
but this potentially sacrilegious teaching
was saved for only the most trusted disciples.
Furthermore, Pythagoras saw the
cosmos as a mathematically ordered
whole. Everything in the universe and in
nature was divided into threes. The universe had three worlds: (1) the Supreme
World, a subtle essence that was the true
plane of the Monad; (2) the Superior
World, the home of the immortals; and
(3) the Inferior World, the home of mortal gods, daimons, humans, animals, and
all material things. Living beings had a
triune nature: body, soul (which Pythagoras related to mind), and spirit. He also
said that all arts and sciences are based
on three elements: music, mathematics,
and astronomy.
Pythagoras described numbers as an
intrinsic and living virtue of the Monad.
He ascribed to each a principle, law, and
active force of the universe. The first four
numbers contain the basic principles of

Pythagoras (c. sixth century

B.C.)

the universe, since adding or multiplying

them produces all other numbers. Besides
three, Pythagoras gave special meaning to
the numbers seven and ten. Seven, comprised of the numbers three and four, represents the union of human and divinity.
It is the number of adepts and great initiates. Ten is a perfect number (1 + 2 +
3 + 4) and represents all the principles of
the Monad. Pythagorean number theories
survive in modern-day numerology. See
Numerology.
In the area of music, Pythagoras is
credited with discovery of the diatonic
scale. He discovered that all music can be
reduced to mathematical ratios. These ratios also could be applied to the universe,
he said, which gave rise to his curious
theory of the Harmony (or Music) of the
Spheres. The theory was based on harmonic relationships drawn between all
heavenly bodies, which produced music
as the bodies rushed through space. This
divine music could not be heard by human beings, however (except perhaps by
the enlightened, such as Pythagoras), as
long as humankind was in its fallen, material state.
Pythagoras believed in the healing
power of music, and composed "musical
medicine." He favored stringed instruments, especially the lute; he said songs
sung to the lute purified the soul. He advocated avoidance of flutes and cymbals.
See Music.

Pythagoras

(c. sixth century

B.C.)

Pythagoras also taught herbal and

medicinal plant lore. He opposed surgery.
In other teachings he said friendship was
the truest and nearest to perfection of all
relationships. Anarchy was the greatest
crime. He told his disciples that once they
were initiated, they had to allow the truth
to descend into their beings and apply it
in daily life. To accomplish this they had
to bring together three perfections: (1) to
realize truth in intellect; (2) to realize virtue in the soul; and (3) to realize purity in
the body. Regarding the latter he advocated not eating beans, and said meateating clouded the reason. He himself ate
meat occasionally, but said judges in particular should not eat meat before sitting
at trial.
The Pythagoreans believed in the immortality of the soul, in the soul's ability
to separate from the body, and in reincarnation. See Reincarnation.
Sources: Andre Dacier. The Life of Pythagoras. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser,
1981; Peter Gorman. Pythagoras: A Life.

Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978;

Manly P. Hall. The Secret Teachings of All
Ages. 1928. Los Angeles: The Philosophical
Research Society, 1977; Edouard Schure.
The Great Initiates: A Study of the Secret
Religions
of History.
San Francisco:

Harper

& Row, 1961; Ward Rutherford.

Pythagoras:

Lover

of

Wisdom.

York

Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1984.

495

Qabala (also Qabalah)

See Kabbalah; Magic.

Qi
See Universal life force.

Qi Gong (also Ch'i Kung)

An ancient Chinese art and science of
breath, posture, motion, sound, intention, and visualization to cultivate qi,
the vital force, throughout the body. Its
origins date to the oracle bones of ancient
China, and it is mentioned in the Tao Teh
Ching text of Taoist mysticism.
Qi gong literally means "work on
the ch'i," and involves the forceful expelling of toxins. The breath is heard, unlike
the often silent breath control of Tai Ji
Chuan and some forms of yoga. "Healing
Sounds" Qi Gong involves the coordination of mantra-like syllables with breath,
movement, vibration, and awareness in
order to purify the major organs of the
body.

496

There are three main types of Qi

Gong. Medical Qi Gong is often referred
to as "acupuncture without needles." It is
used to strengthen the immune system
and treat various diseases. Qi Gong doctors reportedly possess extraordinary
abilities, such as the manipulation of patients' limbs at a distance, and the ability
to effect physical and chemical changes
by projecting intention on acupuncture
points.
Buddhist and Taoist Qi Gong expand into a discipline of mental and spiritual development with martial art and
meditational practices. Compare to Tai Ji
Chuan.
Sources: Kenneth S. Cohen. "Exercises for
Youth and Vitality." East/W est Journal
Ganuary 1982): 52-55; Roger Jahnke.
"Qigong: Awakening and Mastering the
Profound Medicine That Lies Within."
Newsletter of the International Society for
the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy
Medicine 1, no. 2 (Fall 1990): 3-7.

Quakers
See Society of Friends.

Qabala

(also Qabalah)

R
Radiesthesia
See Dowsing.

Rainmaking
See Cloud dissolving.

Rajneesh Foundation
International
See Alternative religious movements.

Ramakrishna, Sri
See Hinduism.

Ram Dass (b. 1931)

Psychologist, humanist, and popular
spokesperson on enlightenment. Ram
Dass was born Richard Alpert on April 6,
1931, in Boston, Massachusetts, to a Jewish family. His father, George Alpert, was
a lawyer who helped found Brandeis University and was president of the New
York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad. Richard Alpert pursued a career in
psychology, specializing in human motivation and personality development. He
earned his master's degree at Wesleyan
University and his doctorate at Stanford
University in 1957. He taught at Stanford
and the University of California at Berke-

Radiesthesia

ley. In 1958 he joined the faculty in the

Department of Social Relations and the
Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.
At Harvard he met Timothy Leary,
who in 1961 introduced him to the hallucinogen psilocybin. He later described
the experience as a turning point in his
life. He said he discovered that "I" existed beyond his social and physical identity, and entire realms of possibility
opened up. From 1961 to 1963 Alpert,
Leary, and others pursued a program of
research with psilocybin and LSD-25, administering the drugs to volunteer graduate students, prison inmates, ministers,
scientists, and others. Although the research was not to include undergraduates, some were given the drugs anyway.
See Leary, Timothy.
The drug research was controversial,
and in 1963 Alpert and Leary were fired
from Harvard-the
first professors to be
dismissed from the university in the twentieth century. For the next four years,
Alpert and Leary continued their association and research through the Castalia
Foundation, a private foundation they established, and through the community
they formed at Millbrook, New York.
By 1967 Alpert had become aware of
the limitations of psychedelics as a spiritual practice, and traveled to India on a
search for Eastern methods of enlightenment. He met his guru, Neem Karoli
Baba (known to his Western devotees as

497

Ram Dass

"Maharaji"), and settled in a small temple in the Himalayas to study yoga, meditation, and bhakti (devotional) practices.
Maharaji gave him the Hindu name
"Ram Dass," meaning "servant of God."
The following year Ram Dass returned to
the United States and continued to pursue
a variety of spiritual practices, including
Bhakti Yoga, focused on his guru and on
the Hindu deity Hanuman; Karma Yoga;
Sufism; and meditation in the Theravada,
Mahayana, and Zen traditions of Buddhism.
Soon after his return, he began sharing his spiritual insights with increasingly
large audiences. He continues to teach
widely, now emphasizing compassionate
service as a spiritual path. He trains AIDS
volunteers and works with the dying, and
is a member of the board of directors of
the Seva Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports health, ecology, and
service projects around the world, especially in developing countries.
Although the focus of his practice
shifted away from psychedelics after he

498

met his guru, Ram Dass believes that they

fulfilled an important role in opening up
Western culture to the wisdom of the
East. In lectures given in 1970 and 1972,
he observed that he honors LSD for being
"one of the major breakthroughs in this
culture," because it enabled people to experience other planes of reality, and by
temporarily dissolving the ego, prepared
them to face physical death with greater
awareness and equanimity. He has acknowledged that there were mistakes of
excesses in the Harvard research, including giving LSD to undergraduates and in
underestimating the speed at which the
whole of society could be enlightened. He
said he continues to take psychedelics.
In 1974 Ram Dass created the Hanuman Foundation, based in Santa Fe,
New Mexico. Programs initiated by the
Foundation include the Prison-Ashram
Project to foster the spiritual growth of
prisoners, and the Living-Dying Project
to assist terminally ill people who wish to
approach death as a conscious, spiritual
unfolding. These programs continue today under other auspices.
His bqoks as Ram Dass include Be
Here Now (1971), considered a landmark spiritual guide of the early 1970s;
The Only Dance There Is (1974), taken
from lectures given at the Menninger
Foundation and elsewhere; Miracle of
Love:

Stories

about

Neem

Karoli

Baba

(1979); Journey of Awakening:

A Medi(1982; 2d ed. 1990);
tator's Guidebook
How Can I Help? (1985) with Paul Gor-

man, which concerns service to others

and is used in medical, nursing, and social service schools, volunteer agencies,
hospices, and other service organizations;
and Grist for the Mill (1987), with Stephen Levine.
Sources: Edgar D. Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science. Edited by

John White. New York: Paragon Books,

1974; Ram Dass. The Only Dance There
Is. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books/
Doubleday, 1974; Ram Dass. Journey of

Ram Dass (b. 1931)

Awakening:

Meditator's

Guidebook.

New York: Bantam Books, 1982; Leslie A.

Shepard, ed. Encyclopedia of Occultism
and Parapsychology. 2d ed. Detroit: Gale
Research Co., 1984; Seva Foundation.

Ramtha
See Knight, JZ.

Randi, James "The Amazing"

See Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP).

Rapture
See Ecstasy; Mystical experiences.

Rasputin, Grigory Yefimovich

(1872?-1916)

Russian mystic, healer, and prophet who

predicted his own death, the deaths of
Tsar Nicholas II and his family, and the
downfall of the nobility in Russia.
Rasputin was born in Pokrovskoye
to Siberian peasant parents; he may have
been the distant descendant of Siberian
shamans. As a youth he worked as a
carter and acquired an early reputation
for fighting, drinking, and womanizing.
He also was attracted to religion.
At age twenty he married a woman
four years older than he and became a
farmer. They had a son, who died as an
infant. Soon after, Rasputin experienced
a vision of the Virgin Mary calling to
him, and he set out on a two-year religious pilgrimage to Mt. Athos in Greece.
When he returned home, he was changed,
possessing the ability to heal and cure by
prayer. He set himself up as a starets, an
unordained holy man. When his popularity threatened the village priest, Rasputin
left town.

Rasputin,

Grigory

Yefirnovich

(1872?-1916)

He was drawn to St. Petersburg,

Russia's capital, where the nobility and
high society were intensely interested in
the occult and Spiritualism, due in large
part to the 1871 visit by the famed English medium Daniel Dunglas Home. The
atmosphere was ripe for someone like
Rasputin to be noticed.
Despite his scruffy appearance and
odd ways, Rasputin gained .quick fame
with his healing ability. He attracted the
attention of the royal family, Nicholas
and Alexandra, whose sole male heir,
Alexis, had hemophilia. Rasputin was
able to alleviate the boy's suffering. Alexandra became devoted to him, which
aroused jealousy and enmity among others in court.
Rasputin's licentious behavior exacerbated his lack of popularity. He
boasted of his early days of womanizing,
and preached that one must sin before
one can be redeemed. He acquired numerous mistresses. By 1911 his behavior
was considered a scandal and disgrace.
Opposition to him grew, and in 1916 a
group of nobles plotted to kill him.
Rasputin presaged his own death,
which he wrote down in a letter. He predicted he would be dead by January 1,
1917. If peasants killed him, the monarchy would continue and prosper; but if
the nobles killed him, the royal family
would die within two years, and the aristocracy would be plunged into trouble
for twenty-five years, after which it
would be eliminated from the country.
The circumstances of Rasputin's
death are bizarre. On the night of December 29 to 30, 1916, Rasputin attended a
midnight tea to which he had been invited in the home of Prince Feliks
Yusupov, one of his enemies. There he
allegedly was fed cakes and wine laced
with cyanide, which, incredibly, did not
kill him. Yusupov then shot him. Rasputin collapsed, then jumped up and dashed
into the courtyard. Yusupov shot him
again and beat him with an iron bar. Still

499

he remained alive. The desperate conspirators dragged him to the frozen Neva
River, bound him, and pushed him
through a hole in the ice. When his body
was recovered, the cause of death was determined as drowning; no traces of poison were detected.
True to Rasputin's prophecy, the
royal family was murdered within two
years. The Russian Revolution and
World War I plunged the country into
chaos and threatened the old aristocratic
order. The nobiliry finally came to an end
twenry-five years later, in World War II,
at the hands of Josef Stalin.
Sources: Alex de Jonge. Life and Times of
Grigorii Rasputin. New York: Dorset,
1982; Colin Wilson. The Occult. New
York: Vintage Books, 1973.

Recurrent spontaneous
psychokinesis
See Poltergeist.

Reflexology
See Bodywork.

Reich, Wilhelm
See Bodywork; Universal life force.

Reichenbach, Karl yon

See Universal life force.

Reichian massage
See Bodywork.

Reiki
See Bodywork.

500

Reincarnation
The return of the soul or essence after
death to inhabit a new physical form. Belief in reincarnation has existed for thousands of years, and the concept has flourished at one time or another in virtually
every part of the world. Roughly twothirds of the world's modern population
accepts some form of reincarnation or rebirth as a fundamental belief-most notably Hindus and Buddhists, as well as
many tribal societies. Western belief in reincarnation is low but has slowly increased since the late nineteenth century,
due largely to the influence of Theosophy, the American medium Edgar Cayce,
and the introduction of Eastern religions.
Reincarnation beliefs have varied
considerably from culture to culture. The
ancient Egyptians believed in the reincarnation of great souls whose purpose is to
lead humankind. The Egyptians modified
that belief over the years to apply reincarnation to the masses. The Egyptian
Book of the Dead includes incantations
for reincarnation.
In ancient Greece Pythagoras (c. 572
B.c.-479 B.C.) taught reincarnation. Plato
(c. 427 B.c.-347 B.C.) said that without
successive lives, life in the universe would
disappear.
In Africa deeply rooted reincarnation
beliefs are held by many tribes. Among
those tribes who believe humans reincarnate as humans, childlessness is considered a curse because it blocks souls from
being reborn.
In Australia the belief is strongest
among the central aboriginal tribes, but is
found elsewhere on the continent. With
the dying of their ancient culture, some
Aborigines believe they will reincarnate
as "Whitefellows" in the continuing evolution of their souls.
Throughout the Pacific Island cultures, reincarnation also holds strong. It
is found among the Balinese, Okinawans,
Ainu (northern Japan), Tasmanians,

Rasputin, Grigory Yefimovich (1872?-1916)

Maoris (New Zealand), Fijians, and the

inhabitants of New Caledonia, Solomon
Islands, and Melanesia.
In North America many Native
American tribes believe in reincarnation.
The Tlingits of Alaska, for example, attach great importance to it as a glorious
continuation of personal identity. Prior to
the birth of an infant, a soul announces
its intent to reincarnate through dreams
to the pregnant woman or her close relatives. At birth the infant must be correctly identified according to previous
lives, and given the tribal name of the
person he or she was before. In this way
the child can take credit for all the good
deeds done by his or her previous incarnations. An infant who is not identified
correctly is denied his or her right to accumulated glory.
Reincarnation
beliefs also exist
among Native Central and South Americans, and perhaps were one reason why
the Spanish conquistadors took over with
such relative ease. The Spaniards were
hailed as reborn gods, Quetzalcoatl in
Mexico and Virochas in Peru, and the natives were anxious to submit to their
whims-with disastrous results.
With rare exception past lives are
not recalled spontaneously; most of those
who do remember past lives naturally are
children. According to various traditions,
forgetfulness of past lives is necessary to
the process of reincarnation.

Reincarnation in Islam
The concept of reincarnation was
known to ancient Persians prior to the
arrival of Islam. The teachings of the
prophet Zarathustra allude to it, and it is
explicitly taught in The Desatir, a mystical work written c. 500 B.C. In the sixth
century A.D., the prophet Muhammad received the Koran, the Bible of Islam, from
Allah. The Koran makes no direct reference to reincarnation, but some of its passages are interpreted as referring to it;

Reincarnation

one example is chapter 25 -Sura

Zakhraf-Meccan
Verses 5-10-6: "And
He sent down rain from above in proper
quantity and He brings back to life the
dead earth, similarly ye shall be reborn."
After Muhammad
reincarnation
passed into esoteric teachings. Three aspects of rebirth are generally accepted by
various esoteric schools: (1) the periodical incarnation of the Perfect Man or Deity; (2) the return of the Imam (a divinity
formerly manifest in Muhammad) or
other spiritual leader after death; and (3)
the return of ordinary souls. Some of the
Ism'ilis say that Krishna reincarnated as
Buddha and then Muhammad. See also
Sufism.

Reincarnation in Hinduism
Samsara, the "wheel of rebirth," is
taken for granted by Hindus from earliest
childhood. Hindus believe reincarnation
is caused by the imperfections of the soul
when it first comes into the world. Ignorance and desire perpetuate the need to
reincarnate. The soul perfects itself by purifying and realizing itself, and shedding
earthly desires. It is able to quit samsara
when it is reunited with Brahman, the
Absolute.
Samsara is influenced by karma, the
law of cause and effect. Good is rewarded
and evil is punished. Humans may reincarnate in lower life forms. The number
of incarnations is limitless. Successive
lives are separated by a period of rest in
which the soul contemplates its progress.
See Karma.
It is not certain exactly how old the
concept of reincarnation is in Hinduism;
there are inferences to rebirth or reincarnation in the oldest sacred writings, the
Vedas, some dating to c. 1000 B.C. The
Upanishads, which elaborate upon the
Vedas, refer to reincarnation. Reincarnation is explained more fully in the
Bhagavad-Gita ("The Lord's Song" or
"Song of Krishna"), part of the Mahab-

501

harata, composed c. 400

B.C. to A.D. 200.

In the Gita Krishna, the eighth avatar (incarnation) of Vishnu, explains that the
self is eternal. "Both I and thou have
passed through many births!" Krishna
says to Arjuna. "Mine are known to me,
but thou knowest not of thine." Krishna
explains that through continual striving
through many lives, the soul can at last
attain a state of supreme happiness and
grace.
Hinduism regards reincarnation as
misery and a sorrowful burden, a bondage from which to escape. At times in India's history, reincarnation and the law of
karma have been abused by the ruling
Brahmin caste as a way to manipulate the
masses.

Reincarnation in Buddhism
Buddhism, which prevails in parts of
India and throughout Asia, derives a doctrine of rebirth (distinct from reincarnation) from Hinduism. According to the
Pali Canon, the early scriptures of the
Theravada school, Buddha taught that
the individual has a lesser self, which
dies with the body, and a greater self,
which survives. However, Buddhism has
evolved with the concept of anatta, or
"no self" or "non-self," which holds that
there is no personality or ego which remains intact from life to life. Instead the
personality disintegrates at death into
sparks or pieces, which coalesce with
other sparks to form a new personality.
The life force, or will to live, is what survives, taking with it the good and bad
karmic attributes developed during the
life. Incarnations are caused by karma
and earthly cravings, which must be overcome in the pursuit of spiritual perfection. Prior to rebirth parents are chosen
for karmic reasons.
Liberation from rebirth is achieved
when one overcomes the "three unwholesome roots" -desire, hatred, and delusion-and
attains nirvana ("extinc-

502

tion"), or enlightenment, a state of ineffable peace.

The wheel of rebirth has six states of
existence through which sentient beings
revolve as long as there is evil karma to
be worked off: gods (devas); asuras (elemental forces); humans; animals; pretas
("hungry ghosts," who live in a purgatory of unsatisfied desires); and denizens
of hell. In Buddhism "hell" is another
state of temporary purgatory, the nature
and duration of which is determined by
karma. It is only in the human state that
one has a chance to awaken spiritually;
when that is accomplished, there is no
longer a need to remain on the wheel, but
one may choose to be reborn. See Bodhisattva. Like Hinduism, Buddhism views
birth as misery and a burden.
Both Hindus and Buddhists believe
that the last thought at the moment of
death determines the character of the
next incarnation. Thus it is of vital importance to die properly, and a yogic art
of dying and choosing the next womb is
taught to adepts. According to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Bardo, or
after-death state, lasts for forty-nine days.
It is characterized by three stages of deteriorating consciousness: Clear Light, or
supreme serenity; visitations from the
Peaceful and Wrathful Deities; and a
reckoning of karma that ends in rebirth.
The transition itself from life to death occurs in a state of unconsciousness over
three-and-a-half to four days; the Book of
the Dead sets forth procedures for making the transition without losing conSCIOusness.

Reincarnation in Judaism
Gilgul is the Hebrew term for transmigration, the passage of a soul upon
death into another body. There is no direct reference to gilgul in the Torah, unless one looks for it in allegories. It is,
however, contained in the Kabbalah, the
body of mystical works based on early

Reincarnation

esoteric teachings, compiled beginning in

medieval times by rabbis.
According to the Kabbalah, the early
Jews believed in the transmigration of
great prophets: Adam became David,
who was to become the Messiah. The 20har (Book of Splendor), an influential
work first published c. 1280 but attributed to teachings in the first century
A.D., extends gilgul to everyone: "All
souls are subject to the trials of transmigration ... "
Not all Kabbalists viewed gilgul as a
universal law, however, but related it to
sins against procreation and sexual taboos. Others said reincarnation was punishment for Cain's slaying of Abel, and
would quit only when all the dead were
resurrected. A few Kabbalists advanced
the view that humans could transmigrate
into animals, or even into plants or rocks.
The Kabbalah was prominent in
Jewish thought from about the thirteenth
to eighteenth centuries. Later Kabbalistic
works developed the idea of "main souls"
belonging to one root, which was Adam.
When Adam fell his soul scattered into
sparks, which could only be reassembled
through gilgul.
In the nineteenth century, the Kabbalah fell out of fashion with skeptical
Jewish scholars, and gilgul lost its place
in teachings. As of the twentieth century,
gilgul has not been taught in the three
main branches of Judaism - Reform,
Conservative, and Orthodox - but is
taught by the Hasidic sect.

Reincarnation in Christianity
Edgar Cayce once said, "I can read
reincarnation into the Bible, and you can
read it right out again!" Reincarnation is
not taught in any of Christianity's mainstream denominations. Christians who
believe in reincarnation feel there is evidence for the concept in the Bible, despite
the lack of direct reference to it. In the
Book of Matthew, Jesus says John the

Reincarnation

Baptist was once the prophet Elijah, who

was supposed to return to earth before
the coming of the Messiah. John the Baptist denied that he was, but reincarnationists explain that in terms of the "forgetfulness" that descends before every new
life.
Opponents to reincarnation
say
there is nothing on the subject in the Gospels or St. Paul, and say only Jesus has
the power to be born again on the earth.
Proponents say reincarnation is implied
in the New Testament, and find it significant that Jesus did not refute the concept. They add that from the perspective
of the authors of the Gospels, Jesus' return was imminent and would bring the
end of the world, which obviated reincarnation.
The Gnostics, who influenced Christian doctrine, believed in reincarnation,
according to ancient Coptic records discovered around 1945 in Egypt. The
Gnostic
manuscript
Pistis
Sophia
("Knowledge-Wisdom") tells how Jesus
explained to Mary Magdalene that he
had brought about the rebirth of advanced souls, including Elijah (Elias) as
John the Baptist. Early Christians called
Pre-Existants, who included such church
authorities as Justin Martyr and Origen,
believed in the doctrine of the preexistence of the soul, which implies reincarnation. This doctrine apparently was cast
out in 553 when the Roman Emperor
Justinian, who had made himself head of
the church, anathametized (cursed) Origen.
Belief in reincarnation survived,
along with other Gnostic views, into the
Middle Ages in religious sects such as the
Cathars and Albigenses, in groups such as
the Knights Templar, Rosicrucians, and
Freemasons, and among alchemists, Kabbalists, and others.
Western secular interest in reincarnation was revived in the nineteenth century, when Madame Helena P. Blavatsky
introduced Theosophy, Eastern esoteric

503

thought, to the West. In Isis Unveiled

Blavatsky said reincarnation was caused
by "ignorance of the senses."
In the twentieth century, belief in reincarnation has spread fairly evenly
throughout the predominantly Christian
West, according to the few public opinion
polls that have been taken.
In 1969 a George Gallup poll of
adults in twelve countries showed that
belief in reincarnation ranged from a low
of 10 percent (the Netherlands) to a high
of 26 percent (Canada). The United
States registered 20 percent, while the
United Kingdom scored 18 percent.
A 1981 Gallup poll in the United
States alone showed a 3 percent increase
in reincarnationists, to 23 percent, or a
total of about 38 million adults. Slightly
more women were believers (25 percent)
than men (21 percent). Roughly onequarter of those in major religious denominations said they were believers: 26
percent of Methodists, 25 percent of
Catholics, 22 percent of Lutherans, and
21 percent of Protestants.
None of the mainstream Christian
denominations officially recognizes or
teaches reincarnation, though various
members of the clergies have speculated
on or supported it. The Unity Church
(sometimes called the New Age Church)
recognizes reincarnation, and invites the
teaching of it to church members. The
church emphasizes "regeneration" rather
than reincarnation, stating that regeneration, or the purification of the soul, eventually makes reincarnation no longer necessary.

Scientific Investigation of
Reincarnation
Efforts have been made to scientifically investigate reincarnation and validate claims of past lives. Most notable of
these is the research of Ian Stevenson,
professor of psychiatry at the University
of Virginia, who began investigating
spontaneous reincarnational memories

504

among children around the world in the

1960s. In India, other researchers have investigated cases since the 1920s. See Pastlife recall.
Reincarnation has yet to be proven
scientifically, but Stevenson acknowledges evidence in support of reincarnation. A major problem in reconciling reincarnation with science is that science
does not recognize the existence of the
consciousness apart from the brain, as an
essence that survives the brain after bodily death. Heredity and environment are
said to be the sole agents responsible for
the formation of body and personality.

Reincarnation as the
Opposite Sex
Beliefs in sex switching vary from
culture to culture. In some societies where
the status of women is very low, it is considered impossible for a man to reincarnate as a woman (as the Druse of Lebanon believe), or it is considered karmic
punishment. Some early Kabbalists maintained that gender change was unnatural,
and that a man who reincarnated as a
woman would be barren.
Western believers in reincarnation
generally accept sex change as part of the
soul's development. Stevenson and other
researchers have collected cases involving
alleged gender change.

Reincarnation of Humans in
Nonhuman Form
The belief in transmigration of humans to the lower kingdoms is held by
Hindus, Buddhists, and many African
tribes, and some Native Americans, such
as the Inuit. In Africa beliefs of rebirth
of the human soul in nonhuman forms
are more commonplace than human-tohuman rebirth beliefs. Nonhuman forms
include animals, birds, reptiles, insects,
plants, and fabulous monsters.
The ancient Egyptians believed that
the human soul could occupy animal

Reincarnation

forms in perfecting itself, and could spend

up to three thousand years in animal bodies before returning to a human form.
The ancient Greek concept of "metempsychosis," the passage of a human soul
into a human or animal body, was
learned from the Egyptians. It is uncertain whether metempsychosis was taught
literally or figuratively by Pythagoras and
Plato. According to some Platonists, a regressed human soul did not actually become the soul of an animal, but took over
the body like a daimon or spirit guide.
See Spirit guide.
Justin Martyr, an early Christian
philosopher (c. 100-165), believed that
"unworthy" human souls were put into
the bodies of wild beasts. That idea was
opposed by other early Christians, including Tertullian (c. 160-230), who dismissed it as ridiculous. In the modern
West, transmigration of humans to animals is widely rejected, even among those
who believe in reincarnation, including
the Unity Church. The chief argument advanced against this belief is that the
highly developed human consciousness
could not possibly operate in a lower
form of life. Furthermore, the law of
karma would not be served, for an animal could not possibly understand or appreciate what happened.
Stevenson has found no convincing
evidence in his research to support transmigration to lower life forms. The Cayce
readings contain no such occurrences, although Cayce did state that humankind's
attitude toward and treatment of animals
produces a karmic reaction from the animal kingdom itself.

Reincarnation in the Subhuman

Kingdoms
Hindus and Buddhists believe all
forms of life reincarnate as part of their
own spiritual evolution. Some Westerners
believe in a one-way process in which
subhuman entities advance to the human

Reincarnation

kingdom and beyond. According to Theosophy subhuman species belong to a

"group soul," a collective consciousness.
When an animal dies, for example, its individuality is absorbed into the pool.
New animal souls are reborn from sparks
sent off by the group soul- similar to the
Buddhist concept of rebirth for humans.
Theosophy also holds that several parallel evolutionary streams exist on planet
Earth. One stream begins with minerals
and works its way up through plants,
shrubs, trees, antediluvian reptiles and
lower mammals, mammals, and domestic
animals to finally reach human beings
(three levels of primitive, ordinary, and
advanced). Another stream also begins
with minerals, but follows a different
path through grasses, ants, bees, etheric
creatures, fairies, fire spirits, sylphs, astral devas, and higher devas. Birds belong
to a stream that ends in nature spirits and
devas.
The group soul concept exists in the
teachings of Zarathustra, who asked the
Creator Ahura- Mazda what happened to
the consciousness of a dog when it died.
According to the Vendidad, a Zoroastrian scripture, Ahura-Mazda answered,
"Oh holy Zarathustra! it goes into a
stream of water, where, from a thousand
male, and a thousand female dogs, a
pair-one male and one female-of the
Udra [a water dog, perhaps seal or walrus], that reside in the waters, comes into
being."
One documented case of alleged animal reincarnation from the 1960s involves a Vietnamese beiy who recalled
that in his previous life he had a dog, that
also had died and gone with him into the
afterlife. In the investigation of the case,
the boy was taken to the village where he
said he had lived, and where still lived the
members of his previous family. One of
the family members had a dog that had
never seen the boy before but acted as
though it knew him. The boy believed it
was his former pet reincarnated. The boy

505

said that prior to reincarnation, he had

been given not fruit, but a "soup of forgetfulness," which he had disposed of by
giving it to his dog-spirit. Apparently, the
soup did not affect the dog in its next life.

Books, 1967; Frederick Lenz. Lifetimes:

True Accounts
of Reincarnation.
New
York: Fawcett Crest, 1977; James G. Matlock. "Age and Stimulus in Past-Life Memory Cases: A Study of Published Cases."

Theodore Besterman. Collected

Papers on the Paranormal. New York:
Garrett Publications, 1968; John Blofeld.
The Tantric Mysticism of Tibet. Boston:
Shambhala Publications, 1987; Gina Cerminara. Many Lives, Many Loves. New
York: William Sloane Assoc., 1963; Emily
Williams Cook. "Research on Reincarnation-Type Cases: Present Status and Suggestions for Future Research." Case Studies
in Honor of Louisa E. Rhine. Edited by K.
Ramakrishna Rao. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1986; Sylvia Cranston and
Carey Williams. Reincarnation: A New

303-16; Marcia Moore and Mark Douglas. Reincarnation, Key to Immortality.

York Cliffs, ME: Arcane Publications,
1968; Marcia Moore. Hypersentience.
New York: Bantam Books, 1977; Ian Stevenson. Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. 2d ed. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1974; Francis
Story. Rebirth as Doctrine and Experience.
Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society, 1975.

Sources:

Horizon

in Science, Religion, and Society.

New York: Julian Press, 1984; W. Y.

Evans-Wentz, ed. The Tibetan Book of the
Dead. 3d ed. London: Oxford University
Press, 1960; Joe Fisher. The Case for Reincarnation.
1984. New York: Bantam
Books, 1985; George Gallup, Jr., with William Proctor. Adventures in Immortality.
New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1982;
Rosemary Ellen Guiley. Tales of Reincarnation. New York: Pocket Books, 1989;
Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Kindness, Clarity, and
Insight. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1984; Manly Palmer Hall. Reincarnation: The Cycle of Necessity. Los Angeles: The Philosophical Research Society,
1956; Joseph Head and S. L. Cranston,
comps. and eds. Reincarnation in World
Thought. New York: Julian Press, 1967;
Joseph Head and S. L. Cranston, comps.
and eds. Reincarnation: The phoenix Fire
Mystery. New York: Julian Press, 1977;
Le-Quang H'u'ong. "Histoires vietnamienes de reincarnation." Message d' extremeorient 2, no. 7 (1972): 535-39; Yong
Choon Kim. Oriental Thought. Totowa,
NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1973; His
Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet. My Land
and My People: Memoirs of the
Lama of Tibet. 1962. New York:
Corp., 1977; Noel Langley. Edgar
on Reincarnation.
New York:

506

Dalai

Potala
Cayce

Castle

The Journal of the American Society for

Psychical Research 83 (October 1989):

Relaxation
A state of deep rest in which the metabolism of the body slows; less oxygen is
burned, the heart and respiration rates
drop, blood pressure drops, and brain
waves slow to an alpha state. Relaxation
of both mind and body is a key factor in
the development of psychic faculties and
in the attainment of enlightened states of
consciousness. Relaxation is stressed in
all Eastern meditation disciplines. It has
been demonstrated to be a significant influence on the successful performance of
psi in laboratory experiments. Relaxation
also has been shown to enhance one's
ability to learn new information, perform
tasks, and achieve results through creative visualization. In a psychic reading,
relaxation is just as important for the client as for the psychic, in order to facilitate the flow of superphysical sense perceptions.
The first systematic study of relaxation in relation to psi was conducted in
1952 by American parapsychologist Gertrude Schmeidler. Schmeidler found that
hospitalized concussion patients scored
much higher in psi guessing tasks than
did patients suffering from other disorders, and concluded it was due to their

Reincarnation

greater relaxation. Subsequent studies of

progressive states of relaxation in psi tests
have supported her conclusion.
The importance of relaxation in
meditation and mystical disciplines has
been known for centuries. Relaxation is
paramolint to achieving a state of perfect
mental solitude and quiet, in which either
a union or a communion with the divine
becomes attainable. The body must be at
ease and the mind stilled to blankness.
Relaxation can be achieved through
Eastern yoga and meditation techniques,
as well as through progressive muscular
relaxation, the loosening of every part of
the body from head to toe; chanting; biofeedback; and self-hypnosis. Some people
use self-hypnosis tapes, environmental
music, and incense. Medium Eileen J.
Garrett believed that relaxation is enhanced when one of the five senses is
stimulated, such as hearing or smell.
Relaxation is impaired by drugs,
including alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, tranquilizers, hallucinogens, and other mindand mood-altering substances. See Altered states of consciousness; Biofeedback; Meditation; Yoga.
Sources: Herbert Benson. The Relaxation
Response. New York: Avon Books, 1976;

Jo An Chase as told to Constance Moon.

You Can Change Your Life through Psychic Power. New York: Permabooks,
1960; Jack Forem. Transcendental Meditation. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1973; Maxwell Maltz. The Magic Power of Self-Image
New York: Pocket Books,
Psychology.
1970; Ormond McGill. The Mysticism and
Magic of India. Cranbury, NJ: A. S. Barnes

& Co., 1977; Sheila Ostrander and Lynn

Schroeder. Handbook of Psi Discoveries.
New York: Berkley, 1974; Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. SuperLearning. New York: Dell, 1979; D. Scott
Rogo. Psychic Breakthroughs Today. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England:
The Aquarian Press, 1987; John White and
James Fadiman, eds. Relax. New York:
The Confucian Press, 1976; Benjamin B.

Remote

viewing

Wolman, ed. Handbook of Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold,

1977; Vivian Worthington. A History of
Yoga. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1982.

Releasement
See Depossession.

Remote viewing
Seeing remote or hidden objects clairvoyantly with the inner eye, or in alleged outof-body travel. In the past remote viewing
was called "traveling clairvoyance" and
"telesthesia." The term "remote viewing"
was coined in the 1970s by American
physicists Russell Targ and Harold
Puthoff. Targ suggests a more accurate
name is "remote sensing," for it involves
psychic impressions of smell, sound, and
touch as well as sight.
Remote viewing is one of the oldest
and most common forms of psi, and one
of the most difficult to explain. As a shamanic skill, it has been used in Tibet, Siberia, Africa, India, and the Americas for
centuries. Perhaps the first recorded account of remote viewing was written by
Herodotus concerning Croesus, King of
Lydia, who in 550 B.C. evaluated seven
Greek oracles for accuracy. The oracles
were asked by messengers what the king
was doing at the moment on the day of
inquiry. The Delphic oracle came out the
clear winner: The Pythia reported the
sight and smell of a tortoise and lamb
boiling in a stew in a brass-lid-covered
cauldron, which Croesus himself had prepared.
In the eighteenth century, Emanuel
Swedenborg was renowned for his clairvoyance, which included remote visions.
Philosopher Immanuel Kant, who investigated Swedenborg, recorded one famous incident that took place in 1759.

507

Swedenborg attended a dinner party in

Gothenburg, Sweden. After two hours he
excused himself and left the room, returning after some time in a state of anxiety.
He announced that a fire had broken out
in Stockholm, his hometown, and was
spreading rapidly. For several hours he
remained agitated, periodically leaving
the company, coming back, and reporting
on the fire's progress. He was immensely
relieved when he saw the fire put out
three doors away from his own house.
The following day the governor of Gothenburg summoned Sweden borg, who
gave a complete description of the fire, its
origins, progress, and how it was extinguished. Two days later the governor
received a report from Stockholm by
courier, describing the fire exactly as
Swedenborg had seen it.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, remote viewing, or
"traveling clairvoyance" as it was called
then, excited much interest among magnetists, who discovered that many of their
hypnotized subjects could give detailed
accounts of distant locations. Not only
could they describe surroundings, people,
clothing, and activities, some could "see"
into distant stomachs to report their contents, and "see" into brains.
Many experiments in remote viewing
were conducted during the nineteenth
century. There was no shortage of capable subjects, who worked with eyes
closed or blindfolded; some were even
blind.
In the late nineteenth century, Frederic W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, London, observed that traveling clairvoyance seemed
to be a fusion of telepathy, retrocognition, precognition, and clairvoyance.
Sometimes the events or activities seen
were displaced in time; the subject had
the impression of immediacy, when in
fact the events had already occurred or
had yet to occur. Sometimes they carried
on conversations with people seen re-

508

motely and "heard" responses. Subjects

sent to remote locations to describe them
occasionally got lost, and had to find
their way by a psychic navigation that resembled the tracking of a hound dog.
In the early to mid-twentieth century, American writer Upton Sinclair and
Rene Warcollier, a French engineer, recorded data relating to remote viewing
and other psychic phenomena. In 1972
Targ and Puthoff used this data when
they coined the term "remote viewing"
and established a research project at SRI
International
(formerly Stanford Research Institute) in California.
After hundreds of experimental trials
over at least ten years, Targ and Puthoff
had amassed impressive results. They
concluded that remote viewing is a psychic experience that occurs naturally in
the lives of many people. They found they
could train others to remote view, regardless of innate psychic ability and previous
psychic experiences or training. Most
viewers can be taught to "go" to a location and accurately describe buildings,
geographic features, people, and activities. In many cases the further away the
target, the greater the accuracy. They also
can be taught to see into opaque containers to describe contents, and to read data
and see images on microdot film. Ingo
Swann, one of the SRI's leading psychics,
used remote viewing to guide a submarine to the previously unknown site of a
submerged shipwreck. Swann said he
could remotely view sites around the
world, given the longitude and latitude.
A related skill developed out of the
SRI project is "associative remote viewing," obtaining analytical data through
remote viewing. The viewer is asked to
describe objects linked with the information desired. Associative remote viewing
may have potential for predicting future
events, such as election outcomes, stock
market trends, and successful ventures,
such as determining which of various oil
sites should be drilled first.

Remote viewing

Associative remote viewing works

like this: Simple objects, like a ball or
piece of fruit, are assigned to several possible future events. The viewer, who does
not know the objects or the possible
events, is asked to remote view into the
future to see which object is going to be
placed in his hands or presented to him
on a certain date.
In 1982 Targ and American psychic
Keith Harary conducted an associative
remote viewing experiment on the silver
futures market. A group of anonymous
investors bought and sold futures according to the objects perceived by Harary,
who did not know what they were. The
objects included a vial of perfume, a pair
of eyeglass frames, and a plastic bag of
washers. The investors made more than
$100,000 profit. However, a subsequent
experiment to replicate the results failed.
Other major research in remote
viewing has been done at Princeton University by the Princeton Engineering
Anomalies Research (PEAR) group, established in 1979. PEAR is the first research group to apply modern engineering science techniques to a systematic
study of psi phenomena. In experiments
of "precognitive remote perception"
(PRP), involving men and women of various ages, PEAR determined that it is possible to obtain remote information by
means which are not explained by
"known physical mechanisms."
Researchers have not been able to
explain exactly how remote viewing
works. The Soviets put forth the theory
that psi is carried on extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic waves, but
that does not explain why remote viewing
does not get weaker with greater distance. Using the SRI International data,
other American and Canadian researchers have found that remote viewing is affected by geomagnetic activity. A higher
incidence of geomagnetic activity one or
two days before a remote viewing test has
an adverse effect; low activity precedes

Retrocognition

(also postcognition)

successful tests. In some experiments remote viewers exhibited precognition, by

seeing the target site before the target
is known or visited by the other participants. See Out-of-body experience
(OBE); Applied psi.
Sources: Slater Brown. The Heyday of Spiritualism. New York: Hawthorn Books,
1970; Alfred Douglas. Extrasensory Powers: A Century of Psychical Research. Lon-

don: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1976; Robert G.

Jahn and Brenda J. Dunne. Margins of Reality: The Role of Consciousness in the
Physical World. San Diego: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1987; D. Scott Rogo. Psychic
Breakthroughs
Today.
Wellingborough,

Northamptonshire, England: The Aquarian

Press, 1987; Russell Targ and Keith
Harary. The Mind Race. New York: Villard Books, 1984; Russell Targ and Harold
Puthoff. Mind-Reach: Scientists Look at
Psychic Ability. New York: Delacorte
Press, 1977.

Retrocognition
postcognition)

(also

Seeing into or sensing the past. Retrocognition occurs spontaneously but uncommonly in daily life, dreams, and in parapsychology experiments. It is claimed to
be accomplished deliberately by psychics
who seek access to past events in order to
obtain unknown information useful in
the present. Retrocognition is difficult to
test scientifically because of the possibility of clairvoyance of existing historical
records.
Spontaneous retrocognition usually
manifests as a hallucination or vision.
The present surroundings are abruptly replaced by a scene out of the past. Although the vision usually is fleeting, some
last for minutes and generally feature
movement, sounds, and smells.
Retrocognition is a phenomenon of
some hauntings and apparitions that
seem to be continual replays of events,
such as murders or suicides. Psychologist

509

Gardner Murphy theorized that most

ghosts are cases of retrocognition, in
which an individual becomes momentarily displaced in time and can perceive
scenes from the past.
The most famous and significant
case of retrocognition involves apparitions seen at Versailles, dating to the
1770s in tranquil days prior to the French
Revolution. Reports of apparitions there
were recorded as early as 1870, but Versailles became famous as a case beginning
in the summer of 1901. In that year two
English academics, Eleanor Jourdain and
Annie Moberly, visited the Petit and
Grand Trianons. They walked a long
route to the Petit Trianon and seemed to
lose their way. Upon entering the garden,
Moberly suddenly felt depressed. Both
felt as though they were walking in a
dream. The atmosphere was very still, eerie, and oppressed. The surroundings
looked unpleasant and unnatural, almost
two-dimensional. They saw and spoke to
people in period costume of the 1770s,
and saw a kiosk and a bridge that no
longer existed.
In subsequent visits to the Petit Trianon, Moberly and Jourdain experienced
the recognitive visions again. Their adventure was publicized, and others who
visited the garden reported similar experiences. What was unusual about the initial experience of Moberly and Jourdain
is the length of their hallucinations, perhaps up to thirty minutes. The haunting
appears to be an "aimless haunting," as
no extreme emotions are associated with
apparitions.
Another well-known case is the Battle of Nechanesmere, which took place on
May 20, 685, in Scotland. The Picts, led
by King brude mac Beli, staved off an invasion of Northumbrians, led by King
Ecgfrith, by killing Ecgfrith, his bodyguards, and most of his army. Survivors
fled into the countryside.
On January 2, 1950, 1,265 years
later, the aftermath of the battle was wit-

510

nessed by E. F. Smith, a woman in her

fifties. Driving home one snowy evening,
Smith suffered a minor car accident about
eight miles away from the village of
Letham, near Nechanesmere. She began
walking toward Letham with her dog.
About a half-mile from the village,
Smith observed a mass of torches moving
through the dark. She then perceived that
they were held by figures who were
dressed in period clothes, which she later
identified as from the seventh century.
The figures were moving through a field,
turning over bodies. There was no sound
save for the barking of her dog. Investigators theorized she witnessed a scene
from the past, the Pictish searching for
their dead from the Battle of Nechanesmere.
Yet another famous retrocognition
case was all sound and no image. In
August 1951 two British women pseudonymously identified as the Norton sisters went to Dieppe, France, for vacation. Dieppe had suffered an air raid during World War II on August 19, 1942,
in which Canadian forces sustained
heavy casualties. The Norton women
heard machine-gun fire, rifle shots, divebombing planes, and human shouts and
screams. The noise, which sounded like a
movie soundtrack, lasted from 4 A.M. to 7
A.M. It was not heard by others.
Retrocognition is used in applied psi
fields such as psychic criminology and
psychic archaeology, in which past events
are reconstructed by psychics to help
solve crimes, find dig sites, or identify unknown objects found in digs. The rerrocognition usually is done by using psychometry on objects. Some psychics say
they enter an altered state of consciousness and consult the Akashic Records,
which Edgar Cayce once termed "God's
book of remembrance." See Psychic archaeology; Psychic criminology; Psychometry. Compare to Precognition.
Sources: Individual Reference File of Extracts from the Edgar Cayce Readings. Vir-

Retrocognition

(also postcognition)

ginia Beach, VA: Edgar Cayce Foundation,

1976; Robert G. Jahn and Brenda J.
Dunne. Margins of Reality: The Role of
Consciousness in the Physical World. San
Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987;
Andrew MacKenzie. Hauntings and Apparitions. London: William Heinemann Ltd.,
1982; Edgar D. Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science. Edited by
John White. New York: Paragon Books,
1974; Gardner Murphy. "Direct Contacts
with Past and Future: Retrocognition and
Precognition." Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 61, no. 1 (January 1967): 3-23; Sheila Ostrander and
Lynn Schroeder. Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970; Jack Harrison
Pollack. Croiset the Clairvoyant. Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1964; Jane Roberts.
Adventures in Consciousness. New York:
Bantam Books, 1979; Joan Windsor. The
Inner Eye: Your Dreams Can Make You
Psychic. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-

Hall, 1985; Benjamin B. Wolman, ed.

Handbook of Parapsychology. New York:
Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977; Dixie Yeterian. Casebook of a Psychic Detective. New
York: Stein and Day, 1982.

Revelation, Book of
The last book of the New Testament,
which portrays the Second Coming of
Christ, the final triumph of the kingdom
of God, and the destruction of all evil;
also called the (Book of the) Apocalypse.
The opening verse presents the book's title as meaning either "the revelation
which Christ possesses and imparts," or
"the unveiling of the person of Christ"
(1:1). The Book of Revelation is the only
book of the New Testament whose character is exclusively prophetic.
The writer of the Apocalypse has traditionally been named as John the Evangelist. Church fathers who identify him as
such include Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian,
and Clement of Alexandria. Subsequent
scholarship has periodically questioned
the book's authorship. Part of the book

Revelation,

Book

of

may have been written before the fall of

Jerusalem (A.D. 70), and toward the end
of the reign of the Emperor Domitian
(81-96), who exiled John (the author of
Revelation) to the island of Patmos and
persecuted Christians. More significantly,
there are theological differences (especially concerning the Second Coming)
that raise serious doubts as to John the
Evangelist being more than the inspiration for the Apocalypse.
The book is written in three parts.
Part one features letters addressed to
seven of the groups of Christians of the
Roman province of Asia. These letters,
which may have existed as a separate
text, depict Christ's continuing relationship with his followers. Part two features
the visions of judgment and the victory of
God over the forces of evil. By extensive
use of symbols and numbers, especially
the number seven, the book foretells (or
"reveals") a violent end of the world.
Part three features a vision of heaven.
The book concludes with a call to all
those who listen to "come."
One of the most popular symbols
used in Revelation is the Four Horsemen,
often called the Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse. These are symbols of the
evils to come at the Second Coming: a
white horse (conquest), a red horse (war),
a black horse (famine), and a pale horse
(plague).
There are four main schools of interpretation of the book. The Preterists hold
that the book tells the story of the contemporary condition of the state of Rome
and the church, told in a sort of mystical
code so as to hide the meaning from hostile pagans. Similarly, those of the Historical school hold that the symbolic
form tells the story of the church, but the
entire historical life of the church, not
just its contemporary condition. The Futurists hold that some passages refer to
the contemporary scene, and some to the
return of Christ at the end of time. The
Symbolic school sees the book as a dra-

511

matic picture of the war between good

and evil, which exists in varying degrees
in every historical age. Since part of the
book was written during a time of severe
persecutions of Christians, its original
purpose may have been to assure Christians that they and their faith would be
vindicated.
The four great visions presented in
Revelation place the seer in a different location. Each paints a distinctive picture of
Christ, and each moves the progress of
the proceeding condition.
The immediacy of the Last Day has
been a belief of many Christian groups.
Even the first-century Christians read the
New Testament, especially the closing
two verses of Revelation, to mean these
events were to happen in their lifetime.
Ever since, various personal interpretations of Revelation have led religious
leaders, usually self-appointed, to foretell
a specific time for the final day, usually
without the blessing of any major denomination.
Thematic throughout the book is the
vision of "a new heaven and a new
earth," which will be revealed at the Armageddon (the site and event of the final
bartle between good and evil), during the
Second Coming of Jesus (The Parousia),
on Judgment Day. While each major
Christian denomination believes in at
least aspects of these phenomena, to some
degree they are essential to the faith and
practice of both the Seventh-Day Adventists and the followers of Charles Taze
Russell, who since 1931 have been called
the Jehovah's Witnesses. They believe in
the nearness of the Second Coming and,
moreover, that exactly 144,000 people
will go to heaven, and the rest of humanity will live in an earthly paradise.
The Book of the Apocalypse should
not be confused with the Apocrypha
(from the Greek meaning "hidden
things"), which are religious writings that
have not been accepted by certain religious groups. For example, Roman Cath-

512

olics and Eastern Orthodox churches accept certain books in their Old Testament
that Jews and many Protestants do not
consider part of the Bible.
Sources: Pat Alexander, ed. The Lion Encyclopedia of the Bible. Rev. ed. Tring,

England: Lion Publishing, 1986; T. Alton

Bryant. The New Compact Bible Dictionary. New York: Pillar Books, 1967; Sherman E. Johnson. "Apocalyptic Literature."
In The Academic

American

Encyclopedia.

Princeton, NJ: Arete, 1980; The New Jerusalem Bible. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1966; The New King James Bible. Nashville: Nelson Thomas, 1979; The New Oxford Annotated Bible. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1977.

Ritual
A ceremonial act, especially for religious
or sacred purpose. All religions and spiritual, mystical, and magical traditions
have their own rituals, which are the
means to come into contact with God or
gods or supernatural forces. Rituals help
one to define oneself in relation to the
cosmos, and to mark one's progress
through life and one's spiritual unfoldment.
Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung observed
that rituals "are an answer and reaction
to the action of God upon man, and perhaps they are not only that, but are also
intended to be 'activating,' a form of
magic coercion" (Memories, Dreams, Re1961). Hsun Tzu, a Chinese
flections,
philosopher of the third century B.C., said
that rituals have three bases: heaven and
earth, the source of all life; ancestors, the
source of human life; and sovereigns and
teachers, the source of government. Rites,
said Hsun Tzu, make for harmony in the
universe and bring out the best in human
beings-they are the culmination of culture.
Rituals have various purposes, which
may overlap: placation and propitiation;
magical; initiation; invocati~ns; trans i-

Revelation,

Book

of

Siberian shaman performing ritual to alter consciousness

tion or passage; supplication; fertility; social; sacrifice; healing or cleansing; purification; protection; banishment, and so
on. Rituals have various natures. For example, some involve ordeals and physical
mortification; others are ecstatic, and still
others are contemplative. Some, such as
the rites of the mysteries, are reenactments of mythical dramas. See Mysteries.
Mircea Eliade, the Romanian-born
historian of religion, said rituals of initiation are the most significant spiritual
phenomenon in human history, for their
purpose is to alter the religious and social
status of the individual. They prepare for
and parallel the great transitions in body
and spirit. Initiation rites are revealed by
God or the gods, and to undergo such a
rite is to imitate the gods. Eliade defined
three broad categories of initiation rituals: puberty or passage into adulthood;
entrance into a secret society or order;
and entrance into a mystical vocation
such as shaman or medicine man. The
latter two tend to be ecstatic in nature.
Shamanic initiations in particular involve
contact with non ordinary reality.
An initiation rite has great depth and
complexity. It involves ordeal and sacri-

Ritual

fice; one comes face to face with the numinous. It culminates with one's symbolic death and rebirth into a new life, in
which one has access to new values. The
reborn one is given a new name to reflect
his or her new status.
In modern civilization the rite of initiation, where it still exists at all, has lost
much of its power. Eliade observed that
initiatory themes in the modern West are
kept alive largely in the unconscious, expressed through art and literature. Perhaps this is one reason why the subject of
mythology, and particularly the hero's
journey, has received renewed interest
through the works of Joseph Campbell.
See Mythology.
Jung said that the process of individuation, a person's becoming whole, involves initiatory types of ordeals. However, the only initiation process still alive
in the West, he said, is the psychoanalysis
of the unconscious process.
The elements of ritual include recitation, chanting, singing, prayer, and invocation; dancing, movement, or postures; costumes or special dress; incense,
smoke, candles, or fire; offerings or sacrifices; consumption of food and drink

513

(or, conversely, fasting); purifications;

use of sacred objects, relics, tools, images,
and symbols. These elements create physical and psychological changes intended
to help achieve the goal of the ritual. It is
important that all elements of a ritual are
observed correctly to ensure success. Failure to do so in some cases is believed to
have serious consequences, as in some
Navajo healing chants. See Chantways.
Rituals are done both individually
and collectively. There is greater power in
a group, where all energies are focused on
the same objective. See Chanting; Magic;
Medicine societies; Sacred pipe; Shamanism; Spiritual emergence; Sweat; Vision
quest; Witchcraft.
Sources: Isaac Bonewits. Real Magic. Rev.

ed. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1989;

Mircea Eliade. Patterns in Comparative Religion. New York: New American Library,
1958; Mircea Eliade. From Primitives to
Zen: A Thematic Source Book of the History of Religions. San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1977; Mircea Eliade. Rites and Symbols of Initiation. New York: Harper &
Row, 1958; Murry Hope. The Psychology
of Ritual. Longmead, Dorset, England: Element Books Ltd., 1988; C. G. Jung. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Recorded and

edited by Aniela Jaffe. New York: Random

House, 1961; Andrew Samuels, Bani
Shorter, and Fred Plaut. A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.

Roberts, Jane (1929-1984)

Poet and author, best known for channeling an entity named Seth, the most
widely known of all such entities channeled in the twentieth century.
Jane Roberts grew up in Saratoga
Springs, New York, and attended Skidmore College. She married Robert Butts,
a painter; they lived in Elmira, New
York. Prior to the arrival of Seth in 1963,
Roberts aspired to a conventional literary
career in what she termed "the Establish-

514

ment"; she published poetry and short

stories in various national magazines.
In September 1963 Roberts had her
first full-blown paranormal experience
one evening as she sat writing poetry.
Suddenly, she felt her consciousness lift
out of her body, and her mind was
flooded with "astonishing and new"
ideas. When her consciousness returned
to her body, she discovered that, through
automatic writing, she had recorded the
ideas that had flowed into her mind. The
notes were even titled: The Physical Universe as Idea Construction.

Intrigued by this episode, Roberts

and her husband began experimenting
with a Ouija board. (Despite warnings
from some that Ouija boards can invite
negative spirits, Roberts maintained
throughout her life that it was not the
Ouija, but one's superstitious fears that
produced negative results.) The initial
communications through the board were
allegedly from Roberts's grandfather, Joseph Adolph Burdo; and then, on December 2, 1963, from a deceased English
teacher from Elmira whom Roberts identified pseudonymously as "Frank Withers." A check of local records indicated
that such a man had lived and died as the
Ouija communications alleged.
After three sessions with Withers,
the entity said he preferred to be called
Seth, which more aptly expressed "the
whole self I am, or am trying to be."
Withers, he said, was a part of his much
larger personality. On various occasions
Seth described Withers as "colorless" and
a "fathead."
Seth defined himself as "an energy
personality essence" that was no longer
focused in physical form. He referred to
Roberts as "Ruburt" and Butts as "Joseph," names which he said better expressed their whole, larger personalities.
All three had known each other in previous incarnations in seventeenth-century
Denmark. In the nineteenth century Roberts had been a medium, and Seth, as a

Ritual

nonphysical being, had communicated

through her. Seth suggested twice-weekly
communication sessions.
Thus began Roberts's remarkable
channeling career. By the fourteenth session with the Ouija, she was able to discard it for clairaudient channeling, done
first in light trance and then gradually in
deep trance. In deep trance Roberts's features would change and her voice would
deepen and take on an odd accent; Seth
boomed out to his audience. He said that
speaking through her was not comparable to using a telephone, but involved "a
psychological extension, a projection of
characteristics on both of our parts, and
this I use for communication." Other
paranormal experiences occurred during
work with Seth. Apparitions appeared,
including one of Seth; Roberts's facial
features changed in the mirror, and her
hand changed shape at a seance; both
Roberts and Butts had out-of-body experiences. Dreams were important to Seth
as gateways to other realities, and he often appeared in dreams or gave others
"dream assignments."
Seth said he was a "personality with
a message," and that his many lives on
earth, male and female, had been to learn
with the goal of being a teacher. His central message is that human beings create
their own reality through thoughts, actions, and beliefs; in effect they are cocreators of the universe. Furthermore, each
individual is a multidimensional being,
existing simultaneously in multiple realities. There are no limits to the growth
and development of the self.
Human beings reincarnate many
times, though not in the fashion in which
many believe, Seth said. Lives are not a
progression of single incarnations determined by the karma of the preceding life;
in fact, there is no karma that punishes or
rewards. Rather, progress of the soul depends on the psychic and spiritual focus
of the lives. Lives grow out of the inner
self; they are forms taken by the con-

Roberts, Jane (1929-1984)

sciousness expressing itself. The past,

present, and future exist in a simultaneous now, and we experience all of our
lives simultaneously.
Seth said that prior to the history of
Earth, he had been a "Lumanian." He
later was born in Atlantis and subsequently had numerous human lives as
man and woman, none of them historical
figures of note. He had been a cave man;
a Roman man during the time of Christ;
a minor pope (probably in the fourth century, according to Roberts's estimate); a
spice merchant in seventeenth-century
Denmark, when he knew Roberts and
Butts; several monks; several black men
in Ethiopia and Turkey; a victim of the
Spanish Inquisition; a courtesan during
the time of David; a Dutch spinster; and
several existences as a "humble" wife and
mother. His last full incarnation had been
in the seventeenth century as the Dutch
spice merchant. Frank Withers was a
fragment of his personality that would
continue to reincarnate on its own.
Seth said that God is neither male
nor female, but is "more than the sum of
all the probable systems of reality He has
created, and yet He is within each one of
these, without exception." Human concepts of personality are too limiting to
comprehend God's multidimensional existence. God is responsible for All That Is,
the inconceivable energy that gives validity to the multidimensional self.
According to Seth there were actually three male individuals whose history
blended into that of the one known as
Christ. The disciples were fragment personalities formed by the Christ personality. The triune Christ figure represented
the inner self, and the disciples represented twelve main characteristics connected with the egotistical self. The crucifixion was not a physical event, but a
psychic one. The drama played out by
Christ was the manifestation of God in a
way comprehensible to individuals at the
time. The third personality of Christ will

515

not appear until the event prophesied as

the "Second Coming"; this incarnation
will be a new gestalt of the three Christs.
The individual will be a great psychic and
will teach others to use the inner senses
that make true spirituality possible. He
will not generally be known for who he
is. By the time of his birth, Christianity
will be in a shambles, Seth said, and he
will straighten it out by undermining religious organizations and setting up a
new system of thought that will enable
each individual to attain intimate contact
with his or her own entity, the mediator
with All That Is. All of this will be accomplished by the year 2075, Seth said.
Unlike some channelers who followed her, Roberts never sought huge,
paying audiences. Seth sessions were
done at home before a small circle of
friends or students from Roberts's creative writing class. Butts took copious
notes by shorthand, which were transcribed. In this way Seth dictated several
books of challenging material. Roberts
herself wrote two books about the beginnings of her contact with Seth, as well as
novels and volumes of poetry inspired by
her channeling. She produced another
three books attributed to other channeled
sources: Seth Two, a group entity that allegedly included Seth, the French impressionist painter Paul Cezanne, and the
American psychologist and philosopher
William James. She felt that her contact
with the latter two involved pieces or
constructs of their personalities.
Roberts died in 1984 in Elmira following a period of illness. Other channelers have since claimed to take up communication with Seth. See Channeling.
Sources: Jon Klimo. Channeling: Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources. Los Angeles: Jeremy P.
Tarcher, 1987; Jane Roberts. The Coming
of Seth. First published in 1966 as How to
Develop Your ESP Power. New York:
Pocket Books, 1976; Jane Roberts. The
Seth Material.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

516

Prentice-Hall, 1970; Jane Roberts. Seth

Speaks: The Eternal

Validity of the Soul.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972.

Rodegast, Pat
See Channeling.

Rolfing
See Bodywork.

Roll, William
See Poltergeist.

Rolling Thunder (b. 1915)

Intertribal Native American medicine
man whose remarkable healings have
been witnessed by medical professionals.
Rolling Thunder was born in 1915
into the Cherokee nation. He was recognized at birth as a future medicine man,
and at an early age was given special
training by tribal leaders. As a teenager
he was sent off to live in the woods, and
spent long periods in isolation over several years. During this time he learned to
communicate with plants and animals.
He also experienced profound dreams,
one of which contained images and symbols that led to his adoption of the name
Rolling Thunder. Dreams have been of
great importance to him throughout his
healing career.
After his time in the woods, Rolling
Thunder served as an apprentice to several medicine men and went through the
traditional seven initiatory ceremonies to
becoming a medicine man. He did not begin practicing until he was in his thirties
following the tradition that practice does
not begin until the time is right. His first
patient was a seriously ill old woman

Roberts,

Jane (1929-1984)

who was in danger of dying. Following

an all-night session singing with Rolling
Thunder, she recovered.
Rolling Thunder believes in reincarnation, and that one comes into life
with a mission. His healing, like that of
other medicine men and shamans, is
based on a respect for the Great Spirit
and for all life, and on the ability to align
himself with and make use of the forces
of nature. He says he can hold a strange
plant and it will communicate its secrets
to him, telling him how to use it in healing. He calls herbs his "helpers." The efficacy of his herbal remedies lies in his
knowledge of their spiritual properties,
he says. Those who have duplicated the
physical mixtures have found they do not
work.
Rolling Thunder's totem is an eagle
feather; a whole badger skin is his medicine bag. When "doctoring," as he calls
it, he assesses the patient's aura and mimics the behavior of a badger, sniffing and
growling. He often does not know what
"medicine" he will use until after the
process has begun; he simply lets the
Great Spirit work through him. Often he
sucks an illness, and vomits bile, pus, and
other foul-looking liquids after doing so.
Witnesses have reported seeing a purple
glow around his head and hands during
healing. At times he finds it necessary to
enter the spirit realm to heal, a process he
says must be done precisely or else it is
dangerous. What scientists call "paranormal phenomena" Native Americans call
the "other world," he says.
He undertakes a healing only when
directed to do so by the Great Spirit. Illnesses have a purpose, he says, and sometimes illness is a price that must be paid
for something else. To cure such an illness will only bring greater suffering to
the patient at a later time. He says he is
most effective in treating illnesses he himself has suffered first; yet he has performed impressive healings for illnesses
and conditions he has not had.

Rolling Thunder (h. 1915)

On one occasion he exorcised the

spirit of a young woman who had committed suicide, and which was possessing
the doctor who attempted to revive her
when he discovered her body.
Rolling Thunder's first significant
visit with a Western physician occurred in
1970 in California; the two compared
their practices. In 1971 he addressed
eighty scientists at the Third Interdisciplinary Conference on the Voluntary Control of Internal States, and led them in a
morning ritual. Other major appearances
include the Association for Research and
Enlightenment clinic in Virginia Beach,
Virginia.
Rolling Thunder accepts no fees for
healing, only small gifts of tobacco. He
earned his living as a brakeman for
Southern Pacific Railroad - where he was
known as John Pope-and worked as a
medicine man in his spare time. He
served as spiritual adviser to celebrities,
including Bob Dylan (who named the
Rolling Thunder Revue after him), the
Grateful Dead, Joan Baez, and Muhammad Ali. He played a role in the creation
of two Billy Jack movies.
After thirty-five years at the railroad,
Rolling Thunder retired in 1981. Since
then he travels extensively, speaking,
performing healings, and interpreting
dreams for others. Some patients experience dreams of him in advance of healings, which appear to be the initial part
of the healing. He lives in Carlin, Nevada. With his wife, Spotted Fawn (Helen
Pope), he had two sons, Buffalo Horse
and Spotted Eagle. See Healing, faith and
psychic; Shamanism.
Sources: Doug Boyd. Rolling Thunder.
New York: Random House, 1974; Stanley
Krippner and Alberto Villoldo. The Realms
of Healing. 3d ed. Berkeley, CA: Celestial
Arts, 1986; Shirley Nicholson, compo Shamanism. Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical
Publishing House, 1987; Jim Swan. "Rolling Thunder at Work." Shaman's Drum
no. 3 (Winter 1985): 39-44.

517

Rosenkreutz,

Christian

See Rosicrucians.

Rosicrucians
The Order of the Rosy Cross, or Rosicrucianism in its many forms, claims to
be the oldest secret society in the Western
world, dating back to the ancient Egyptian and Greek mystery schools. Primarily utopian and humanist, its ideals and
practices are essentially Christian with
strong beliefs in the Great White Brotherhood of Adepts and in reincarnation.

History
According to Harvey Spencer Lewis
(1883-1939), first Imperator and founder of the Ancient and Mystical Order
Rosae Crucis (AMORC) in the United
States, Rosicrucianism dates back to
1489 B.C., when the group of mystic
scholars-both men and women-studying under Pharaoh Thutmose III decided
to make their order secret, calling it simply the Order or Brotherhood. Succeeding pharaohs continued as Grand Masters through Amenhotep IV, great-greatgrandson of Thutmose III.
Amenhotep IV has been called a man
born out of his time (1388 B.c.-1350
B.C.). He made enemies of the priests, outlawing the worship of the principal Egyptian god Ammon and establishing one supreme deity. The pharaoh even changed
his name to Akhnaton, meaning "glory to
Aton," the sun-symbol of the one true
God, as Amenhotep meant "Ammon is
satisfied." He moved the capital city from
Thebes, sacred to Ammon, to a place
called Khut-en-Aton, also known as El
Amarna, where he supposedly built a
temple for the Brotherhood in the shape
of the cross. According to Lewis Akhnaton added the cross and rose as symbols
of the Brotherhood, adopted the crux an-

518

sata, or ankh, as the symbol of life, and

composed several prayers and chants still
used in Rosicrucian ceremonies.
But when Akhnaton died, AmmonRa was reinstated as the chief god, and
the Brotherhood fled to the temple at
El Amarna. Lewis reported that the 296
Fratres living there wore linen surplices
tied by a cord and shaved their heads in
a round spot on top-the origin of what
later became standard attire for Franciscan monks.
For the next several centuries, the
Brotherhood concentrated on preserving
the sacred truths of Akhnaton and passing the teachings on to worthy students
like King Solomon of Israel, Plotinus,
Pythagoras, Plato, Solon, and Ammonius
Saccas. The legendary Hermes Trismegistus supposedly served as Grand Master
after Akhnaton's death, living for 142
years. See Hermetica. Lewis traced Freemasonry back to Solomon's use of Rosicrucian teachings to build the temple.
This early period culminated in the life of
the Master Jesus Christ, whom Lewis
claimed had been expected by the Essenes, the Rosicrucians of Palestine.
Following the first few centuries after Christ, the Brotherhood seemed to disappear. Lewis said that the Order decreed
each Lodge to determine its year of foundation, and then to operate in cycles of 108
years of activity followed by 108 years of
secret inactivity, when operations went
underground. In the years immediately
preceding "rebirth," members would advertise through symbolic pamphlets, describing what they allegorically called
"opening the tomb to find the body of
C-R.C." (Chrisrus of the Rosy Cross).
But according to Lewis, the advent
of printing in the seventeenth century
blew the allegorical rebirth completely
out of proportion, giving rise to what
most scholars consider the "real" story of
Rosicrucianism: the discovery of the
long-dead body of Christian Rosenkreutz.

Rosenkreutz, Christian

The sources of the legend of Christian Rosenkreutz appeared mysteriously

in Kassel, Germany, in 1614 and 1615.
Circulated anonymously, the Fama Fraternitatis dess Loblichen Ordens des
Rosenkreutzes (The Fame of the Praiseworthy Order of the Rosy Cross) and the
Confessio Fraternitatis told of a mythic
young man called Christian Rosenkreutz,
born in A.D. 1378. At age five he was
placed in a convent to study the humanities, and at age sixteen accompanied one
of his teachers to Damcar (Damascus?) in
Arabia to continue his education. After
three years he went to Fez, Morocco, via
Egypt, where he learned even more
magic. Upon graduation Rosenkreutz
traveled to Spain, where he expected a
warm reception from the mystic Moors.
He was rebuffed, however, and eventually returned to Germany, where he gathered a small group of men who became
the Rosicrucian Fraternity.
The Fraternity built its headquarters,
called the Spiritus Sanctum, or House of
the Holy Spirit, in 1409, using it to teach
an ever-widening circle of occult adepts
and to heal the sick. One brother reputedly cured the English Earl of Norfolk of
leprosy. Rosenkreutz died in 1484, at 106
years of age, and was entombed in a secret vault in the Spiritus Sanctum. The
other brothers continued their missionary
work, but in secret.
In 1604, during repairs to the headquarters building, the brothers discovered
the vault. Across the door to the tomb
was the Latin inscription, "After 120
years I shall open." Inside the seven-sided
room were wonderful magical symbols,
books, and ritual objects, and the ceiling
was illuminated by an artificial sun. But
most amazing was the coffin containing
Rosenkreutz's body, completely preserved.
These wonders were described in the
above-mentioned pamphlets, along with
an open invitation to all worthy people
interested in the Rosicrucian phenome-

Rosicrucians

non to apply for membership. The brothers did not reveal their whereabouts, but
assured all petitioners .that printed inquiries would be answered.
In 1616 another anonymous pamphlet appeared, entitled, Chymische
Hochzeit, or The Chemical Marriage of
Christian Rosenkreutz, supposedly written by him in 1459. The story tells of a
royal wedding ceremony Rosenkreutz attended (not his own marriage); it is full of
occult imagery and alchemical propositions, including the creation of homunculi (artificial humans allegedly created
by magic).
These revelations created tremendous interest among the growing European occult community, and scores applied to the secret order. But no records
exist of anyone hearing from the brothers. Later scholars attribute the authorship of all three pamphlets to Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654), a young
German Lutheran pastor and reformer.
All three documents promoted Protestant
ethics and vilified the papacy. Apologies
for the works and silence of the Order
were written by the German count Michael Maier (1568-1622), counselor to
Emperor Rudolf II, and by the English
doctor Robert Fludd (1574-1637), both
believed to be at least dabblers in Rosicrucian philosophy; yet not one of the
three men ever admitted to membership
in the Order.
After the flurry of interest subsided,
little more was heard from the Fratres of
C-R.C. The movement blended into German Pietism, an offshoot of Lutheran
doctrine that sought perfection and the
expected return of Christ. In 1693 a
group of Pietists led by Johannes Kelpius
(1673-1708) left for Pennsylvania to accept William Penn's offer of religious
sanctuary. They arrived in Philadelphia in
1694, eventually settling farther west on
the banks of the Wissahickon River.
Staunchly millennialist and communal,
the group also practiced occult and heal-

519

ing arts. After Kelpius's death they disbanded, bur are remembered as originators of the Pennsylvania hex tradition.
Lewis maintained they brought Rosicrucianism to America.
In the early eighteenth century, various authors published several books and
manifestos claiming existence of the
Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross and outlined the Order's beliefs and practices. In
nearly all cases these publications are actually treatises for political and religious
reform, championing such causes as the
free dissemination of knowledge, universal brotherhood, support of the arts, and
the reorganization of the warring countries of Europe into one idealized commonwealth. Others-with
guilty consciences, perhaps-took the attacks as the
revenge of the martyred Templars, returned to exact punishment on the descendants and institutions that had murdered them. See Order of the Knights
Templar.
Symbols

and Beliefs

Rosicrucian ideals have changed little from those early manifestos. Through
study and practice, members still strive
for the perfection illustrated by the Masters of the Great White Lodge, with the
ultimate goal being admittance into the
Lodge and the attainment of true knowledge, or cosmic consciousness. Students
progress through twelve degrees of mastery, with the tenth through twelfth degrees conferred psychically, usually in the
Order's temples in the East. Worthy
members who have mastered nine degrees
may choose to enter the Illuminati, a
higher organization of the Order. See llluminati.
Similar to the Theosophists, such
perfection comes only after various reincarnations, each devoted to achieving a
greater oneness with the Supreme Being.
Lewis insisted that Rosicrucians do not
force members to believe in reincarnation, but that the examples of their daily

520

lives and continual progression to knowledge would prove the point.

Rosicrucians have always been associated with alchemy, concerned on a
mundane level with the transmutation of
base metals into gold and on a spiritual
level with the transmutation of humankind's baser nature into a higher spiritual
being. See Alchemy. Members stress
healthful living, with abstinence from
meat, alcohol, and tobacco. Such measures ensure prevention of disease and allow the body to heal itself, aided perhaps
by the "Invisible Helpers" of the Rosicrucian Fellowship.
Rosicrucians claim influence on
Freemasonry, especially since the eighteenth Masonic degree is the Sovereign
Prince Rose Croix of Heredom. Several of
the Rosicrucian groups formed in the
nineteenth century restrict membership to
Masons and incorporate Rosicrucian
symbols. See Freemasonry.
All Rosicrucian organizations employ the rose and cross, although in various combinations. The Rosicrucian Fellowship places a gold cross with looped
ends over a five-pointed star made of
rays; the background color is blue.
Draped around the cross are seven red
roses, sometimes shown climbing the
cross and sometimes gathered in a wreath
around it.
The symbol of AMORC shows one
red rose centered on a gold cross, also
with looped ends. Occasionally, the rose
has a green stem for decoration. AMORC
also uses an equilateral triangle, point
down, inscribed with a cross. AMORC
registered both these symbols with the
United States Patent Office as the only
true Rosicrucian symbols.
Symbolically, the cross represents
death, suffering, and ultimately resurrection. AMORC employs the crux ansata,
or ankh, as representative of reincarnation. The rose has always signified love
and secrecy. In Greek mythology Eros,
the god of love, gave a rose to the god of
silence. Signs for Roman taverns usually

Rosicrucians

showed a rose signifying that anything

said "below the rose" (sub rosa) in
drunkenness would remain confidential.
Additionally, Andreae's family crest was
a cross of St. Andrew with four roses between the arms, while that of his mentor
Martin Luther was a rose with a cross in
the center.

Rosicrucian Organizations
AMORC, founded by H. S. Lewis,
had its beginnings as the Rosicrucian Research Society or the New York Institute
for Psychical Research in 1904. In 1908
Lewis met Mrs. May Banks-Stacey, a reputed Rosicrucian who put him in touch
with the Brotherhood in Europe. Lewis
traveled to France in 1909, where he
claimed he was initiated into the Order
and given the authority to "open the
tomb of C-R.C." in America for its next
108-year cycle of activity. AMORC was
officially chartered in 1915 and held its
first national convention in 1917.
At the 1917 convention, Lewis organized the National Rosicrucian Lodge,
whereby wisdom-seekers could obtain the
elementary teachings through correspondence, with the hope of eventually
joining a Lodge. By 1926 Lewis petitioned a Rosicrucian Congress in Belgium
to allow students unable to join a Lodge
to continue their instruction via correspondence and become part of the Sanctum, or "Lodge at home." Such accommodations allowed Ai\10RC to distribute
materials worldwide. Currently, the Order claims approximately 250,000 members in over one hundred countries.
Lewis's son, Ralph M. Lewis, succeeded
him as Imperator.
In 1927 Lewis moved the Order's
headquarters to San Jose, California,
where it remains today. The Grand Lodge
at Rosicrucian Park has become a tourist
attraction, as the headquarters buildings
include a planetarium, research facilities,
and the Egyptian Museum. Reportedly

Rosicrucians

the only Egyptian museum in the world

housed in authentic ancient Egyptian architecture, it contains the largest collection of Egyptian, Babylonian, and Assyrian artifacts on the West Coast.
Max Heindel (1865-1919) founded
the Rosicrucian Fellowship in 1909. Born
in Denmark as Carl Louis Von Grasshoff,
Heindel's spiritual searchings led him
first to the Theosophical Society, then to
Germany in 1907, where he claimed the
Elder Brothers of the Rosicrucian Order
appeared to him and initiated him into
their mysteries. He studied under an approved Rosicrucian adept, believed to be
Rudolf Steiner of the Anthroposophical
Society. Returning to the United States,
he wrote of his experiences in The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception and began
opening Rosicrucian centers on the West
Coast. In 1910, while recuperating from
heart disease, he received a vision of the
Fellowship's headquarters on Mt. Ecclesia in Oceanside, California, where the
group remains. Facilities include a temple
for services and a twelve-sided Temple of
Healing, built to correspond to the zodiac.
Members of the Fellowship are actively engaged in spiritual healing and astrology, although they do not cast horoscopes for outsiders. They believe in
reincarnation and the influence of the
planets on life.
Other Rosicrucian organizations include two limited strictly to Freemasons:
the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia,
founded in 1866 by Robert Wentworth
Little; and the Societas Rosicruciana in
Civitatibus Foederatis, originally called
the Societas Rosicruciana Republicae
Americae, founded in 1878 as an affiliate
of the Scottish branch of the Societas
Rosicruciana. Members must be Masons
of the thirty-second degree. The Societas
Rosicruciana in Anglia counted Kenneth
MacKenzie, author of the Royal Masonic
Cyclopedia, and coroner Dr. William
Wynn Westcott and Samuel Liddell
MacGregor Mathers, founders of the

521

Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as

members.
The Societas Rosicruciana in America, founded in 1907 by Sylvester C.
Gould, accepts non-Masons,
as does the
Fraternitas
Rosae Crucis, reputedly the
oldest Rosicrucian
group in the United
States. Founded in 1858 by Pascal Beverly Randolph
(1825-1875),
the group
traces its lineage to the French occultist
Eliphas Levi. After Randolph's
death,
leadership passed to Edward H. Brown,
then Reuben Swinburne Clymer, a physiCIan.
Coupling the teachings
of Rudolf
Steiner and Max Heindel, S. R. Parchment founded the Rosicrucian
Anthroposophic League in the 1930s. J. Van
Rijckenborgh
founded
the Lectorium
Rosicrucianum in 1971, espousing "transfigurism" - giving up one's life to God in
order to escape the cycles of karma and
reincarnation.
Also starting in the 1970s
was the Ausar Auset Society, founded
by R. A. Straughn of the Rosicrucian
Anthroposophic
League. The AfricanAmerican community is the main audience of Straughn's meditation and health
guides.
Sources: Richard Cavendish. The Encyclopedia of the Unexplained.
New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1974; Keith Crim, gen. ed.
Abingdon Dictionary of Living Religions.
Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1981;
Manly P. Hall. Masonic Orders of Fraternity. Los Angeles: The Philosophical Research Society, 1950; Manly P. Hall. Orders of Universal Reformation:
Utopias.
Los Angeles: The Philosophical Research
Society, 1949; Manly P. Hall. The Secret
Destiny of America. Los Angeles: The Philosophical Research Society, 1944; Max
Heindel. The Rosicrucian Mysteries. 8th
ed. Oceanside, CA: The Rosicrucian Fellowship, 1943; H. Spencer Lewis. Rosicrucian Manual. San Jose, CA: Rosicrucian
Press, 1918; H. Spencer Lewis. Rosicrucian
Questions and Answers with Complete
History of the Order. 1929. San Jose, CA:
Supreme Grand Lodge of AMORC, 1977;

522

Christopher McIntosh. "The Rosicrucian

Dream." Gnosis no. 6 (Winter 1988): 1417; J. Gordon Melton. Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America. New York and
London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1986;
The New Age Catalog. New York: Dolphin/Doubleday,
1988; S. R. Parchment.
Operative Masonry. San Francisco: San
Francisco Center, Rosicrucian Fellowship,
1930; "The Rosicrucian Emblem." Pamphlet. The Rosicrucian Fellowship, Oceanside, CA; "The Rosicrucians
Heal the
Sick." Pamphlet. The Rosicrucian Fellowship, Oceanside, CA; Leslie A. Shepard, ed.
Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. 2d ed. Detroit: Gale Research Co.,
1984; Lewis Spence. Encyclopedia of Occultism. 1920. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press,
1960.

Runes
Ancient Norse and Teutonic alphabet sigils, ascribed various magical, mystical,
and divinatory properties. Various alphabets have been handed down through the
centuries;
individual runes have represented letters, deities, qualities, events,
and forces of nature. Runic inscriptions
surviving from the pagan period always
have a religious significance. The term
"rune" comes from the Indo-European
root ru, which means "mystery" or "secret."
Runic symbols have been discovered
in rock carvings dating back to the prehistoric Neolithic and Bronze Ages (c.
8000 B.c.-2000
B.C.), carved by tribes
that settled in Northern Italy. Rock carvings from the second Bronze Age, c. 1300
B.C., are common throughout Sweden. By
A.D. 100 runes were in widespread
use in
Nordic and Germanic lands. According
to myth they were created by Odin (also
Woden), god of wisdom, war, and death.
Odin
sacrificed
himself
by hanging,
pierced by a spear, upon Yggradsil, the
World Tree, for nine days and nights, in
order to gain secret wisdom. In Havamal
138, a mythological poem of the Viking

Rosicrucians

Age (A.D. 700-1050), Odin took up the

runes, lifted them screaming, and fell
back again.
The magical powers attributed runes
were believed to be released in the etching
of names, phrases, memorial inscriptions,
and spells upon bone, metal, wood, and
stone. Grave markers were inscribed with
runes that described the deeds of the
dead, and warded off grave robbers. Diviners used runes in the casting of lots.
Runes were carved on swords to make
them more powerful in battle, and to
cause more pain and death to the enemy.
Magicians etched them on magical tools,
sometimes sprinkling them with blood to
make the magic more potent. Runes were
etched as amulets on wands, jewelry, personal belongings, chalices, and other
items as protection against illness, the evil
eye, and sorcery, and to guarantee safety
and effect healing. They also were used in
weather rites and fertility, birth, and
death rites. Lappish tjetajat, or wizards,
shouted and sang runes. Runes also were
used to seal contracts, and in the writing
of poetry.
The Viking invaders spread runes
throughout Europe, Russia, and Britain;
rune usage was at its height during the
Dark Ages. In Britain the runic alphabet
was called futhorc, because the first letters were F, U, TH, 0, R, and K. The
earliest version of the futhorc alphabet
had twenty-four letters divided into three
groups of eight. The groups were named
after Norse deities: Freya, Hagal, and
Tiu. Runes coexisted for centuries with
Christian symbols such as the cross. They
began to disappear from usage around
the fourteenth century, when the church
began an earnest campaign against paganism through the Inquisition.
In the late nineteenth century, German occultists revived interest in runes,
which became associated with Teutonic
superiority and racial supremacy. The
"secret chiefs" of the Germanen Order, a
runic society founded in 1912, signed

Ryerson,

Kevin

their names in runes. Herman Pohl Magdeburg, the order's first chancellor, sold
amuletic bronze rune rings to soldiers in
World War I as protection in battle. Another occultist, 5eigfried Adolf Kunner,
reached the extreme of rune mania with
the creation of rune exercises, yoga-like
postures that mimicked rune shapes.
While contorting, the student was supposed to yodel, which would release mysterious, magical forces. Kunner also advocated meditating upon runes to cure
illness.
The Nazis perhaps ruined forever
two runes: the swastika, originally Thor's
hammer and the symbol of the Earth
Mother and the sun; and the 5 sigil, used
by the 55.
Runes were popularized as an oracle
in the 1980s. Rune tiles are drawn from
bags and meditated upon, cast in lots like
the I Ching, or laid out in crosses or
wheels like Tarot cards. Like the I Ching
and Tarot, runes do not provide answers,
but provide the means to answers; they
are considered keys to self-transformation. Like Tarot cards runes can be used
as meditational tools.
Sources: Ralph Blum. The Book of Runes.

New York:
Press, 1987;
Van Nuys,
1987; Ralph

Oracle Books, 5t. Martin's

Dean Dolphin. Rune Magic.
CA: Newcastle Publishing,
W. V. Elliott. Runes: An Introduction.
Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1959; Michael
Howard. The Magic of the Runes. Wellingborough, England: The Aquarian Press,
1980; Michael Loewe and Carmen Blacker.
Oracles and Divination. Boulder: Shambhala, 1981; New Larousse Encyclopedia
of Mythology. New ed. New York: Crescent Books, 1968; Dusty Sklar. Gods and
Beasts: The Nazis and the Occult. New
York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1977; Doreen
Valiente. An ABC of Witchcraft Past and
Present. Amended ed. Custer, WA: Phoenix
Publishing, 1986.

Ryerson, Kevin
5ee Channeling.

523

s
Sacred pipe
A long-stemmed, elaborately decorated
pipe sacred to Plains and Woodlands Native Americans. In ritual tobacco smoke
from the pipe is the equivalent of visible
breath or incense; it is both offering to
the spirits and forces of nature, and
means of communication with them.
Smoking a sacred pipe also is a means to
having a spiritual vision.
The sacred pipe also is called a "calumet," from the French chalumet, which
means "a reed." The name was given by
white settlers in North America to ceremonial pipes whose stems were hollow
reeds. Early calumets were made of two
separate pieces, a bowl carved of clay or
stone, sometimes in the effigy of a bird,
man, or animal, and a stem of reed, decorated with eagle feathers and symbols.
Some calumets were enormous: The
bowls were so large they had to be placed
on the ground, and the stems reached up
to four feet in length. The smoker squatted on the ground to hold the stem. Such
calumets eventually gave way to shorter
long-stemmed pipes, which were stored
in separate pieces but fitted together for
smoking. They were held in forked sticks
stuck in the ground.
According to myth the sacred pipe
originated with the Pawnee and spread to
other Plains and Woodlands tribes. The
Pawnee and other tribes attribute the
original sacred pipe to White Buffalo Calf

524

Maiden, a representative of the Great Spirit. White Buffalo Calf Maiden appeared
one winter long ago and delivered seven
gifts, the first of which was the pipe. She
said the bowl of the pipe, carved in the
likeness of a buffalo calf, represented the
Earth and all the four-legged creatures
who walked upon her. The wooden stem
represented all that grows upon the
Earth. The decorative eagle feathers represented all the winged creatures. By
smoking the pipe, humankind would join
its voice with all these other beings in addressing the Great Spirit.
White Buffalo Calf Maiden's other
six gifts were rites in which the sacred
pipe was to be used: purifying the souls
of the dead; purification in sweat lodges;
having visions; dancing the Sun Dance;
peacemaking; initiating girls into womanhood; and playing a ball game that symbolizes human life.
Other mythical givers of the first
pipe are Duck (Arapahoe), Thunder
(Blackfoot), and the prophet Sweet Medicine (Cheyenne).
Sacred pipes are used in a wide variety of clan, society, social, council, and
personal affairs; decorations reflect the
function. Pipes are used in pipe dances,
in which dancers dance with decorated stems, or offer their whole pipes to
other dancers or spectators. See Sun
Dance.
The use of sacred pipes has had a
revival among many North American

Sacred pipe

tribes, even those which traditionally did

not use them. See Tobacco.
Sources: Joseph Epes Brown, ed. The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven
Rites of the Oglala Sioux. Harmonds-

worth, Middlesex, England: Penguin

Books, 1953; John Redtail Freesoul. Breath
of the Invisible:

The

Way of the Pipe.

Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing

House, 1986; Ruth M. Underhill. Red
Man's Religion. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1965; Museum of the American Indian, New York City.
Sai Baba

Sacred psychology
See Psychology.

Sadhu
See Fakir.

Sai Baba (b. 1926)

Hindu avatar whose alleged miraculous
and paranormal feats have attracted a
large following of devotees, in both East
and West. Sai Baba is renowned for his
healing; for materializations of an incredible array of apports that include hot
foods and liquids; and for bilocation,
teleportation,
levitation, precognition,
and luminous phenomena. He has been
the object of limited study by Western
psychical researchers, who have been unable to prove the validity of his paranormal feats, but have not uncovered any evidence of fraud.
Sai Baba was born on November 23,
1926, in Puttaparti, a remote village in
southern India, north of Bangalore, to the
Venkappa Ratnakara family, members of
the low Raju caste. His father was a
farmer. The boy's full name was Sathyanarayana (Sathya means "truth" and
Narayana is a name for God) Ratnakara
Raju. His miraculous gifts began mani-

Sai Baba (b. 1926)

festing during his teens. On March 8,

1940, he allegedly was stung by a black
scorpion - although none was ever discovered-and
lapsed into unconsciousness for several hours. From then on he
exhibited strange behavior and seemed to
be a different person. He would fall into
trances from which he could not be
roused, and would offer spontaneous discourses on ancient Hindu philosophy. He
would suddenly sing and recite poetry.
On May 23, 1940, he left school. He announced to his family that he was Sai
Baba reborn, and presented them with
apports of flowers, sugar candy, and rice
cooked in milk, which he seemed to materialize with a wave of his hand. Thereafter the boy called himself Sathya Sai
Baba.
Sai is a Muslim term for "saint," and
baba is a Hindi term of respect for "father." The original Sai Baba was a
middle-class Brahmin fakir at the turn of
the century, who had settled in Shirdi,
about 120 miles northeast of Bombay,
and had produced astO'unding miracles.
Sathya Sai Baba quickly attracted
followers who were amazed by his miracles and charmed by his personality, but
many rejected and criticized him. He was
virtually ostracized in Puttaparti. Swamis
and avatars traditionally come from the
Brahmin caste, and a low-caste Raju boy

525

was thought to have no business attempting to be a man of God. Sai Baba nevertheless predicted that one day he would
be surrounded by huge crowds of followers. By the 1970s that prediction had
borne out. Thousands of people regularly
camp outside his ashram, Prashanti
Nilayam ("Abode of Great Peace") in
Puttaparti, hoping to get a glimpse of
him, receive an apport, obtain an interview, touch him, or listen to a sermon.
Sai Baba's Sathya Sai Educational Trust
runs five colleges established in India as
of 1986, including a boys' college in Brindavan, his second home, an estate near
Whitefield, about fifteen miles south of
Bangalore (according to legend, Krishna
had lived in a "Brindavan").
Sai Baba is best known for his apports; some 75 percent of his devotees
claim to have seen or received them. He
produces a steady stream of apports with
a wave of his hand. They include huge
quantities of vibuti, holy ash made from
burnt cow dung, which is smeared on the
body; foods and liquids; religious statues
and objects made of gold; precious jewelry; photographs; business cards; even
stamps bearing his likeness, which have
not been officially issued by the government. He reportedly fills empty bowls
with hot, steaming Indian food of most
unusual flavors, and produces enough to
feed hundreds of people at a time. He
opens his fist and drops sticky sweets into
the palms of others, yet his own hands
are dry. He also produces amrith, a
honey-like substance. On outings to the
nearby Chitravati River, he has reached
into sand and pulled out food free of
sand. He has plucked apples, pomegranates, mangoes, and other fruits from a
tamarind tree. All nonfood objects materialized are bright, fresh, and new. Jewelry includes valuable precious gems.
Rings requested by followers fit them perfectly; if a person does not like a particular ring, Sai Baba takes it back and
changes it instantly. Business cards bear-

526

ing his name appear to be freshly printed.

Many objects are inscribed with his
name.
In his earlier days, he frequently fell
into sudden, often convulsive trances,
which lasted up to one-and-a-half days,
and during which his body would be very
cold to the touch. His explanation was
that he had been called to another, often
distant location to help people in distress
or illness. In these other locations, he reportedly appeared as if in the flesh. If he
had gone out of body to heal, he sometimes would return showing symptoms of
the illness. In one reported instance during a trance, Sai Baba levitated. While in
the air, the sole of his right foot split
open, and an estimated two kilograms of
vibuti poured out. In another trance incident, he opened his mouth and out fell
vibuti and golden plates a half-inch in
width. One of the plates was inscribed in
Telugu, "Sri Rama."
Sai Baba also would appear to teleport himself up a hill, disappearing at its
base and appearing at the top of the hill
within seconds. From the hilltop he
would produce luminosities so brilliant
and blinding that others had to shade
their eyes. Some witnesses collapsed from
the brightness.
Other phenomena attributed to him
include the instant changing of the color
of his loose robes; his appearance in the
dreams of others, seemingly in answer to
needs; weather control; unusual smells,
often produced at a distance; the appearance of vibuti and amrith on pictures of
him and on his apports; psychic surgery;
the changing of water into gasoline and
into other beverages; mind reading; and
clairvoyance. Some of those who touched
him experienced a mild electrical shock.
Once he was found to have a nest of scorpions living in his bushy hair. During his
early days, he forbade photographs and
films to be taken of him. Those who attempted to do so surreptitiously found
their film to be blank when developed.

Sai Baba (b. 1926)

From the 1950s to 1970s, Sai Baba

had numerous opponents. A government
investigation of him was proposed, but
never undertaken. By the early 1970s, the
criticism abated. At the same time, Sai
Baba grew more serious and moody. He
began to perform fewer miracles and
spend more time preaching about the love
of God.
In 1973 Erlendur Haraldsson, a psychologist from the University of Iceland
and a psychical researcher, began an investigation of Sai Baba's paranormal phenomena that spanned a ten-year period.
He made a number of trips to India to
interview Sai Baba, his devotees, and critics. Haraldsson was accompanied on several trips by Karlis Osis, who at that time
was with the American Society for Psychical Research; once by Dr. Michael
Thalbourne of Washington University;
and once by Dr. JooP Houtkooper of the
University of Amsterdam.
Sai Baba refused to submit to controlled experiments to test his psi abilities, thus making it impossible to obtain
proof. He explained that his powers come
from God, and that he produces apports
from the superconscious by imagining
them first, and transporting them from an
unspecified place where they already exist. While observed by the scientists, Sai
Baba produced an estimated twenty to
forty apports a day, all spontaneously
and with great ease. Many of the objects
were rare or unusual, such as a double
rudraksha, an acorn-like nut grown together like Siamese twins, but none were
otherwordly. Sleight of hand seemed
highly unlikely, for the sleeves of his
robes were large and loose. Haraldsson
also ruled out hypnosis, and found films
of Sai Baba to be inconclusive.
Once Haraldsson and Osis were able
to closely observe the materialization of
vibuti. Sai Baba spread his hand with the
palm down and waved it in quick, small
circles. A gray substance appeared in the
air just below and close to his palm. He

Saint Germain

closed his fist around it and then opened

it to pour sand-like granules into the
open hands of his devotees. The granules
turned into fine, delicate ash.
In his research Haraldsson found
that Sai Baba's precognitive predictions
are not always accurate (one observer estimated a 50 percent "hit" rate), and that
not all of his cures work. A number of
prominent Indian scientists have observed
Sai Baba and feel his miraculous feats are
genuine. His followers believe he is God.
Sai Baba has predicted he will die in 2020
at the age of ninety"four. See Avatar.
Sources: Erlendur Haraldsson. Modern
Miracles: An Investigative Report on Psychic Phenomena Associated with Sathya Sai
Baba. New York: Fawcett Columbine,
1987; N. Kasturi. Sai Baba. Bombay, India:

Sanathana Sarathi, 1969; Howard Murphet. Sai Baba: Man of Miracles. New
York: Samuel Weiser, 1976; Samuel H.
Sandweiss. Sai Baba: The Holy Man and
the Psychiatrist. San Diego, CA: Birth Day
Publishing, 1975; Arthur Schulman. Baba.
New York: Viking Press, 1971.

Saint Germain
Ascended Master considered by some the
greatest adept since Jesus Christ. As part
of the Great White Brotherhood of adepts, Saint Germain protects the wisdom
of the ages, only revealing it and himself
to those he completely trusts. He administers the Seventh Ray in the theosophical
universe, controlling ceremony and ritual.
According to legend Saint Germain's
first stay among humankind supposedly
occurred more than 50,000 years ago, in
a paradise located where the Sahara Desert is today. He led his people in the
knowledge that they were part of the
great cosmic Source, represented by the
Violet Flame Temple, of which Saint Germain was high priest. But some people
were tempted by the pleasures of the
senses, and he withdrew, leaving them to
their fates.

527

He next appeared in 1050 B.C. as

Samuel, prophet of the Lord Jehovah. He
anointed Saul as leader of the tribes
against the Philistines, but denied Saul
when he disobeyed the Lord. Samuel then
anointed David king of all the Israelites
and the beginning of the Messiah's line.
Saint Germain himself allegedly returned
as Joseph, Mary's husband and father of
the infant Jesus.
In the third century A.D., Saint Germain supposedly returned as St. Alban,
the first Christian martyr in Britain. Converted to Christianity by the monk Amphibalus, he hid the holy man during the
persecutions of Christians under the Roman Emperor Diocletian. For refusing to
give up Amphibalus and renounce his
faith, St. Alban was beheaded in 303.
After an incarnation as Proclus
(410-485), head of Plato's Academy in
Athens, Saint Germain returned to Britain in the late fifth century as Merlin,
wizard extraordinaire and counselor to
the legendary King Arthur of Camelot.
See Merlin.
Saint Germain supposedly returned
in the thirteenth century as Roger Bacon
(1214-1294?), English monk, philosopher, alchemist, and scientist. Years
ahead of other medieval thinkers, Bacon
believed the world was round and is credited with foreseeing such inventions as
hot air balloons, flying machines, spectacles, telescopes, elevators, and machinedriven cars and ships. Many believe he
invented gunpowder. Although his three
major books, Opus majus, Opus minor,
and Opus tertium were written for Pope
Clement I, his fellow Franciscans decided
his beliefs were heretical and kept him in
solitary confinement for fourteen years,
only releasing him shortly before his
death.
In 1451 Saint Germain is said to
have again walked on Earth as Christopher Columbus, founder of the New
World. Roger Bacon, in his Opus majus,
had earlier predicted that India could be

528

reached by water from the west of Spain,

and Columbus wrote that he was merely
fulfilling a prophecy when he set sail under the aegis of King Ferdinand and
Queen Isabella. After first landing in
1492, Columbus became governor of
Hispaniola and eventually discovered
Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. He
died in neglect in 1506, supposedly at the
hands of unhappy natives in Central
America.
Saint Germain's next life was sup~
posedly that of Sir Francis Bacon (15611626), English essayist, philosopher,
statesman, and occultist. He is best remembered as the father of scientific inductive reasoning as opposed to the
medieval scholastic method. Bacon, reportedly a Freemason and perhaps also a
Rosicrucian, dabbled in occultism and alchemy. He served as the guiding inspiration for the Royal Society of London, a
group dedicated to the pursuit of science
and knowledge. Controversy still exists
over whether Bacon wrote the Shakespearean dramas. One theory claims Bacon was the son of Queen Elizabeth I and
Robert Dudley, Lord Leicester.
Sir Francis Bacon was supposed to
be Saint Germain's last incarnation, and
believers claim he ascended as Master on
May 1, 1684. But begging one last chance
to show humankind the error of its ways,
Saint Germain returned as the Comte
(Count) de St. Germain to the glittering
courts of eighteenth-century France and
Germany. Contemporaries called him
"the Wonderman of Europe."
The Comte once told a countess that
he was a mature man at the turn of the
eighteenth century, although many accounts estimate his birth in 1710. He is
rumored variously to be the third son of
Prince Ferenc Rakoczy II of Hungary, or
a Portuguese Jew. Although the Comte
cut quite a figure in court, he was not
particularly handsome. He dressed well
and wore diamonds on every finger. He
supposedly spoke (and wrote) Greek,

Saint Germain

Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic, Chinese, French,

German, English, Italian, Portuguese, and
Spanish fluently and without accent. He
collected fine art and jewels, played violin
and harpsichord, painted, and displayed
keen alchemical knowledge, reportedly
transmuting base metal into gold. He was
a canny statesman, traveling Europe for
both Frederick the Great of Prussia and
Louis XV of France.
Many critics called the Comte a spy,
and there is little doubt that he was
working for Frederick at the same time he
represented Louis XV. Ministers to Louis
finally called the Comte's bluff when he
attempted to negotiate a peace between
England and France without consulting
anyone. Henry Walpole wrote that the
Comte lived and worked in London for a
few years, and was eventually arrested as
a Jacobite in 1743. In 1762 he supposedly helped put Catherine the Great on
the Russian throne. Through prophecy
the Comte tried to warn Louis XVI and
Marie Antoinette of the coming revolution, but his pleadings went unheeded.
Even after his death, in 1785 or 1786, the
Comte allegedly appeared to members of
the French court to warn them of the
royal family's death and destruction.
The Comte is not remembered for
his political maneuverings as much as his
practice of the occult. According to philosopher Manly P. Hall, the Comte was
likely a Templar, trying to bring back the
Templar tradition through Rosicrucian
and Freemasonic societies under cover of
his diplomatic missions. The eighteenthcentury intelligentsia were fascinated
with anything esoteric, and the Comte
knew how to play that role with flourish.
He lived the latter part of his life at a
residence provided him by the Landgrave
Karl of Hesse to be dedicated to the study
of the occult. See Order of the Knights
Templar.
The house was the scene of many ritualistic ceremonies, including the initiation of the Count and Countess di Ca-

Saint Germain

gliostro into the Lodge of Illuminists.

According to Cagliostro's memoirs (attributed to someone else), the Comte, resplendent in diamonds, received them at
an altar covered with thousands of candles and flanked with acolytes holding
bowls of perfume. Cagliostro studied under the Comte and eventually introduced
what he called Egyptian rites of Freemasonry to France. See Cagliostro, Count
Alessandro.
The Comte's last recorded appearance was supposedly in 1822, about forty
years after his probable death. He had
told friends years earlier that he would
retire to the Himalayas, home of many of
the Ascended Masters. From there Saint
Germain reportedly helped found the
Theosophical Society with the Masters
Morya and Koot Hoomi and Madame
Helena P. Blavatsky in 1875. Blavatsky
called Saint Germain the greatest Oriental Adept in Europe. See Theosophy.
In 1930 Saint Germain is said to
have appeared again to Guy Ballard, a
miner and Spiritualist, who, with his wife
and son, founded the "I AM" Religious
Activity movement. See "I AM" Religious Activity, the.
Another group claiming to be in contact with Saint Germain is the Church
Universal and Triumphant, founded in
the 1960s by Mark L. and Elizabeth
Clare Prophet. Both groups strive to
achieve spiritual union with the divine 1
AM Presence and to disseminate Saint
Germain's teachings and prophecies
about universal wisdom, the world's
karma, and what each believer must do
to bring about the Seventh Golden Age
on earth. See Alternative religious movements; Freemasonry; Rosicrucians.
Sources: Bruce F. Campbell. Ancient Wisdom Revived: A History of the Theosophical Movement. Berkeley: University of Cal-

ifornia

Press,

1980;

Robert

Ellwood.

Theosophy: A Modern Expression of the

Wisdom of the Ages. Wheaton, IL: The

Theosophical

Publishing House,

1986;

529

Manly P. Hall. Freemasonry of the Ancient

Egyptians. 1937. Los Angeles: The Philosophical Research Society Inc., 1973;
Manly P. Hall. Masonic Orders of Fraternity. Los Angeles: The Philosophical Research Society Inc., 1950; J. Gordon Melton. Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in
America. New York: Garland Publishing
Inc., 1986; Saint Germain on Alchemy. Recorded by Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth
Clare Prophet. Livingston, MT: Summit
University Press, 1962; Saint Germain on
Prophecy. Recorded by Elizabeth Clare
Prophet. Livingston, MT: Summit University Press, 1986; Kurt Seligmann. The History of Magic and the Occult. New York:
Pantheon Books, 1948; Lewis Spence. The
Encyclopedia of the Occult. Reprint. London: Bracken Books, 1988.

Samadhi
See Meditation;
Yoga; Zen.

Mystical

experiences;

Sankara
See Hinduism.

Santeria
Syncretic religion based on ancient African rites and Catholicism. Santeria is related in ritual and practice to Vodoun.
"SanterIa" comes from the Spanish word
santo, meaning "saint." Practitioners are
called santeros and san teras. Yoruba is
the liturgical language.
Like Vodoun, Santeria came to the
Americas with West African slaves, principally from the Yoruban tribes along the
Niger River. Forced to convert to Catholicism, the slaves practiced their religion in
secret, using Catholic saints as covers for
their own gods and blending the two religions. The Spanish and Portuguese masters eventually became fascinated with
Yoruban magic and began to practice it
themselves. Santeria today is practiced

530

predominantly in US cities with large Hispanic populations; in the Caribbean; and

in Brazil under the names of Candomble,
Umbanda, and Quimbanda. See Macumba.

The Orishas
In the Yoruban language, orisha literally means "head-calabash" and is the
term for god. The orishas are archetypal
forces and are the equivalent of the
Vodoun loa and the Greek megaloi theoi.
According to Yoruban wisdom, a person
"chooses a head" at birth, that is, one is
furnished with a bit of cosmic essence.
The essence manifests in the forces and
world of nature, which are embodied by
the orishas. Like the loa, the orishas exhibit complex human personalities, with
strong desires, preferences, temperaments, and various sexual orientations.
When the orishas possess their "children," the devotees assume their personalities, performing feats of superhuman
strength, eating and drinking huge quantities of food and alcohol, and divining
the future with great accuracy.
The oldest ancestor and the first orisha is Obatala, the father of the gods.
Santeros, like Vodounists, believe in a supreme being as creator, but he is incomprehensible and too remote for daily worship. Obatala is personified as a white
man dressed in white and on horseback.
He represents peace and purity. Oddudua, his wife, is a black woman usually
depicted breastfeeding an infant and represents maternity. According to myth
ObataJa and Oddudua had two children,
a son Aganyu and a daughter Yemaya.
Aganyu and Yemaya married and had a
son, Orungan. Orungan was supposedly
so handsome that Aganyu died from
envy. When he matured Orungan forced
himself on his mother, who then cursed
him and he died. Yemaya, depicted as a
beautiful yellow-skinned woman and the
goddess of the moon and womanhood,

Saint Germain

then climbed to the top of a mountain

where she died from sorrow. Just before
her death, she gave birth to fourteen orishas. The waters released when her abdomen burst caused the flood, and the
place where she died became the holy city
of Ile Ife, the same sacred place worshiped in Vodoun.
Second in power to Obatala is Eleggua, the counterpart of Legba in Vodoun.
Eleggua is the god of entryways, doors,
and roads, who allows the other oris has
to come to earth. All homes keep an image of Eleggua behind the door. Another
important orisha is Oninla, who owns
the Table of Ifa, the sacred system of divination.
Each of the orishas appears in many
manifestation,. and only a priest knows
what orisha to invoke. Saints identified
with the orishas mayor may not be of the
same gender. Santeros explain that after
the gods' mystical deaths, they were reincarnated in new bodies. A partial list of
the saints and their corresponding orishas
is as follows: Olorun/Olofi, God the Creator (the Crucified Christ); Obatala (Our
Lady of Mercy); Oddudua (Saint Claire);
Aganyu (Saint Joseph); Yemaya (Our
Lady of RegIa); Orungan (the Infant Jesus); Chango (Saint Barbara); Oya (Our
Lady of La Candelaria, also Saint Theresa
and Saint Catherine); Oshun (Our Lady
of La Caridad del Cobre); Ochosi (Saint
Isidro); Dada (Our Lady of Mount Carmel); Ochumare (Our Lady of Hope);
Oggun (Saint Peter, Saint Anthony, or
Joan of Arc); Babalu-Aye (Saint Lazarus);
Eleggua (the Holy Guardian Angel, Saint
Michael, Saint Martin de Porres, and
Saint Peter); Orunla (Saint Francis of Assisi); Ifa (Saint Anthony of Padua); Bacoso (Saint Christopher).

Rites and Practices

Although all worshipers of Santeria
may be called santeros, the term often refers to the priests or priestesses. The high-

Santeria

est order of priest is the omnipotent babalawo ("father of secrets"), who has
power not only to heal the sick and punish the unjust but to divine the future
through the Table of Ifa. All babalawos
are male, since Orunla, the guardian of
the Table, is male. Within the order of
babalawo are various degrees, ranging
from high priest to the one responsible
for a particular orisha's sacrifice. Following the babalawos are the priests of orishas who govern the sick or healing; and
the priests or priestesses of Orisha-Oko,
the god of agriculture. Priests consecrated
to lesser oris has or human deities also fall
in this third category.
The babalawo's second most important duty is sacrificing the animals as offerings to the orishas. Common sacrificial
animals include all types of fowl, goats,
pigs, and occasionally a bull. The practice
is opposed by animal rights activists in
the United States.
Divining the future by reading the
seashells (ios caracoles) of the Table of
Ifa is paramount in Santeria. Santeros
who specialize in Table readings are
called italeras and are often babalawos
dedicated to serving Orunla. Reading the
Table is also called diloggun or mediloggun. Eighteen shells make up the Table,
but the italero only uses sixteen. The
smooth shells may be bought in a botanica (store where Santeria and Vodoun
paraphernalia and herbs are sold) by anyone, but uninitiated users, called aleyos,
may use only twelve. The unbroken sides
of the shell are filed until the serrated
edges appear, showing what look like
tiny mouths filled with teeth. The shells
are the "mouthpieces" of the orishas.
During a consultation, called a registra, the italero prays to the orishas, rubs
the sixteen shells together, then throws
them onto a straw mat called an estera.
The shells are read according to how
many of them fall with their "mouths"
uppermost. Each pattern of up and down,
called an ordun, has a corresponding con-

531

trolling orisha and accompanying proverb. The italero interprets the proverbs to
fit the particular situation, since otherwise the oracles sound more like the wisdom found in fortune cookies.
Very often the babalawo finds the
questioner has been put under an evil
spell, or bilongo, by an enemy. Such action requires the victim to place a counteracting spell, called an ebbo, on the
guilty party. If the ebbo does more damage to the enemy than the original
bilongo, it merely enhances the babalawo's prestige, reputation, and clientele.
Remedies range from herbal baths to
complicated spells involving various oils,
plants, and intimate waste products of
the intended victim. A common prescription is for the questioner to wear a resguardo, or protective talisman bag filled
with various herbs and dedicated to an
orisha.
Another popular divinatory method,
normally used to consult Eleggua, is
called "darle coco al santo" ("give the coconut to the saint"), or reading coconut
meat. Coconuts are used in all major
SanterIa ceremonies and form the main
ingredient in several spells. To prepare a
coconut for divination, the reader must
break its shell with a hard object, never
cracking the nut on the floor, as that
would offend Obi, the coconut's deity.
The meat, which is white on one side and
brown on the other, is then divided into
four equal pieces. The pieces are thrown
on the floor, and one of five patterns results. Each pattern has a meaning and
must be interpreted for the situation at
hand.
Readings of the Table of Ifa by the
babalawo help determine all of the important characteristics of a person's life
and how he or she should deal with each
event in life as it occurs. Upon the birth
of a child, the parents consult the babalawo to find the infant's assigned orisha, plant, birthstone, and animal. In
SanterIa stones traditionally associated

532

with birth months have no relation to the

birthstone. Good talisman animals include goats, elephants, and turtles; bad
ones are many reptiles, venomous insects,
some types of frogs, all birds of prey,
rats, crocodiles, lizards, and spiders.
Water has great spiritual powers as
protection for the santero. Since evil spirits are believed to dissolve in water, all
devotees keep a small receptacle of water
under the bed to clean away evil influences. The water must be changed every
twenty-four hours, and must never be
poured on the floor or down the kitchen
sink.
Other protective agents against evil
are black rag dolls, garlic, and brown
sugar. To be especially safe, a santero
burns brown sugar and garlic skins in a
small pan over hot coals, along with incense and other herbs. The thick smoke,
called sahumerio, fills the house, seeping
into every nook and cranny, even closets
and corners where evil spirits can hide.
Healing and Magic
All santeros are accomplished herbalists, since plants, and especially herbs,
are sacred to the orishas. Most plants
serve dual purposes, as curatives and as
magic ingredients, and can be obtained in
any good botanica.
The sacred bombax ceiba tree, or
five-leaf silk-cotton tree, gives the santero
curative or magical powers from almost
every part of the plant. The tree is worshiped as a female saint, receiving offerings of food, money, and sacrificed animals. Ceibas are very easily offended; a
santero won't even cross the tree's
shadow without first asking permission.
Teas made from the ceiba's roots and
leaves help cure venereal disease and urinary tract infections; leaves also work on
anemia. Bark teas help cure infertility.
The tree trunk and the ground around it
facilitate evil spells; if a santero wishes
harm upon someone, he must walk naked

Santeria

around the ceiba tree several times at

midnight and brush the trunk with his
fingertips, softly asking the tree to help
him against his enemy. Even the shade of
the ceiba attracts spirits, giving strength
to spells cast there.
Santerian magic has been described
as African magic adapted for Western
city life. It is based on the magical principles of sympathy and contagion (see
Magic), and is used primarily to solve
problems and make gains in love, luck,
money, business, and health. Santeros
who deal exclusively in black magic are
known as palo mayombe or brujeria (a
type of witch). The mayomberos, who are
descendents of Congo tribesmen, are
viewed as malignant beings specializing
in revenge, necromancy, and the destruction of human life. Ethics do not enter the
picture, for evil magic simply serves as a
means of survival in a hostile world. Retribution can be avoided by "paying" the
demonic forces through offerings of food,
liquor, money, and animal sacrifice. Mayomberos operate with impunity, offering
death and destruction on behalf of anyone for a price.
Many santeros fear the mayomberos'
powers so much that they will not even
speak of them except in whispers. Conversely, the mayombero respects the
santero's communion with the orishas.
Few mayomberos willingly tangle with
the orishas directly, much as the lords of
darkness avoid the princes of the light.
See Vodoun.
Sources: Rod Davis. "Children of Yoruba."
Southern Magazine (February 1987); Migene Gonzales-Wippler. Santeria: African
Magic in Latin America. New York: Original Products, 1981; Judith Gleason. Oya:
In Praise of the Goddess. Boston: Shambhala, 1987; Mike McLaughlin. "A Voudou
Village in the US." The Seattle Times/
Seattle Post-Intelligencer (AprilS, 1987).

Satori
See Mystical experiences; Zen.

Saying

Schmeidler, Gertrude
See Sheep/goat effect.

Scientology
See Church of Scientology.

Scrying
A method of divination done by gazing
upon an object such as a crystal ball or
mirror until clairvoyant visions are seen
on the surface or in the mind's eye. Scrying is an ancient art dating back to the
early Egyptians and Arabs. Scryers attempt to look into the future in order to
answer questions, solve problems, find
lost objects and people, and identify or
find criminals.
"Scrying" comes from the English
word "descry," which means "to succeed
in discerning" or "to make out dimly."
The tool of scryers, called a speculum,
can be any object that works for an individual, but usually is one with a reflective surface. The oldest and most common speculum is still water in a lake,
pond, or dark bowl. Ink, blood, and
other dark liquids have been used by
Egyptian scryers for centuries. The
French physician and astrologer Nostradamus scryed with a bowl of water set
upon a brass tripod. His preparatory ritual consisted of dipping a wand into the
water and anointing himself with a few
drops, then gazing into the bowl until he
saw visions. See Nostradamus.
Other specula include glass fishing
floats, polished metals and stones, and
precious gems. Gypsy fortune-tellers
made crystal balls the stereotype of the
trade. American psychic Jeane Dixon uses
a crystal ball. John Dee, the royal magician to Queen Elizabeth I, used a crystal
egg and a black obsidian mirror. In Arab
countries scryers use their own polished
thumbnails. Dr. Morton Prince, a medi-

533

thumbnail scryers are children, mostly

young boys. They enjoy a flourishing
trade until age ten or eleven, when their
natural gifts begin to fade. See Divination; Mirror.
Sources: W. E. Butler. How to Develop
Clairvoyance. 2d ed. New York: Samuel
Weiser, 1979; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The
Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft.

Glass fishing float used for saying

cal psychologist of the nineteenth century, used electric lightbulbs in experiments with his patients. Witches use
rounded mirrors, the convex side of
which is painted black, or small cauldrons, painted black on the inside and
filled with water.
Scryers usually have their own individual techniques for inducing their visions. Some who use crystals focus on
points of light on the surface. Others enter an altered state of consciousness and
allow images to float into their inner
awareness. Some images are couched in
symbols, which the scryer must learn to
interpret. In the Middle Ages, there was a
belief that the images formed on a crystal
ball or other tool were caused by demons
that had been trapped inside by magic.
It is possible to learn the art of scrying with patience and practice. Paramount to success is the ability to relax
both mind and body and put the mind in
a passive, unfocused state. Some scryers
say that when clairvoyance develops the
speculum will appear to cloud over with
a curtain or mist, which then parts to reveal shapes and colors. With more skill
the shapes and colors sharpen to reveal
discernible objects, people, and symbols.
For people with natural psychic ability, advancement comes quickly. Exceptional psychic ability tends to manifest in
childhood. In Arab countries the best

534

New York: Facts On File, 1989; D. H.

Rawcliffe. The Psychology of the Occult.
London: Derricke Ridgway Publishing Co.,
1952; Keith Thomas. Religion and the Decline of Magic. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971; Doreen Valiente. Witchcraft for Tomorrow. Custer, WA: Phoenix
Publishing, 1978.

Seance
Event in which a medium contacts the
spirit world. The medium enters an altered state of consciousness and reaches a
spirit, called a control by psychical researchers and "spirit friend" or "spirit
helper" by many modern mediums. The
control, communicating mentally with
the medium or speaking directly through
his or her vocal cords, conveys information from other spirits for the benefit of
the sitters. The spirits may also assist in
healing or manifesting physical phenomena such as apports.
Seances from the mid-nineteenth
through early twentieth centuries were
dominated by physical phenomena, some
of which was exposed as fraud. Most
modern seances involve mental mediumship, in which the medium relays messages.
In the early days of Spiritualism, seances traditionally took place in darkened rooms. The medium and otherscalled "sitters"-sat
around a table and
held hands or placed their hands down
on the table. Hands were accounted for
in this way to show that any phenomena
produced during the seance were not due
to sleight of hand. Researchers held or
tied down the medium's feet and knees.

Scrying

The term "seance"

has fallen out of

fashion, in part due to negative associations caused by earlier fraud. Psychical

researchers have long used the term "sitting," which also is used by many modern mediums. Some mediums use "spirit
greetings" and others use nothing at all;
sessions are billed as "An evening with
... " Many Spiritualist mediums do not
enter a dramatic trance to communicate
with the spirit world,
darkened rooms.

nor do they need

"Seance" sometimes is applied to the

trance events of shamans, which customarily take place inside a darkened tent
and feature
spirit voices, whistlings,
shriekings,
and manifestations;
moving
and levitating objects; and rappings and
poundings.
There are marked
differences
between shamanic seances and mediumistic
seances, however. The medium usually
enters a trance quietly, through
selfhypnosis and breathing control, while the
shaman achieves an altered state through
fasting, ecstatic dancing (which produces
hyperventilation),
and drumming,
and
sometimes with the help of drugs. The
medium often has little or no control over
what takes place at a seance once the
trance has been entered; many, in fact,
have no recollection of it once they return
to a normal state of consciousness.
The
shaman, on the other hand, retains a high
degree of control, remaining lucid enough
to command the spirits invoked, go outof-body, and perform healings, including
psychic surgery. See Channeling;
Mediumship; Shamanism; Spiritualism.
Sources: Slater Brown. The Heyday of Spiritualism. New York: Hawthorn
Books,
1970; Alfred Douglas. Extrasensory Powers: A Century of Psychical Research. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1976; Alan
Gauld. MediumshiP and Survival. London:
William Heinemann Ltd., 1982; R. Laurence Moore. In Search of White Crows.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1977;
Janet Oppenheim. The Other World: Spir-

Sedona,

Arizona

itualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914. Cambridge, England:

Cambridge University Press, 1985; D. Scott
Rogo. Psychic Breakthroughs Today. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire,
England:
The Aquarian Press, 1987; Alberto Villodo
and Stanley Krippner. Healing States. New
York: Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 1986.

Secret of the Golden

Flower, The
See Alchemy;

Jung, Carl Gustav.

Sedona, Arizona
Area

in central

Arizona

said

to be a

power point or "psychic vortex." The site

is located in the red rock country near the
town of Sedona, about forty miles south
of Flagstaff, and is alleged to lie on a ley
line. See Leys. The area is sacred to the
Yavapai Native Americans, whose myths
feature deities who live in the rocks.
Thousands of pilgrims visit the site
annually.
Experiences
reported
include
visions of spirits (primarily Native American), visions of blue auras over the
rocks, clairvoyant
dreams, clairaudient
bell-like tones, past-life recall, automatic
writing, cures, physical changes, and spiritual transformations.
Others have visions of what they believe are the remains
of an advanced civilization buried far below the rocks. Many of the pilgrims are
attracted to Sedona by the seminars of
Dick Sutphen, who first visited the area
in 1969 and was impressed by the energy
he experienced there. See Power point;
Sutphen, Richard.
Sources: Robert Lindsey. '''Psychic Energy'
and the Pot of Gold." The New York
Times (February 9, 1988): 9; Dick Sutphen
Presents Sedona: Psychic Energy Vortexes.
Malibu, CA: Valley of the Sun Publishing,
1986; Paul Zuromski.
"Dick Sutphen."
Body
Mind
Spirit (September/October
1987): 14-18.

535

Sedona, Arizona

Seiki

Seth

See Universal life force.

See Roberts, Jane.

Seiki-jutsu

Shah, Idries

See Bodywork.

Self-actualization
See Psychology.

Sensitive
See Mediumship; Psychic.

Serios, Ted
See Thoughtography.

536

See Sufism.

Shakers
American religious sect. Also called the
United Society of Believers, the Shakers
flourished in nineteenth-century America.
They lived communally yet stressed complete celibacy to counter sex, the root of
all sin.
The Shakers were founded by Ann
Lee, a native of Manchester, England. Lee
was poor and uneducated. Following her
marriage to Abraham Standerin, also
called Stanley, she bore four children,

Seiki

Circle dance of the Shakers of New Lebanon, New York, 1873

three of whom died in infancy and one

daughter who did not live past age six.
These traumas contributed to her decision to avoid sex.
Lee was deeply religious. In 1758 she
joined a splinter group of Quakers
headed by Jane and James Wardley, derisively known as the Shaking Quakers
because of their shaking dances during
worship. Lee became convinced that human carnal nature caused all sin. Tormented, she drew away from her husband
and cried out in agony if she gave in to
his affections. She preached celibacy to
the Wardley group, and eventually took
over as its leader. While in Manchester
jail in the summer of 1770 for disturbing
the peace with noisy religious practices,
Ann had a powerful vision of what she
believed was the source of all human depravity: the first carnal act committed by
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Ann attributed this act as the cause of
humankind's separation from God, confirming her belief that celibacy was the
only route to reunification. She then saw
Jesus Christ before her, who offered so-

Shakers

lace for her suffering and encouraged her

to follow her convictions.
After her release from prison, Ann
related her visions to the Wardley group
and revealed herself as Ann the Word.
They were so impressed they made her
head of the sect and began to call her
Mother, putting into practice their notions of a dual godhead, both male and
female, God the Father and the Mother.
The Shakers were continually harassed in Manchester, and might have
disappeared if one of the group, James
Whittaker, had not had a vision of a
burning tree of life in America. Mother
Ann interpreted this vision as a call to
take the church to America. She, Abraham, and eight of her followers set sail
and arrived in New York City on August
6, 1774.
In 1776 they established their first
settlement at Niskayuna near Albany,
New York, later called Watervliet, amidst
hostility and persecution. Mother Ann
moved the church headquarters to Harvard and Shirley, Massachusetts, in 1781,
but continued to suffer harassment, often

537

Shaker women
physical abuse. Although the Shakers did
not plan to live together, they chose communallife for protection. Neighbors were
hostile toward a group who would not
fight in the Revolution, worshiped God in
such unorthodox manners, spoke in
tongues and received revelations, and followed a woman as church leader. Mother
Ann's statements that she was nearly divine, was equal to men, and that women
did not have to "be fruitful and multiply"
branded her as a witch. Abraham eventually left Ann for another woman, and
Ann reverted to her maiden name.
Mother Ann died in 1784, without
seeing her church well established. Her
spiritual presence apparently remained
with the Shakers, however. She had believed in communication with the spirit
world and had claimed to talk to Jesus,
angels, and Shaker founders who had
preceded her. At her death Mother Ann

538

reportedly said that she saw her dead

brother William coming for her in a chariot, and follower John Hocknell testified
that when she died, he saw her soul float
upward into a chariot drawn by four
white horses. Shaker literature testifies
that she sent messages of moral exhortation and encouragement to her followers
for years after her death.
As the first major sect founded by a
woman,
Shakerism
attracted
more
women than men. The church taught that
God had a dual nature, with a masculine
spirit embodied in Christ and a female
spirit manifested in the presence of
Mother Ann. Members of either sex
could lead the church. Such early feminist
notions appealed to women, who, like
Mother Ann, felt subjected to traditional
male sexual dominance.
Like Quakers, Shakers took a liberal
approach to Bible interpretation, per-

Shakers

formed no sacraments-not even baptism

or communion-refused to take oaths or
participate in government, believed.in total pacifism, abolition of slavery, and
used the more archaic forms "thee" and
"thou." Shakers also believed in the free
workings of the spirit and communication with the other world. Worship services consisted of singing and dancing,
which often evolved into trembling, shouting, leaping, whirling, stomping, rolling
on the floor and writhing, speaking in
tongues, trances, and other possession
phenomena.
Elder Frederick W. Evans, who became a Shaker after a fiery vision showed
him surviving unscathed except for the
loss of his genitalia, always maintained
that Spiritualism had begun with the
Shakers. But no extensive spiritual phenomena occurred until August 16, 1837,
when a group of young girls at Watervliet
began to shake, fall to the ground, and
sing songs in unknown languages. The
girls claimed to have seen Mother Ann
and to have visited heavenly places
guided by angels.
The phenomena spread, and spiritual
manifestations lasted for about ten years,
a period known in Shaker literature as
the New Era, Mother Ann's Second Appearing, or Mother's Work. During that
time Believers in all the communities became "instruments" for the spirits, exhibiting classic possession phenomena:
stiffening bodies, agonizing distortions,
screeching, preternatural strength, and
the smell of sulfur.
The instruments, or mediums, delivered two types of messages from the spirits: personal words of comfort and concern for individuals, usually received by
average Shakers; and moral exhortations
and calls for return to Shaker ideals, received by Shaker leaders. Communications in the early years came primarily
from Mother Ann and other deceased
leaders, but later messages came from Jesus, Mary Magdalene, St. Paul, Colum-

Shakers

bus, George Washington, Napoleon,

Queens Isabella and Elizabeth I, Alexander the Great, William Penn, the Marquis de Lafayette, martyred saints, biblical figures, Indians, Chinese, Arabs,
Negroes, and Muhammad. Native American spirit controls were especially popular, causing the mediums to whoop,
dance, and smoke the peace pipe. Such
controls among the Shakers appear to be
the first recorded instances of Native
American spirit participation in Spiritualist phenomena.
In 1842 the central ministry at New
Lebanon, New York, told the communities to establish a place for outdoor spiritual worship, ostensibly the highest spot
in the village. These "Sacred Squares" or
"Holy Hills of Zion" were to be visited
twice a year, spring and fall, for gatherings with the spirits, called "Mountain
Meetings." The crests were fenced or
walled, surrounding a Fountain and engraved Fountain Stone. While the stones
were tangible, the fountains were visible
only to those with spiritual insight. Prior
to the meetings, the Shakers fasted and
prayed, then dressed themselves in imaginary spiritual garments, often including
"spectacles of discernment" to see the
spirits, then "bathed" in the fountains.
Worshipers carried spiritual musical instruments and plates of spiritual food for
a great pantomime feast. The luxurious
spiritual garments and delicacies were
worlds apart from plain Shaker fare.
By the end of Mother's Work, spiritual messages became cynical and critical
of Shaker ideals, especially celibacy. One
medium even declared that Mother Ann
wanted her followers to abandon celibacy
and marry; Elder Evans quashed that idea
by saying that if Mother Ann had fallen
from the light, good Shakers should not
do likewise. The manifestations tapered
off and ended about 1847.
Shakerism peaked about 1850, with
six thousand members living in twenty
communities in New York, Connecticut,

539

New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts,

Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. They were
renowned for their skilled craftsmanship.
Although Shakers believed that after
the Millennium marriage would be obsolete, strict celibacy, dependence on conversion alone, and the changes in society
after the Civil War brought about the
sect's decline and virtual demise. Only
two communities remain today: Canterbury, New Hampshire, and Sabbathday
Lake, Maine. See Glossolalia; Mediumship.
Sources: Edward R. Horgan. The Shaker
Holy Land. Harvard and Boston: The Har-

vard Common Press, 1987; Lawrence Foster. Religion and Sexuality. New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981;
"Psychic Manifestations Among the Shakers (Part II)." Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 32, no. 11
(November 1938): 339-50; F. E. Leaning.
"The Indian 'Control.'" Journal of the
American

Society

for Psychical

and village chief prepare

for ritual

Research

22, no. 6 (June 1927): 346-52; Keith

Crim, gen. ed. Abingdon Dictionary of Living Religions. Nashville, TN: Abingdon
Press, 1981; Slater Brown. The Heyday of
Spiritualism. New York: Hawthorn Books,
1970.

Shamanism
Magico-spiritual systems in which an
adept enters an altered state of consciousness and travels to nonworldly realities in
order to heal, divine, communicate with
the spirits of the dead, and perform other
supernatural feats. The term "shamanism," from the Tungusic term saman,
originally applied to societies found in Siberia and Central Asia, then was extended to similar systems found elsewhere around the world. It has also been
suggested that the term derives from the
Sanskrit saman, meaning "song," referring to the shaman's magical songs and
chants. Shamans belong to the same class
of individuals as mystics, in that they are

540

Java shaman

separated from the mainstream of their

community by intense spiritual experience. They are predominantly men.
The terms "shaman" and "shamanism" are frequently applied to various
kinds of healers, medicine men, witch
doctors, mystics, priests, magicians, sorcerers, and diviners, and to societies that
had or have shamanic practices but were
not or are not shamanic after the
Siberian/Central Asian systems. Arguments have been advanced on both sides,
to retain narrow definitions of the terms
or to loosen them.
Shamanism has been described as
"the world's oldest profession"; archaeological evidence suggests shamanic techniques are at least 20,000 years old. Shamans were probably the first storytellers,
healers, priests, magicians, dramatists,
and so on, who explained the world and
related it to the cosmos.
Shamanic systems are complex and
diverse, but many share common characteristics. In Siberia and Central Asia, the

Shakers

Shaman and assistants become horses in trance dance and reenact a battle for
onlooking villagers
magi co-religious life of the society centers
around the shaman, while in other societies shamans share the stage with priests
and other adepts. The ecstatic trance sets
shamans apart from other religious and
magical adepts: shamans cannot become
shamans without experiencing ecstatic
trances, and they perform all of their
functions in trance. They are assisted by
tutelary and helping spirits.

Selection and Initiation

Shamans generally are called to their
profession in 1:\\'0 ways: by heredity, or
by spontaneous and involuntary election
by the Supernaturals. In some cases shamans can be self-made by seeking out the
training; these individuals, however, are
considered less powerful. An exception to
the latter is found among Native North

Shamanism

Others revive shaman to ordinary

consciousness after ritual ends

541

~
&
1;

cestral spirit, or the spirit of a dead shaman. The candidate is initiated into his
power in trance by ritual death, dismemberment, and resurrection. He becomes a
new person and takes a new name. In
some societies he is considered to be literally dead, and resurrected as a ghost.
The shaman acquires an assortment
of helping spirits, which take the form of
animals, birds, insects, fish, plants, or
spirits of the dead. Each has a specific
function and helps him in performing his
duties. Shamans also may have a guardian spirit, usually the representative of a
genus, such as Bear or Coyote, from
which he derives his power. See Guardian
spirit.
Some shamans, such as among the
Australian Aborigines and Native North
Americans, receive objects of power, such
as crystals, shells, or stones, which are
symbolically inserted in their bodies in
initiation rituals. See Medicine societies.

-f

Shaman in his garb as village chief

Americans, many of whom undertake a
vision quest to ask for healing power or
the help of guardian spirits. The shaman
becomes distinguished from others by the
greater number of his helping spirits, by
the intensity of his vision, and by his
greater power. See Vision quest.
In spontaneous election an individual may suddenly fall seriously ill, and
recovers only by healing himself. In other
cases he has an involuntary trance or
dream in which he is informed by spirits
or shades of the dead that he has been
chosen to be a shaman. The vision may
occur during serious illness.
The candidate then undertakes training by an elder shaman and by a tutelary
spirit, usually a semidivine being, an an-

542

Powers
The shaman lives in two worlds: ordinary reality and nonordinary reality,
also called the "shamanic state of consciousness." Nonordinary reality is a
unique altered state of consciousness in
which the shaman has access to the three
zones of most cosmologies: earth, sky,
and underworld, which are connected by
a central axis represented by a"World Pillar, World Tree, or World Mountain. The
shaman remains lucid throughout his altered state, controls it, and recalls afterward what transpired during it. In the
shamanic state, the shaman sees other,
nonworldly realities, perhaps multiple realities simultaneously. He has access to
information that is not accessible in the
ordinary reality.
The ability to enter the shamanic
state at will is essential to shamanism.
Techniques for doing so include drumming, rattling, chanting, dancing, fasting,
sexual abstinence, sweat baths, staring

Shamanism

into flames, concentrating on imagery,

and isolating oneself in darkness. Some
societies employ psychedelic drugs for
this purpose, but drugs are not essential
to the shamanic process.
The shaman also has the power to
see spirits and souls, and to communicate
with them. He is able to take magicalmystical flights to the heavens, where he
can serve as intermediary between the
gods and his people; he can descend to
the underworld to the land of the dead.
The flights are done by shape-shifting, by
riding mythical horses or the spirits of
sacrificed horses, by traveling in spirit
boats, and the like. He heals, prophesies,
shape-shifts, and controls the elements.

Functions
Universally, the shaman's primary
function is to heal and restore the individual's connectedness to the universe.
Shamans make no distinction between
body, mind, and spirit; they are all part
of the whole. Shamanism, unlike Western
medicine, is not necessarily concerned
with the extension of life, but rather is
concerned with protecting the soul and
preventing it from eternal wandering.
Certain life-threatening health hazards of
primitive living, such as contaminated
water, are accepted as risks of daily life.
The diagnosis of illness generally
falls into two categories: the magical "insertion" of a disease-causing object in the
body of the patient by a sorcerer or displeased or evil spirit; or "soul loss," in
which the patient's soul has wandered off
into the land of the dead, been frightened
away by a ghost or traumatic experience,
or been kidnapped by spirits of the dead.
The shaman makes the diagnosis by communicating with his helping spirits.
In the case of "insertion," he
"sucks" the offending object from the patient's body. The illness is absorbed by
the spirit helpers, who also protect the
shaman from becoming ill himself. If the

Shamanism

soul has been lost, he goes out-of-body to

the underworld, where he finds the soul,
retrieves it, and restores it to the patient.
In both cases tangible evidence of the
cure is important to both patient and the
community. Thus the shaman produces
by sleight of hand the disease-causing
object-typically a stone, bone, feather,
or pottery shard-which he then causes
to disappear. If he has retrieved a soul, he
tells of his battle with the shades and produces his bloodied weapon as proof. In
some societies shamans exorcise diseasecausing spirits in seance-like procedures,
or by invoking or cajoling them to leave
the patient.
The use of sleight of hand does not
negate the healing. Shamans who have
admitted to sleight of hand say they do
not need it to heal, but it is necessary as
tangible confirmation that a healing has
taken place. The tangible "proof" undoubtedly has a placebo effect of facilitating the patient's own self-healing processes. Some witnessed cases of sucking
appear paranormal, as in the healing
work of Rolling Thunder. See Rolling
Thunder.
Dream interpretation is another important function of shamans. They also
divine the future, find lost property, identify thieves, control the weather, protect
individuals and communities against evil
spirits and the evil spells of sorcerers, and
perform various religious rites.

Similarities to Other Systems

Overlaps may be found in some shamanism and Eastern religions, meditation, yoga, and alchemy, indicating that
the latter perhaps were influenced by the
much older shamanism. Dismemberment
imagery figures in shamanism and in Tibetan Tantrism. The means of achieving
altered and higher states of consciousness
are comparable. The psychic powers of
shamans are similar to the siddhis of
yoga. See Siddhis. Animal spirits and

543

symbolisms appear in both shamanism

and alchemy. See Alchemy. Shamans,
however, do not seek higher states of
consciousness as an end in themselves,
but as a medium in which to perform
their duties. The similarities do not mean
shamanism can be equated with Eastern
systems, however, as significant metaphysical differences exist.
Western interest in shamanism has
spawned a so-called neo-shamanism, in
which shamanic elements are adapted to
Western life in an effort to regain a connection to the sacred and an understanding of the interconnectedness of all life,
and as a means of personal empowerment. See Altered states of consciousness;
Black Elk, Nicholas; Meditation; Yoga.
Sources: Jeanne Achterberg. Imagery in
Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine. Boston: Shambhala Publications,
1985; Mircea Eliade. Shamanism. 1951.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

1964; Joan Halifax. Shaman: The Wounded Healer. New York: Crossroad, 1982;
Michael Harner. The Way of the Shaman.
New York: Bantam, 1986; Holger Kalweit.
Dreamtime and Inner Space: The World of
the Shaman. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1984; Shirley Nicholson, compo Shamanism. Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical

Publishing House, 1987. Ruth M. Underhill. Red Man's Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965; Alberto
Villoldo and Stanley Krippner. Healing
States. New York: Fireside/Simon &
Schuster, 1986.

Shambhala
Legendary Tibetan kingdom symbolic of
spiritual enlightenment. Tantric texts discuss the kingdom, its spiritual significance, and the path leading to it. Many
Tibetans, including both laypeople and
lamas, believe Shambhala is a real place,
hidden in a secret location deep within
the Himalayas. Some Western scholars,

544

however, suggest Shambhala is mythical,

and in spiritual teachings represents a desired goal of an enlightened and happy
life. Other scholars theorize Shambhala
legends may have grown out of one of the
ancient and real kingdoms of Central
Asia, such as the Zhang-Zhung.
The name "Shambhala" is Sanskrit,
and is taken by Tibetans to mean "the
Source of Happiness." Laypeople regard
the place as a heaven of the gods, while
lamas consider it a Pure Land. It is not a
heavenly paradise as Westerners might
think, but a mystical kingdom that
guards the most sacred and secret spiritual teachings of the world, including the
Kalacakra ("Wheel of Time"), the highest
and most esoteric Tibetan Buddhist wisdom. Part of the Tibetan Canon (the
equivalent of the Bible in Christianity),
the Kalacakra is a complex system for attaining enlightenment, and its texts form
the basis of Tibetan calendars, astrology,
astronomy, alchemy, medicine, and human anatomy and physiology. Kalacakra
texts are written in obscure symbolism,
and lamas say that oral teachings, given
only to initiates, are necessary for comprehension.
Little is known about the origins of
Shambhala. According to some lamas, it
has existed since the beginning of the
world. Followers of Bon, the preBuddhist religion of Tibet, identify Shambhala with Olmulungring, an invisible
kingdom ringed by snow mountains in
northwestern Tibet that dates back to
16,017 B.C., when Shenrab, the King of
Olmulungring, left his kingdom and
crossed a burning desert in order to bring
Bon to Tibet. A lineage of kings is said to
remain in Olmulungring, where they
guard the teachings of Bon.
Buddhists trace Shambhala to Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, c. 500 B.C. Tibetan Buddhists say
many of Buddha's teachings were too advanced for the lay public and were not
recorded in the Pali Canon, but were

Shamanism

passed down orally and written down

much later. Much of the oral sermons,
which were incorporated into the Tibetan
Canon, were given in an invisible spiritual dimension.
Prior to his death, Buddha is said to
have assumed the form of the Kalacakra
deity and delivered his highest teachings
to a group of adepts and gods in southern
India. Among those present was eightyyear-old King Suchandra, the first King of
Shambhala, who wrote down the sermons and took them back to Shambhala,
where he wrote commentaries on them
and constructed the Kalacakra mandala.
Suchandra is sometimes called the Chief
of the Secret Tibetan Brotherhood of Initiates of the Occult Sciences. According
to prophecy he shall govern humankind,
implying a golden age of divine wisdom
on Earth.
The earliest written Tibetan references to Shambhala appear in the Tibetan
Canon, the oldest of which were recorded
around the eleventh century A.D. The
Canon was transcribed from Sanskrit.
According to lore the texts were delivered
into India in the tenth century, after being
kept hidden in Shambhala for more than
a thousand years. Kalacakra Tantra is
said to have been introduced to India c.
A.D. 600, and was a distinctly Buddhist
system by the eleventh century.
The earliest written Western references to Shambhala were in 1627, when
a group of Catholic missionaries from
Europe traveled to Tibet and China and
en route heard about a place they called
"Xembala," which they believed was another name for Cathay, or China.
Various Buddhist texts give instructions for finding Shambhala, though directions are obscure. It is said that only
accomplished yogis may find it, and only
with a great deal of difficulty and travail.
The kingdom is hidden in the mists of the
snow mountains and can be reached only
by flying over them with the help of siddhis,or spiritual powers. Those who at-

Shambhala

tempt to traverse the peaks by other

means will meet their doom.
The kingdom also is described in
great detail in the Tibetan Canon and in
other texts, such as the Great Commentary on the Kalacakra, written by Mipham, a nineteenth-century Buddhist
teacher. Different locations are given. According to the early texts, Shambhala is
located north of Bodhgaya, a Buddhist
shrine in northern India. Hidden by a
great ring of snow mountains, the kingdom is shaped like an eight-petaled lotus
blossom. Each of the eight regions has
twelve principalities. The capital, Kalapa,
is at the center, and is surrounded by a
second ring of snow mountains. The
kingdom is lush and contains gold-roofed
pagodas. The palace of the King is ornate
and bejeweled, and filled with the scent
of sandalwood incense. The residents,
who are healthy, wealthy, beautiful, and
virtuous, live for hundreds of years.
There is no evil, vice, or war. The residents are guaranteed of attaining nirvana
in that lifetime or soon after; if they die
and are reincarnated, they will not fall to
a lower state.
The residents study the Kalacakra,
the science of mind, the goal of which is
to become enlightened and master time.
Kalacakra enabled Shambhala residents
to cure themselves of disease and illness.
By-products of this spiritual growth included paranormal powers, such as telepathy, precognition, invisibility, and the
ability to walk at high speed.
The Kings of Shambhala are enlightened, according to the early texts; each is
an incarnated bodhisattva. The texts
speak of a prophecy of Shambhala, which
foretells a cataclysmic battle between the
forces of good and evil. Thirty-two Kings
will reign over Shambhala, each for approximately one hundred years, and each
reign is characterized by deteriorating
conditions around the world: greed, dishonesty, war, and materialism. The "barbarians" will defeat all opposition, until

545

an evil King rises to lead them all in an

effort to rule the world. At that point
Shambhala will emerge from the mists.
The evil King will attack it, only to be
defeated by the thirty-second King of
Shambhala, Rudra Cakrin, "The Wrathful One with the Wheel." It is estimated
that this battle will occur sometime between about 2200 and 2500.
According to Mipham Shambhala
lies north of the river Sita in northern Tibet, in a land divided by eight mountain
ranges. The palace of the Rigdens, the imperial rulers, is located on top of Kailasa,
a mountain in the center of the kingdom.
The palace, many square miles in size,
looks out over a park and a temple devoted to Kalacakra Tantra. According to
another source, Sarat Chandra Das, the
kingdom is located in central Asia near
the river Oxus.
In some legends of Shambhala, the
kingdom vanished from the face of the
Earth centuries ago, after its population
became enlightened; it now exists on a
more celestial plane. The Rigdens continue to watch over the Earth, and will
return at some point to save humanity
from destruction. Gesar of Ling, a great
warrior and king c. the eleventh century
in eastern Tibet, is believed to have been
guided by the Rigdens. Legend says that
he now resides in the celestial kingdom of
Shambhala and that he, too, will return
to Earth at the time of great crisis and
will lead an army to vanquish the forces
of darkness. In another version Rigden
Perna Karpo, the last successor to King
Suchandra, is the one who will return and
establish Shambhala as a universal kingdom.
The myth of the return to save humanity has parallels in many religions, including the return of Christ in Christianity, and the final incarnation of Vishnu,
Kalki, in Hinduism.
Author James Hilton probably was
inspired by Shambhala for his novel
about the lost kingdom of Shangri-La,

546

Lost Horizon. Hilton based his story on

the nineteenth-century writings of Abbe
Hue, a Catholic missionary who traveled
through Tibet and heard a prophecy that
resembles that of Shambhala.
Some Theosophist followers of Madame Helena P. Blavatsky believed Shambhala was the residence of the Mahatmas,
spiritual adepts, said to live in the mountains of Tibet.
According to Edwin Bernbaum, scholar of Tibetan religion, mythology, and
art, Shambhala symbolizes the hidden
depths of the mind, the pure region of the
superconsciousness,
which
may be
reached through an inner journey. The
kingdom's lotus shape is associated with
enlightenment and purity, and with the
heart chakra, the center of highest wisdom. See Lotus; Mandala.
Sources: Edwin Bernbaum. The Way to
Shambhala.
Garden City, NY: Anchor

PresslDoubleday, 1980; W. Y. EvansWentz, ed. The Tibetan Book of the Great

Liberation.
London: Oxford University
Press, 1954; John R. Hinnello, ed. The
Facts On File Dictionary of Religions. New
York: Facts On File, 1984; Chogyam
Trungpa. Shambhala: The Sacred Path of
the Warrior. 1984. New York: Bantam
Books, 1986.

Sheep/goat effect
A phenomenon discovered in psychical
research that demonstrates that people
who believe in psi tend to score positively
in psi tests, and people who do not believe in psi tend to score negatively. The
phenomenon was discovered in the 1940s
by American parapsychologist Gertrude
Schmeidler, who named it the "sheep/
goat effect." Sheep are believers and
goats are nonbelievers.
Schmeidler and other researchers
found that "sheep" are more likely to
score "hits" in laboratory psi guessing
games. "Goats" are more likely to miss

Shambhala

targets and thus score below chance.

Nonbelievers apparently miss targets
through avoidance.
The sheep/goat effect seems to come
into play only when positive or negative
attitudes about psi are very strong. Sheep
who are mild believers and goats who are
mild skeptics both tend to score at
chance.
Other factors influence hits and
misses. People who are outgoing, happy,
and relaxed are more likely to score
above chance than those who are stiff,
reserved, and introverted. Even a sheep
who is stiff and reserved will not score as
well as a sheep who is eager and relaxed.
Oddly, the sheep/goat effect began to
disappear from laboratory tests in the
1970s. Parapsychologists theorize that
public attitudes about psi have changed
significantly since the 1940s, when psychic experiences were considered more of
an anomaly. More people are willing to
consider the possible existence of psi, and
emotions on the subject are much less
charged than they were in the past. Test
subjects now are more likely to be influenced by the attitude of the experimenter.
See Experimenter effect.
The sheep/goat effecc may be applied
outside the laboratory in daily life. People
who believe in psi and who are relaxed,
optimistic, and outgoing are more likely
to spontaneously experience a wide range
of psi phenomena, and rely more heavily
on intuition. Nonbelievers are more likely
not to have such experiences; if they do
they tend to explain them away as
chance, coincidence, or freak occurrences. See Psi hitting and psi missing.
Sources: Alfred Douglas. Extrasensory
Powers: A Century of Psychical Research.

London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1976; Martin Ebon. Psychic Warfare: Threat or Illusion? New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983;
Gertrude Raffel Schmeidler and R. A. McConnell. ESP and Personality Patterns.
New Haven, CT: Yale, 1958; Gertrude
Schmeidler, ed. Extrasensory Perception.

Shinto

New York: Atherton Press, 1969; Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook of Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977.

Shiatsu
See Bodywork.

Shinto
Indigenous polytheistic, animistic, and
shamanic religion of Japan. Shinto links
living Japanese to their ancestral spirits,
ancient gods, and elemental energies of
the land and nature in a mysterious and
shared cosmos. All natural phenomena
are considered manifestations of the diVIlle.

Shinto means "the way of the kami";

kami usually is translated into English as
"gods" or "spirits." "Shinto" derives
from the Chinese term "Shen-Tao"; the
early, cultured Japanese commonly borrowed Chinese terms, which were considered more distinguished. The Japanese
term for Shinto is Kami-no-michi,
generally translated as "the Way of the gods."
The term kami is complex and embodies
the concept of spirit, deity, or force that
is superior, transcendent, other-worldly,
sacred, and numinous. Kami are not supernatural beings, but an essence: anything that inspires reverence, awe, mystery, or wonder. Humans, animals,
mountains, literally anything in nature
can possess kami-nature.
The origins of Shinto are unknown;
there is no founder, and no official scriptures exist. There are no doctrine and formal ethics. Some elements of Shinto may
have been imported from China. The earliest extant records of Shinto date to the
eighth century. In early Japan Shinto existed not as a religion, but as a philosophy of life. Early Shinto took for granted
the interwoven nature of the cosmos and
all living things in it, without attempting

547

to explain the meaning of it. All things

were considered manifestations of the Divine, and believed to possess kami. Eight
hundred myriads of kami are mentioned
in Japanese myths.
The highest and most venerated
kami of all is Amaterasu Omigami, the
Sun Goddess and protector of the Japanese nation and people. Amaterasu is one
of the children of Izanagi and Izanami,
the kami who, according to myth, created
Japan as the most beautiful place in the
world and sent their offspring to be the
kami of nature and the elements, such as
the wind, mountains, waterfalls, trees,
the ocean, animals, birds, and rocks.
These kami, too, are highly venerated.
Also worshiped are the ancestral
spirits of clan chieftains and humans who
achieved a high degree of spiritual awareness while alive, or who displayed great
heroism or even great evil. Such people
have their remains enshrined, where the
living come to seek favors and intercession. Communication may be established
with a kami through a shamanic medium.
Many kami are neither well-defined
nor individually named, but are associated with local areas, where they protect
villages, clans, and families, and are worshiped at communal shrines. They also
are believed to intervene in the lives of
humans and are the cause of illness and
bad luck. Misfortunes are remedied by
exorcisms performed by shamans.
The early Shinto cosmology was divided in three realms: the highest was the
High Sky Plain, where superior male and
female kami live; the middle was the
Manifested World of humans and animate and inanimate beings; the lowest
was the Nether World, populated by evil
spirits. The early Japanese referred to
both the High Sky Plain and the Nether
World as the "other world." The threetiered realm later became condensed into one realm, the Takamagaharam, a
heaven in which all kami, superior and
evil, and the spirits of the dead coexist.

548

Early Shinto included many rituals

for divination, purification, sorcery, and
the seeking of favors from nature. Emphasis was given to thanksgiving to the
kami for the bounties of life, and to purification through abstention and exorcism. Sin and evil were not viewed in
moral terms, but as a lack of harmony
with nature.
Shinto shrines are simple structures,
usually a thatched roof supported by pillars. They customarily are located near
fresh water which is used for purification.
The gateway to the shrine, or tori, marks
the boundary between the mundane and
sacred worlds. Inside the shrine are representations of kami, perhaps rocks or
mirrors, but no images. Short sticks with
paper strips are symbolic offerings to the
kami. Some of the most sacred shrines resemble log cabins, and are entered only
by priests; the laity conduct their rituals
in worship halls.
A small shrine, or kamidama ("godshelf"), is maintained in Shinto homes,
and consists of an altar placed usually in
the living room above a closet. Rice, salt,
water, and food are left on it daily as offerings to the kami. Purification ceremonies are performed upon rising. Household Shinto is concerned chiefly with
rituals for domestic affairs, such as births,
deaths, and anniversaries of deaths of ancestors.
Early Shinto absorbed elements of
both Confucianism and Buddhism. After
the introduction of Buddhism to Japan in
the sixth century, Shinto either receded or
coexisted in a Dual Shinto, which included Buddhist images and materials. In
the eighteenth century, an effort was
made to separate Shinto from Buddhism
and revive it. In 1868 the Emperor Mutsuhito declared Shinto the state religion,
or Daikyo ("great doctrine"), but renounced it in 1884. In the nineteenth century Shrine Shinto and Sect Shinto became distinct from one another. Various
forms of both developed.

Shinto

Tennoism and PostWorld War II Shinto

Tennoism, or nationalistic emperorworship, existed until the end of World
War II. Derived from the term tenno
("emperor"), Tennoism held that the emperor of Japan was a direct descendant of
the creator kami, Izanagi and Izanami,
and functioned as ruler and chief priest of
the nation. As a living kami himself, he
was the primary intermediary between
the Japanese people and Amaterasu, the
ancestress of the royal house. In Japanese
Tennoism is called Kokutai Shinto, or
"the Shinto of national structure."
Tennoism took root in Japan's early
history, c. the third to fourth centuries
A.D. and gained strength as the country
was unified by an imperial family. (Although records from the eighth century
date the first legendary emperor of Japan
much earlier, to the seventh century B.C.,
historians hold to the later date.) Tennoism went through cycles, reaching a peak
between 1868, when Shinto was declared
a state religion, and the end of World
War II. Schoolchildren were taught that it
was the highest morality, and that the
emperor was infallible. The laity were
forbidden to look directly at the emperor
or speak his name. During World War II,
Japanese soldiers fought and died in his
name. Following Japan's defeat, the nation was forced to adopt a democratic
government, and the emperor was forced
to renounce his divinity. State Shinto was
abolished, but continued as a sectarian
religion.
Following the war numerous forms
of sectarian Shinto developed, with diverse origins and practices. Some groups
emphasize mountain
pilgrimages to
Mount Fuji or other peaks, where pilgrims hope to have ecstatic experiences.
Others practice faith healing, divination,
"mystical dancing," and firewalking. In
the majority are sects organized around
charismatic individuals, church-like in

Shinto

structure and devoted to community

work.
Household Shinto continues to be
practiced, but is on the decline, especially among the younger population. Shamanic practices also are on the decline,
but remain part of the nation's folk religIOn.

Shinto has been exported to the West

and other countries, serving not only
transplanted Japanese but other nationalities as well. One such export is the
Church of World Messianity (also known
as the World Messianity and Johrei Fellowship), founded in 1935 by Mokichi
Okada (1882-1955),
called Meishusarna, or "enlightened spiritual leader,"
by his followers. Meishu-sama received a
divine revelation on the summit of Mount
Nokogiri on June 15, 1931, in which he
saw that a transition to paradise on earth
was beginning in the spiritual realm. Because of government persecution in prewar times, Meishu-sama could not establish a religious organization, and so
created a foundation dedicated to bringing about the envisioned earthly paradise.
Following World War II, the organization began functioning as a church, and
established sacred centers in Hakone, Atami, and Kyoto.
Johrei, as the sect is called, incorporates Shinto, Buddhist, and Christian
concepts. The kami and ancestral spirits
are venerated, as is God; Meishu-sama
conceived of a single deity. Johrei centers
are located in America, Brazil (where it is
the second largest religion after Spiritism), and elsewhere. One of the sect's
most important fundamentals is the realization of God's Plan through prototypes;
thus the sacred centers serve as prototypes from which spiritual teachings expand into the world. Followers help others by "giving Johrei": the channeling of
healing light to the spirit, an energy transfer that radiates out from the palm of the
hand, which is extended to, but does not
touch, the recipient. Giving Johrei helps

549

purify the body, mind, and spirit, thus facilitating spiritual growth.
Influence of Shinto on Japanese
Way of Life
Central to Shinto is the appreciation
of the ability of nature to awaken in human beings a sense of the divine in the
cosmos. Four elements of Shinto stand
out as influential on the Japanese outlook
on the world: (1) an exceptional understanding of creativity, and a sense of the
interconnectedness of all things in a collective unconscious; (2) a belief in the innate power, beauty, and goodness of life,
which fosters cultural attitudes of cooperation and harmony; (3) pragmatism
and ability to adapt to change; and (4)
universal beliefs, which enable coexistence with other faiths.
Sources: Ichiro Hori. Folk Religion in
Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1968; Yong Choon Kim. Oriental
Thought. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Little-

field, 1973; Ikuko Osumi and Malcolm

Ritchie. The Shamanic Healer: The Healing
World of lkuko Osumi and the Traditional
Art of Seiki-Jutsu. London: Century, 1987;
in the
Geoffrey Parrinder. Mysticism
World's Religions. New York: Oxford Uni-

versity Press, 1976; Stuart D. B. Picken.

Shinto: Japan's Spiritual Roots. Tokyo:
Kodansha International, 1980; J. Isamu
Yamamoto. Beyond Buddhism. Downers
Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1982; Johrei
Fellowship.

Shroud of Turin
A yellow strip of linen bearing bloodstains and the brownish image of the
body of a bearded man, which for centuries was believed to be the shroud in
which Jesus was buried. Measuring about
fourteen feet in length and four feet in
width, the cloth has been the subject of
controversy, debate, and analysis since it
came to light in a French church in 1353.

550

It is considered by the Vatican to be the

most important relic in Christendom. The
shroud takes its name from St. John's Cathedral in Turin, where it has been held,
folded, in a locked silver chest since the
fifteenth century, seldom shown to the
public. In 1988 the Vatican allowed carbon dating tests of samples of the cloth.
According to the test results, the shroud
is a medieval forgery.
One of the earliest skeptics of the
shroud's authenticity was Bishop Pierre
D' Arcis, who in 1389 told Pope Clement
VII that the shroud was a forgery and the
forger had made a confession. Yet this
early dismissal did not deter the development of numerous theories about the
shroud's origins and how it got to western Europe.
Nothing is known about the history
of the shroud prior to 1353, when it surfaced in the possession of the family of
Geoffrey De Charny, Lord of Savoy and
Lirey, who built a church at Lirey in that
year to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The shroud was housed in this church. In
1452 Marguerite de Charny gave it to the
Duke of Savoy because she lacked a suitable heir. In 1478 the shroud was taken
to Turin, the new capital of Savoy. The
relic was willed to the Vatican when King
Umberto II, the last Savoy, died in 1983.
Some historians have seen a connection between the shroud, pre-Christian
Constantinople, the Crusades, and the de
Charny family. The portrait on the
shroud is similar to the Mandylion, a
Byzantine portrait allegedly made "without hands," and one of the factors said to
influence the conversion to Christianity
of King Abgar V of Edessa. In 942, the
Mandylion portrait was bought by Constantinople.
In 1204 Constantinople was sacked
by the Crusader Knights Templar, and
the Mandylion, along with many other
relics, disappeared. It was speculated that
the shroud was among the many relics
taken back to Europe by the Knights. In

Shinto

1307 the Knights were prosecuted for

idolatry and heresy. Two of the leading
members were exiled and burned at the
stake in 1314, one of them being Geoffrey de Charny, a relative of the man who
later built the church.
Those who believed the shroud to be
authentic argued that a forgery would require skills and knowledge believed to be
beyond the medieval capacities. Until
1988 the Vatican allowed only very limited examination of the shroud, and
much evidence seemed to favor its authenticity. The church never claimed the
shroud to be authentic, but never discouraged the belief, either.
That it is a forgery raises questions
as to how the job was done. The shroud
bears certain artistic, religious, and civil
depictions thought to be known only to
those living at the time of Christ. The
bloodstained wounds on the image are
consistent with the tortures thought to
have been inflicted on Christ before
death, and indicative of the times in
which he lived. In some cases this evidence tallies with mystical visions reported from the fourteenth century to the
twentieth century.
Believers maintained that the image
was created by some kind of holy fire
when Jesus disappeared from the Holy
Sepulcher. Computerized enhancement
ruled out the idea that the image was
painted on or applied with herbs. An
analysis of the purported bloodstains
compared with the composition of dried
blood. There are no linear strokes or
change of color from light to dark. In
1898 Secondo Pia photographed the
shroud and a negative image was revealed. The shroud was three-dimensional with front and back images, as if it
had enveloped a body.
Medieval representational art depicted Jesus clothed rather than naked as
he is on the shroud, and paintings of the
crucifixion showed nails piercing his
hands, not the wrists, as indicated by the

Shroud of Turin

shroud. It was not until the 1960s that it

was learned that nails were pounded
through the wrists because the hands
could not support the weight of the body
upon the cross.
Furthermore, the cloth is made of
linen with a three-to-one twill weave,
similar to fabrics dating from firstcentury Palestine, and not thought to be
known in medieval Europe. The shroud
contains pollen fossils from plants that
grew only in Palestine at the time of
Christ.
Early Jewish burial practices included the placement of coin-like objects
over the eyelids, which photo enhancement analysis suggested on the image on
the shroud. The man depicted on the
shroud was hit as many as 125 times with
a three-pronged whip, similar to one used
by Roman soldiers of the first century,
known as a flagra. Other wounds suggest
further Roman practices of dealing with
prisoners and the act of crucifixion.
In 1988, after years of refusals, the
Vatican approved carbon 14 dating testing with a new nuclear device, known as
the tandem accelerator mass spectrometer, that allows testing with samples only
about the size of a postage stamp. Three
samples were dated in independent, blind
tests by Oxford University, the University
of Arizona, and the Federal Institute of
Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, coordinated by the British Museum. All three
institutions concluded that the shroud
was a medieval forgery dating between
1260 and 1390.
Nevertheless, church officials encouraged the continued veneration of the
shroud as a pictorial image of Christ, capable of inspiring religious faith and even
miracles. The officials further maintained
that more research and evaluation would
be needed before the shroud's origins
could be conclusively established.
Sources: Malcolm W. Browne. "Tests
Show Shroud of Turin to Be Fraud, Scientist Hints." The New York Times (Septem-

551

ber 22, 1988): 28; "Is Shroud of Turin a

Fake?" The Seattle Times (August 26,
1988): 2; Richard Saltus. "Scientists May
Finally Learn Age of Shroud." Boston
Globe (April 18, 1988): 31-32; H. David
Sox. "The Shroud." New Realities 1, no. 4
(1977): 42-46; Roberto Suro. "Church
Says Shroud of Turin Isn't Authentic." The
New York Times (October 14, 1988): p.
1 +; Frank C. Tribbe. "The Shroud of
Turin Confirms Mystical Visions." Venture
Inward (March/April 1986): 37-40; Ian
Wilson. The Shroud of Turin: The Burial
Cloth of Jesus Christ? Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1978.

Siddhis
Paranormal and extraordinary powers attained through spiritual development, especially in Tantric and yogic practices.
Siddhis is Sanskrit for "perfect abilities"
or "miraculous powers."
In Hindu yoga siddhis include such
abilities as clairvoyance, telepathy, mindreading, levitation, materialization, rendering one's self and things invisible, projecting out-of-body and entering another
body, superhuman strength, and knowing
the moment when one will die. These
abilities are not to be sought for themselves because they are part of the phenomenal world and thus are obstacles to
the realization of the Absolute. Siddhis
are inevitable but must be renounced and
overcome. If they are not, the yogi becomes merely a magician trapped in the
phenomenal world of siddhis, and will
not obtain the highest form of samadhi,
union with the Absolute.
Book III of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras is
devoted to siddhis, which are attained
through the practice of samyama.
Samyama is a self-control in the final
three phases of Raja Yoga, which is the
control of the mind through concentration, breath control, posture, meditation,
and contemplation. Meditation upon objects or ideas enables the yogi to possess
them magically, that is, to understand

552

them by becoming them. According to

Patanjali samyama enables a yogi to become invisible because by concentrating
on the form of the body, the yogi merges
with form and ceases to become an object
of perception to others.
In Buddhist yoga iddhis (the Pali
term for siddhis, which means "Wondrous Gifts") are the eight powers of
mastery over the body and nature. The
eight powers include invincibility, invisibility, fleetness in running, ability to see
the gods, control over spirits and demons,
the ability to fly, the preservation of
youth, and the ability to make certain
pills. Although possession of the iddhis is
not viewed as harmful, it is not encouraged because of the danger that they will
turn the monk away from the path to enlightenment, nirvana. In fact, the iddhis
cannot be avoided, for they are part of
the process of dying to the mundane
world in order to be reborn in an unconditioned state.
Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical
Buddha, forbade the use and display of
iddhis, especially to noninitiates. He did
this because the same powers could be
obtained through magic without spiritual
transformation, and such displays would
not aid the Buddhist message.
Siddhis also are reported to arise
spontaneously in kundalini awakenings.
In Hindu yoga the kundalini, or "serpent
power," is a spiritual force that resides
dormant at the base of the spine. When
awakened, it rises up through the chakras
to the crown. See Kundalini; Milarepa;
Yoga.
Sources: Mircea Eliade. Yoga: Immortality
and Freedom. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1958; The Encyclopedia
of Eastern Philosophy and Religion. Boston: Shambhala, 1989; Lee Sanella. The
Kundalini Experience. Lower Lake, CA: Integral Publishing, 1987.

Sidgwick, Eleanor
See Society for Psychical Research (SPR).

Shroud of Turin

Sidgwick, Henry
See Society for Psychical Research (SPR).

Sitting
See Seance.

Smith, Helene
The pseudonym of Catherine Elise
Muller, a late-nineteenth-century medium
from Geneva, Switzerland, who aroused
considerable controversy over her alleged
astral visits to Mars. Smith never worked
as a paid medium, but gave seances to
friends and admirers for entertainment.
She earned a living holding a high position in a large store in Geneva.
Smith's seances were characterized
by trances, automatic writing in Arabic,
and glossolalia, or speaking in tongues.
She hypnotized herself into a trance, and
allowed her control, Leopold, to speak
and write through her.
Smith claimed she had been a Hindu
princess and Marie Antoinette in previous lives. Her present humble life was repayment of a karmic debt for her transgressions as Antoinette. One of the spirits
she claimed to channel in trances was
a contemporary
of Antoinette, the
eighteenth-century Italian sorcerer Cagliostro. When the spirit of Cagliostro appeared, Smith's appearance changed
markedly to drooping eyelids and a double chin. The spirit used her vocal cords,
speaking in a deep bass voice.
Leopold, who controlled a bevy of
spirits around Smith, had been transported to Mars, Smith said. The spirits
were able to take Smith to Mars while
she was in trance. The results of these
journeys were crude pictures of Martian
landscapes, including plants, houses, and
city streets, and automatic writing of a
Martian language. Many people believed
her.
In the late 1890s, Smith was re-

Society for Psychical

Research

(SPR)

searched by a number of leading investigators, most notably Theodore Flournoy,

a Swiss professor of psychology. Flournoy, using psychoanalytic techniques,
spent five years sitting in on seances, researching Smith's personal history, and
corroborating historical information she
provided at her seances.
Flournoy concluded that Smith had a
fantastic imagination, perhaps complemented with telepathy and telekinesis.
The Martian language that she produced
was a childish imitation of French; a Sanskrit expert declared that 98 percent of
the words could be traced to known languages. "Leopold," who was pompous,
dignified, and sensible, was probably her
most highly developed secondary personality.
Flournoy published his findings in
1900 in From India to the Planet Mars.
Smith's supporters stood by her, and
Flournoy was banished from her life.
Ironically, the expose served to increase
her popularity, and Smith enjoyed comfortable wealth and fame. See Super-ESP;
Xenoglossy.
Sources: Theodore Flournoy. From India to
the Planet Mars: A Study of a Case of Somnambulism with Glossolalia. New York:

Harper
umship

& Bros., 1900; Alan Gauld.

and

Survival.

Medi-

London: William

Heinemann Ltd., 1982; Into the Unknown.

Pleasantville, NY: Reader's Digest, 1981;
Frederic W. H. Myers. Human Personality
and Its Survival of Bodily Death. Vols. 1
and 2. 1903. New ed. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1954.

Smith, Joseph Jr.

See Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, the.

Society for Psychical

Research (SPR)
Britain's leading organization for research into the paranormal. The Society

553

for Psychical Research (SPR) was

founded in 1882 in London to develop systematic, scientific investigation of
certain phenomena which, if genuine,
appeared to be inexplicable. Such phenomena included hypnosis and multiple personality, extrasensory perception
(ESP), poltergeists, and mediumistic powers, all of which remain topics of debate.
In more recent years, other research has
been conducted into psychokinesis (PK)
effects, anomalous electrical and biophysical effects, out-of-body experiences, and
near-death experiences.
The roots of the SPR can be traced
to the early investigations of Spiritualist
phenomena by Henry Sidgwick, Frederic
W. H. Myers, and Edmund Gurney, all
Fellows of Trinity College at Cambridge.
In 1873 Myers suggested to Sidgwick that
they might conduct joint investigations of
mediums, following a convincing experience Myers had at a sitting of the medium C. Williams. Williams was known
for materializing a spirit named "John
King." At the seance the huge, hairy hand
of John King seemed to materialize from
the ceiling and descend in front of Myers,
who grabbed it in his hands. The spirit
hand began to dematerialize, shrinking
until it disappeared.
Sidgwick was more skeptical about
such mediumistic phenomena than Myers, but agreed to conduct investigations.
In 1874, at Myers's instigation, an informal group of investigators was set up.
The group included Gurney, Walter Leaf,
Lord Raleigh, Arthur Balfour and his sisters Eleanor (who married Sidgwick in
1876) and Evelyn (Lady Raleigh), and
others, and became known after the formation of the SPR as "the Sidgwick
group." The members were wealthy, well
educated, and well connected in the high
academic, social, and political circles of
Britain. They had the money, the time,
and the interest to pursue investigations
and collect data.
The group's early investigations fell

554

into a predictable pattern. Myers would

get excited about a medium and persuade
Sidgwick and the others to investigate.
More often than not, the medium's feats
were exposed as fraudulent or could be
explained by normal means, and the
group would meet with disappointment.
Myers persevered from one medium to
another. Despite the disappointments,
some evidence was inexplicable in conventional terms.
Meanwhile, the London Dialectical
Society, formed in the late 1860s, was
conducting scientific, methodical investigations of Spiritualist phenomena. Spiritualist organizations were forming. See
Spiritualism. In 1875 the Psychological
Society was founded by Spiritualist Sergeant Cox with the purpose of investigating psychical phenomena. The idea
looked promising to Spiritualists, who
desired validation by objective investigators, but Cox's society died with his own
death in 1879.
The call for a new society to conduct
psychical research was made in 1882 by
Sir William Barrett, a prominent physicist
who was interested in Spiritualist phenomena, and Edmund Dawson Rogers, a
prominent Spiritualist. An organizing
conference was held that January. It included Spiritualists and the Sidgwick
group. The organization was christened
the Society for Psychical Research. Sidgwick was elected president, an office he
would hold for nine years, and a steering
council was formed.
The council established six research
committees to study: (1) thought-transference, later renamed telepathy by Myers; (2) mesmerism, hypnotism, clairvoyance, and related phenomena;
(3)
German scientist Baron Karl von Reichenbach's research into "sensitives"; (4)
apparitions of all types, and hauntings;
(5) physical phenomena associated with
Spiritualistic mediums; and (6) the collection and collation of data on the history
of the above subjects.

Society for Psychical

Research

(SPR)

The SPR then embarked on a massive amount of research. The Sidgwick

group, with its high-level contacts, attracted the interest of numerous eminent
people, including researcher William
Crookes, Oliver Lodge, author Arthur
Conan Doyle, philosopher and psychologist William James, and later psychiatrists
Sigmund Freud, Carl G. Jung, and others.
By 1886 dissension had broken out between the intellectuals and the Spiritualists, with each camp feeling the other was
not doing the proper job for the overall
cause. By 1887 a large contingent of Spiritualists had resigned, leaving the intellectuals in full command.
The volume of data collected and
published by the SPR by 1900 was staggering: 11,000 pages of reports and articles. In addition, Gurney, Myers, and
Frank Podmore, another founding member, produced a 1,416-page book, Phantasms of the Living (1886), which included data on hallucinations, both
veridical and nonveridical; apparitions;
and telepathy; and Myers produced the
1,360-page book, Human Personality
and the Survival of Bodily Death (1903).
Most of this prodigious output was accomplished and analyzed by the Sidgwick
group.
In 1885 the American Society for
Psychical Research (ASPR) was founded
in Boston. In 1887 Richard Hodgson, a
university pupil of Sidgwick, left for
America to run the affairs of the ASPR.
In 1889, due to financial need, the ASPR
became an affiliate of the SPR. In 1906 it
was reorganized as an independent
group. See American Society for Psychical
Research (ASPR).
By 1905 the key members of the
Sidgwick group were dead: Gurney in
1888; Sidgwick in 1900; Myers in 1901;
and Hodgson in 1905. Podmore died in
1910. After death all but Sidgwick, the
most skeptical about life after death, reportedly kept working with the SPR
through mediumistic communications.

Society for Psychical Research (SPR)

See Cross correspondence; Piper, Leonora E. Eleanor Sidgwick became president of the SPR in 1908-1909, and in
1910 became honorary secretary until
1931. She was appointed president
d'honneur in 1932.
Since the 1940s the SPR has devoted
more attention to mass experiments evaluated by statistical methods, though less
so than the American Society for Psychical Research and institutional parapsychology in general.
The SPR defines its current fields of
study as:

Inquiry into the nature of all forms

of paranormal cognition, including
telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, retrocognition, remote viewing,
psychometry, dowsing, and veridical
hallucinations of various kinds.
Inquiry into the reality and nature of
all forms of paranormal action, including PK, poltergeist phenomena,
teleportation, and human levitation.
Inquiry into altered states of consciousness in connection with hypnotic trance, dreaming, out-of-body
experiences, near-death experiences,
and sensory deprivation, as well as
the paranormal effects that appear
to be associated with them.
Investigation of phenomena associated with psychic sensitivity or mediumship, such as automatic writing,
alleged spirit communication, and
physical manifestations.
Investigation of evidence suggesting
survival after death and evidence
suggesting reincarnation.
Investigation of reports of other relevant phenomena that appear, prima
facie, to contravene accepted scientific principles.
Investigation into the social and psychological aspects of such phenomena, within and across cultural
boundaries.

555

 Development of new conceptual

models and new ways of thinking
concerning the application of accepted scientific theories to the findings of psychical research. The subject of time is of particular interest.
In addition, interest remains high in
psi as it relates to medicine, healing, psychiatry, philosophy, anthropology, biology, folklore, and history.
The SPR has no research laboratory
and does not express a collective opinion.
Findings of researchers are published in
the SPR's Journal and Proceedings, while
informal articles appear in the Newsletter
and Newsletter Supplement. Membership
is international. See Psi; Theosophy.
The Society for Psychical Research; Slater Brown. The Heyday of Spiritualism. New York: Hawthorn Books,
1970; Alfred Douglas. Extrasensory Powers: A Century of Psychical Research. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1976; Alan
Gauld. The Founders of Psychical Research. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1968; Renee Haynes. The Society for Psychical Research: 1882-1982. A History.
London: Macdonald & Co., 1982.
Sources:

Society of Friends (Quakers)

Religious order founded about 1650 in
England by George Fox. The Religious
Society of Friends, or Quakers, as it is
commonly called, stresses a personal, almost mystical knowledge of God and the
workings of the Lord's "inner light"
within all people.
Along with other splinter Puritan
groups, such as the Seekers, Baptists, and
Ranters, the Quakers arose out of a belief
in the empirical existence of Christ. At
about age twenty, George Fox, born in
1624 in Fenny Drayton village, Leicestershire, began suffering religious misgivings
and spiritual longings. He consulted with
various Anglican and Puritan ministers
and priests, but they dismissed him as

556

slightly deranged. Fox felt entirely alone

until 1647, when at age twenty-three he
heard a voice saying, "There is one, even
Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition."
Immediately after, Fox received the
first of four insights: that a Christian is a
true believer, revealed through a changed
life, not one who follows ceremony or
false piety. The second revelation was
that a minister is simply one who ministers. Such a calling can happen to anyone,
male or female, and requires no theological training or education. Not long afterward Fox received the third insight:
that the church is not a place; that there
is no holy ground. Corollary to that idea
was the belief that ecclesiastical hierarchy
was superfluous to the living fellowship.
Fox referred to church buildings as "steeple houses," and Quaker places of worship as "meetinghouses."
Fox's fourth insight was that faith is
based solely on firsthand knowledge of
Christ as a living, personal reality, not on
logic, reasoning, historical reporting, or
even Scripture. This empirical proof came
to be called the Quaker Way: the idea
that worshipers need not consult preachers or the Bible to receive knowledge of
the Holy Spirit-the so-called "inner light
of Christ" present in every human heart.
Although Fox rejoiced in his new
faith, it was not until 1652, when he
prayed at a place called Pendle Hill, that
he received a vision explaining his mission to show Christ in the Present Tense
as a personal Being. At that time Fox met
with a group of Seekers who, overcome
with his message, converted. Fox also
converted Judge Fell and his wife, Margaret, who opened her Swarthmore Hall
estate for the use of the Quakers, offering
them protection from the local authorities. When Judge Fell died, Fox married
Margaret in 1669, keeping Swarthmore.
The early Quakers suffered terrible
persecution from 1650 to 1690, including
prison, beatings, hangings, brandings,

Society for Psychical

Research

(SPR)

Quaker meeting
and tongue borings. Nonetheless, their
influence quickly spread throughout England and to her colonies in America.
Quakerism's appeal came from the idea
that anyone-no
matter whether they
were man or woman, black or white, rich
or poor, educated or illiterate-could experience Christ and spread his word.
Such notions were great class levelers and
looked on with abhorrence by many.
Quakers practiced "hat honor" and
"plain language," refusing to doff their
hats except in prayer or use titles acknowledging superiors. The use of "thee"
and "thou" flew in the face of seventeenth-century convention. In those days
"you" was the plural, polite form of the
second-person pronoun, used for superiors, and the others were the familiar, singular forms.
Fox believed that true conversion depended on a changed life, and that by
striving for a pure heart, human beings
could be perfect. This idea fell under the
influence of Pietism and the Holiness

Society

of Friends (Quakers)

movements of the late eighteenth and

early nineteenth centuries and caused a
split in the Friends, with Elias Hicks and
John Wilbur on the side of Quakerism's
uniqueness and J. J. Gurney in the evangelical, even fundamentalist, camp. Although there are three main groups of
Friends today-the Friends United Meeting, the Friends General Conference, and
the Evangelical Friends Alliance, with beliefs ranging from moderate to liberal to
extremely fundamentalist-the schism between the two sides has been partially
healed.
The name "Quaker" comes from the
idea that worshipers were so overcome
with the Holy Spirit that they quaked.
Traditional Quaker worship services are
silent gatherings without liturgy or ministerial supervision. Such quiet was not
enforced but allowed the believers to listen for that "still, small voice" that
would lead them. Modern services now
include hymns, scripture readings, and
even some preaching. Fox felt that while

557

all could be ministers, some were called

to help develop "that of God" in all.
Quakers practice pacifism and refuse
to take oaths or tithe their incomes to the
church. They practice no sacraments,
such as marriage, baptism, communion,
or blessing of the dead, believing that every minute of life is a sacrament. Marriages are public ceremonies in which the
couple declare their vows before God, not
a minister. Funerals are simple burials.
They stress the Logos doctrine of John,
believing that Christ as the Eternal Word
and Light shone back as far as all civilization. They do not emphasize the idea of
Trinity.
True to rheir name as Friends, they
believe fervently in shouldering each other's burdens and actively working for the
good of humankind. During the periods
of persecution, Friends never failed to
take care of families who had members in
prison. Even the children would continue
services if all the adults had been incarcerated. Due to the efforts of John Woolman (1719-1792), no Friend could continue in the church and be a slave owner
as early as 1785. Quakers operated the
famous Underground Railroad before
and during the Civil War, helping slaves
escape north to freedom in Canada. The
American Friends Service Committee,
founded in 1917 by Rufus Jones, aids rhe
suffering and destitute worldwide and
was instrumental in saving many children
from Nazi horrors in World War II. Today Friends are active in the Sanctuary
Movement, helping place Central American refugees fleeing terrorist revolutions.
Unlike other religious founders,
George Fox did not become a cult leader.
By his death in 1691, his fame had been
usurped by probably the most famous
Quaker, William Penn. Converting to
Quakerism against the expectations of his
upper-class background, Penn determined
to found a "holy experiment" in America. His wishes were granted in 1681,
when he received a charter from King

558

Charles II for lands along the Delaware

River. Pennsylvania was a haven against
religious persecution and one of the first
places to govern by consent of the governed. All propertied Christians could
vote and hold office.
Penn's efforts as a Quaker also resulted in the affirmation of a jury's right
to decide a verdict without fear of retribution. During Penn's trial for inciting a
riot in 1670, when he was worshiping
with other Friends in Gracechurch Street,
London, the jury was continually badgered and eventually jailed for finding
him not guilty. Penn begged the jury to
remember their rights as Englishmen to
pass verdict, and the Court of Common
Pleas guaranteed those rights in 1671.
Other famous Quakers include Robert Barclay, ancestor of the Barclay banking family; poet John Greenleaf Whittier;
Johns Hopkins, who endowed the nowfamous Baltimore hospital and research
facility to be open to all regardless of
race, creed, or color; feminist Lucretia
Matt, who called the first women's rights
convention in the United States at Seneca
Falls, New York; Elizabeth Fry, who
pressured Parliament for women's prison
reform and rehabilitation, was instrumental for stopping transportation of
women prisoners to Australia, and
founded the first school to train nurses;
author and Pulitzer-prize winner James
A. Michener; President Herbert Hoover;
and Rowland Hussey Macy, founder of
the department store chain, who made
the Quaker practice of selling goods at
one established price for all customers
standard practice throughout the retail
industry.
Sources: Keith Crim, gen. ed. Abingdon
Dictionary of Living Religions. Nashville,

TN: Abingdon Press, 1981; Daisy Newman. A Procession of Friends. Garden City,
NY: Doubleday, 1972; D. Elton Trueblood. The People Called Quakers. Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1971.

Society

of Friends (Quakers)

Soul mate
A soul's ideal counterpart, which must be
found for true happiness and fulfillment.
The search for the counterpart may consume multiple reincarnations. Soul mates
are largely a popular Western phenomenon, especially in the United States. So
many definitions of soul mates have been
put forth that there is no definitive soul
mate and no definitive explanation as to
their origins. The notion of searching for
one's long-lost soul mate gained great
popularity in the 1970s and 1980sperhaps as a reaction to the sexual freedom of the 1960s-and
has become
highly romanticized.
A popular theory says soul mates began in a remote time when a cleavage in
human spiritual and physical nature occurred, leaving the soul imperfect and in
need of searching for its other half. The
imperfect halves are reflected in the doctrine of complements of the Platonists,
who said that man could find in woman
the virtues he lacked. According to the
soul mate theory, the two halves may be
reincarnated many times before finding
each other. At last they join together and
fulfill their purpose. The theory assumes
that a soul mate is of the opposite sex,
and provides a perfect relationship of
love and bliss.
Another theory holds that a soul
mate is not necessarily a missing half, but
a soul with whom one has spent many
lives and for whom one has developed a
strong affinity. Such soul mates gravitate
together again and again to further develop their relationship and help each
other reach the highest potential. They
are completely in tune with each other
and can communicate without words.
They love each other unconditionally,
cannot bear to be separated from each
other, and suffer great misery should
their partner die and leave them behind.
During the course of many lives together,
they may change sex roles.

Soul mate

Still another theory holds that soul

mates are not necessarily spouses or lovers, but family members, friends, business
partners, and others with whom we have
intimate bonds. They may be of either
sex, and more than one may be part of
our lives.
Elizabeth Clare Prophet, leader of
the Church Universal and Triumphant,
cites three kinds of soul mates: the twin
or counterpart; the companion or lover;
and the karmic, who comes into a life to
teach hard karmic lessons.
References to three types of soul
mates are found in the Edgar Cayce readings: companion souls, who share a spiritual relationship; twin souls, who share a
mental relationship and a common purpose or ideal; and soul mates, who share
a physical relationship and an affinity
built on many incarnations together, and
who are in tune with each other's vibrations on physical mental and spiritual levels. Companion souls and twin souls do
not necessarily share marriage or a physical relationship. The Cayce readings describe Mary and Jesus as twin souls.
Some people devote a great deal of
effort to trying to find their soul mate.
Author Richard Bach chronicled his own
three-year search for the perfect mate in
The Bridge Across Forever. He discovered his soul mate was a woman he already knew, actress Leslie Parrish.
Others consult astrologers, psychics,
and channelers, attend classes and seminars, undergo past-life regression, and
learn visualization and "dream programming" techniques designed to attract soul
mates. Some so-called soul mate experts
maintain that one must "program" one's
self physically, mentally, and visually in
order to find the soul mate. Others believe they will instantly recognize their
soul mate upon meeting him or her.
Opinions differ as to whether soul mates
will naturally come together or whether
the relationship must be "earned." An
obsession with soul mates, however, sets

559

up unrealistic expectations for any relationship.

According to philosopher Manly P.
Hall, the doctrine of reincarnation itself
negates the need for soul mates. Each
soul is complete unto itself and is responsible for its own spiritual development.
According to Edgar Cayce, the ultimate
soul mate is God or the Christ, the universal consciousness of which every soul
is a part. See Karma; Reincarnation.
Sources: Richard Bach. The Bridge Across
Forever. New York: Dell, 1984; Rosemary
Ellen Guiley. Tales of Reincarnation. New

York: Pocket Books, 1989; Manly Palmer

Hall. Reincarnation: The Cycle of Necessity. Los Angeles: The Philosophical Research Society, 1956; Frederick Lenz. Lifetimes:

True Accounts

of Reincarnation.

New York: Fawcett Crest, 1977; Violet M.

Shelly and Mark Thurston. "Soul Mates."
Venture Inward 1, no. 2 (November!
December 1984): 13-18; Jess Stearn. Soul
Mates. New York: Bantam Books, 1984;
Dick Sutphen. You Were Born Again to Be
Together. New York: Pocket Books, 1976;
John Van Auken. Past Lives and Present
Relationships. Virginia Beach, VA: Inner
Vision, 1984; Glenn Williston and Judith
Johnstone. Discovering Your Past Lives.
First published as Soul Search. 1983. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England:
The Aquarian Press, 1988.

Spangler, David (b. 1945)

American mystic, writer, and VISIOnary,
formerly codirector of the Findhorn
Foundation Community.
David Spangler was born on January
7, 1945, in Columbus, Ohio. From an
early age Spangler exhibited paranormal
gifts, seeing invisible beings and being
sensitive to vibrations. In 1951, when he
was six, his father, an engineer working
for military intelligence, was sent to an
air base near Casablanca, Morocco,
where the family lived for six years.
A year later, while riding in a car
heading toward Casablanca, Spangler

560

had his first mystical experience. It began

with an out-of-body experience and
shifted through four stages. In the first
stage, he had a sense of reawakening as
though from sleep, and a sense of identity
not as David Spangler but as pure being
that was one with creation. In the second
stage, he became aware of past and future
incarnations, births and deaths, the eternity of the soul, and the continuity of the
self. The third stage was ineffable, a powerful feeling of the oneness of all things,
and of love, serenity, and power. He had
visual impressions of stars and galaxies
floating in a sea of spirit, and everything
engaging in a rhythmic and joyous dance
of life. In the final stage, he perceived
the intent behind his incarnation as
David Spangler, and felt connected to it
and to all other patterns unfolding in creation. He felt great love for all human
life. He then returned to his body and
normal consciousness. The experience
seemed to last hours, but lasted only a
few seconds.
Spangler was permanently changed
by the experience: He felt that part of
him was still seven years old, and another
part was now this other, much higher
level of consciousness. The sense of double consciousness receded during his
childhood, but he could summon it if he
wished to enter into it. Later in life he
perceived that his mission, his faith journey in this incarnation, was to bring
those two levels of consciousness together.
While in Morocco his parents had a
profound UFO experience, witnessing a
cigar-shaped craft with windows buzz the
air base. The craft was tracked for several
hundred miles across the Atlantic, over
Morocco, and down the coast of Africa.
The experience interested his father in researching UFOs.
In 1957 Spangler and his family
moved back to the United States; first to
Old Deerfield, Massachusetts, where
Spangler attended Deerfield Academy,

Soul mate

and then in 1959 to Phoenix, Arizona,

where he was introduced to the New Age.
His parents found groups interested in
UFOs and psychic phenomena, and met
Neva Dell Hunter, a well-known channeler who gave life readings. In 1964
Hunter invited Spangler to speak at one
of her annual conferences on the paranormal. That marked the beginning of his
career in public speaking.
At the time Spangler was a student at
Arizona State University in Tempe, studying toward a degree in genetics. However,
he received a strong inner calling to go in
a different direction, and dropped out.
From 1965 to 1970, Spangler lived in
California, first in Los Angeles and then
in the San Francisco area, where he lectured and gave counseling services in
partnership with a friend, Myrtle Glines.
Spangler's shifts of consciousness enabled him to perceive the patterns of
other beings and qualities. In 1965, during one such shift, a nonphysical "personage" walked into the room and began
to converse with him. The being's name
was a vibrational, nonverbal feeling. It
agreed to be called "John," had a distinct
personality, and referred to itself in the
first person plural of "we." Spangler began to work with John in a relationship
that was not channeling but merely communication; John said that he had manifested to help Spangler bridge the gap between his dual levels of consciousness.
John became an amalgam of this being
and Spangler.
For about three years, under John's
direction, Spangler gave readings for others. John occasionally would bring along
other beings or qualities for Spangler to
meet.
In 1970 Spangler and Glines traveled
to Europe. After visiting Findhorn, they
recognized that the community would be
the site of their next phase of work. They
lived there for nearly three years and became codirectors with founders Eileen
and Peter Caddy and Dorothy Maclean.

Spangler, David (b. 1945)

David Spangler
At Findhorn another presence manifested. Called Limitless Love and Truth,
it was a source of prophetic revelations
that had first appeared some years earlier
to another man in Britain. Limitless Love
and Truth was of great interest to many
who were connected with Findhorn, but
disagreements over how to define this being and make use of its statements led to
splits among followers. The transmissions
of Limitless Love and Truth were published in Spangler's first book, Revelation: The Birth of a New Age (1976). See
Findhom.
Spangler left Findhorn in 1973 and
returned to the San Francisco area. He
traveled extensively, doing public speaking and consulting. With a group of
friends from Findhorn who also returned
to the United States, including Glines and
his wife-to-be, Julie Manchester (they
married in 1981), Spangler set up the
Lorian Association, an umbrella organization for projects in publishing, education, and the arts. In 1980 Spangler
moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where he

561

helped design courses at the University of

Wisconsin in Milwaukee. In 1984 he and
Julie and others from the Lorian Association moved to Issaquah, Washington,
near Seattle. At about the same time,
Spangler retired from public appearances
for several years, concentrating on his
writing and developing his worldviews
and philosophy.
The shift in focus also was accompanied by a change in his relationship
with John. Over the years John's nature
had changed from a distinct personality
to a more mystical quality, until John was
more a realm of being or a way of looking at the world. Around 1985 Spangler
felt the work with John had reached a
point of diminishing return, and the two
agreed mutually to stop. He remains in
contact with John, though in a much different way.
In his writing and lecturing, Spangler's central message is one of the emergence of what he calls a "planetary sensibility": the birth of a new consciousness
that will be a planetary mind and soul,
which will bring about an evolutionary
leap for humankind. This state of consciousness will reach out to connect with
nature as a whole; it will be a true "Gaia
mind."
Spangler, a mystic in the Christian
tradition, has devoted much of his work
to helping individuals reconnect with the
sacred, both within themselves and
within everyday life. Much of the vitality
of Christianity lies outside the church, he
says. The institution has lost its ability to
provide the individual with the means to
have an ecstatic, personal encounter with
the numinous. The sacred can be found in
the ordinary, Spangler says; individuals
can learn to feel in contact with this dimension without having to go to special
places or go through special rituals.
Spangler is often identified with the
New Age and is considered a leading
spokesperson for it; he vie\',Tspart of his
work as defining New Age thought and

562

philosophy. The term "New Age," while

controversial to some, holds a great deal
of power for Spangler, who says no other
term carries quite the meaning of emerging consciousness. He agrees with other
observers of the New Age in noting that
much of what has been called "New
Age" has moved into mainstream culture
and thought. He also decries the tendency
to see the New Age only in terms of channeling, psychic phenomena, or crystals;
to Spangler the New Age is primarily a
mythic image of the cocreative power of
humanity to shape a future that empowers all life on the planet. See New Age.
Spangler's other published titles include The Laws of Manifestation (1975);
Towards a Planetary Vision (1977); Cooperation with Spirit (1982); Emergence:
The Rebirth of the Sacred (1984); and the
booklets The New Age (1988) and Channeling in the New Age (1988). See Channeling; Planetary consciousness.
Sources: David Spangler. Emergence: The
Rebirth of the Sacred. New York: Dell,
1984; David Spangler. Revelation: The
Birth of a New Age. Elgin, IL: The Lorian
Press, 1976; Interview with David Spangler.

Spirit guide
A nonphysical entity, usually perceived as
the Higher Self, an angel, a highly
evolved being or group mind, or a spirit
of the dead. The purpose of a spirit guide
is to help and protect an individual, assist
in spiritual development, or provide a
source of inspiration. Beliefs about spirit
guides vary and are widespread in all cultures.
It is widely believed around the
world that every individual has one or
more spirit guides from birth who remain
close during the person's entire life. At
death they assist in crossing the threshold
to the afterlife. In addition to the primary
guides, an individual can be aided by var-

Spangler, David (b. 1945)

ious guides who come and go for certain

assignments, such as the work a person
must accomplish in life. Some people believe their spirit guides chose their roles
for karmic reasons, or that the spirit
guides shared past lives with them. Deceased relatives sometimes assume spirit
guide roles.
Some individuals are very aware of
presences they call their guides. Guides
can appear in dreams or speak in an inner
voice. Some people receive clairaudient
messages or even visions that they attribute to their guides. Artistic individuals
sometimes credit their inspiration to
guides. Children who have "imaginary
playmates" may be cognizant of their
spirit guides. A person can attempt to establish communication
with guides
through meditation and visualization.
Western popular belief in spirit
guides comes from the ancient Greeks,
who believed in the existence of daimons,
intermediary spirits between man and the
gods. Daimons could be either good or
evil. A good daimon acted as a protector.
It was considered lucky to have one, for
such a daimon whispered in one's ear advice and ideas. Evil daimons, on the other
hand, could lead one astray.
Socrates claimed to be guided by a
good daimon throughout his life. The
daimon warned him of danger and bad
decisions, but never directed him what to
do. Socrates said his guardian spirit was
more trustworthy than omens from the
flights and entrails of birds, two highly
respected forms of divination.
British psychical researcher Frederic
W. H. Myers hypothesized that Socrates's
daimon was his own inner voice, welling
up from the "subliminal self," or the unconscious self.
The church turned all daimons into
evil demons, the minions of the Devil, but
absorbed the concept of a protector spirit
in the form of the guardian angel.
Spirit guides generally do not take on
animal form, though exceptions exist

Spiritism

among individuals who have pursued

magical or shamanic training. See Inspiration. Compare to Control; Guardian
spirit.
Sources: Litany Burns. Develop Your Psychic Abilities. New York: Pocket Books,
1985; June G. Bletzer. The Donning International Encyclopedic Psychic Dictionary.

Norfolk, VA: The Donning Co., 1986;

Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The Encyclopedia
of Witches and Witchcraft. New York:
Facts On File, 1989; Frederic W. H. Myers.
Human Personality and Its Survival of
Bodily Death. Vols. 1 and 2. 1903. New

ed. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.,

1954; Alex Tanous and Katherine Fair
Donnelly. Understanding and Developing
Your

Child's

Natural

Psychic

Abilities.

New York: Fireside Books, 1979.

Spiritism
The philosophy of Allan Kardec, known
as Kardecism (Kardecismo in Brazil) in
his honor, that originated with the Spiritualist movement that swept Europe in
the 1850s.
Writing under the pseudonym of
Kardec, the French writer and physician
Hippolyte Leon Denizard Rivail (18041869) published his seminal work, Le
Livre des Esprits (The Lives of the Spirits), in 1857. In it Kardec outlined his be-

liefs that certain illnesses have spiritual

causes-especially
epilepsy, schizophrenia, and multiple personality-and can be
treated psychically through communication with spirit guides. Such ideas were
common within the Spiritualist community, wherein mediums appealed to the
spirit world to help rid sufferers of obsessing tormentors.
But Kardec took Spiritualist doctrines further, claiming that many of
these psychic illnesses were not only the
result of spirit interference by others, but
were remnants of suffering and turmoil
endured by the individual in past lives.

563

Unlike many Spiritualists he firmly believed in reincarnation; he wrote that

each time a soul is reborn, it brings with
it "subsystems" of past lives that may
even block out the reality of the current
life.
According to Kardec each rebirth,
however painful, is necessary to enable
the soul to improve and eventually attain
a higher plane of existence. Kardec taught
that a person is composed of three parts:
an incarnate soul, a body, and a perispirit, or what Kardec described as a
semimaterial substance that unites soul
and body and surrounds the soul like an
envelope. All souls are created equal, ignorant, and untested, and continue coming back to life until they have nothing
more to learn.
At the death of the flesh, the perispirit holds the soul and separates from
the body. This process takes longer if the
deceased was particularly attached to his
or her material existence. Spiritually advanced souls, Kardec believed, receive
death with joy as it signifies release and
the promise of future enlightenment. On
the other hand, the spirits of those unfortunates who died suddenly or violently
desperately cling to their bodies, confused
and certain they are not dead. Suicides,
especially, try to remain with their material existences, and may reincarnate only
to commit suicide again. Kardec taught
that only when the perispirit has left the
flesh does the soul realize it is no longer
part of the human world.
Once the peri spirit has left the body,
the soul returns to the spirit world, where
Kardec believed the soul reviews its past
lives, its progress to enlightenment, and
decides which life-path to pursue next.
Each soul has wide latitude in choosing
its next life, and often returns to its
earthly family. In cases where two spirits
desire to occupy the same body, Goddescribed by Kardec as the Supreme Intelligence and First Cause of All Thingsbreaks the tie.

564

Kardec believed spirit obsession and

possession caused schizophrenia and multiple personality, often through the interference of unhappy past incarnations.
Spiritist author Andre Luiz called such
obsession "spirit vampirism," in which
spirits who suffered greatly on earth devote their energies to persecution of the
living instead of progressing through
their own spiritual evolution. Kardec did
not consider all obsession intentional,
however. "Spirit induction" occurs when
a confused, recently deceased soul invades a living human on the presumption
that death did not happen. Kardec denied
the possibility of exorcism by outsiders,
whether in the name of the Lord or not.
Instead he maintained exorcism must
originate from the obsessed through conviction and prayer, noting proverbially
that "God helps those who help themselves."
Kardec's theories enjoyed brief popularity in Europe and then gave way to
the next intellectual craze. But in Brazil,
inured in centuries of African spirits,
magic, and superstition, Kardecismo took
root and remains a powerful religious
force in contemporary society, with centers all over the country. Kardecism also
flourishes in the Philippines. It is difficult
to estimate how many people who profess to practice the state religion, Catholicism, also call themselves espiritas.
Kardecist
healing
encompasses
prayer, counseling, exploration of past
lives through a medium, and perhaps psychic surgery. Practitioners of this controversial technique actually claim to open
the body without anesthetic or surgical
instruments, manipulate vital organs, and
use laying-on of hands to heal all kinds of
disease and deformity. The mediums may
be uneducated and unskilled, but they
claim to be guided by the spirits of past
physicians.
The Kardecist psychiatric hospitals,
staffed by highly trained doctors, operate
comfortably alongside their more tradi-

Spiritism

tional counterparts in Brazil and have

won the admiration of many non-Spiritist
physicians. As early as 1912, psychiatrist
Dr. Oscar Pittham, saddened with his
profession's inability to treat many sufferers successfully, began collecting funds
to establish a so-called "spirit hospital."
Finally, in 1934, Dr. Pittham's dreams
were realized in a new hospital in Porto
Allegre. The facility, which doubled in
size in 1951, supports more than six hundred beds and a staff of more than two
hundred. Other major Kardecist institutions are in Itapira and Sao Paulo.
Perhaps the hospitals' most remarkable features are their rigorous denial of
profit and acceptance of all patients, regardless of race, creed, or ability to pay.
Hospital directors do not receive salaries.
All dedicated Spiritist mediums
firmly insist that theirs is a God-given talent, not to be used for personal gain.
Once a medium begins charging for paranormal services, the gift will disappear.
Mediums are doors to the invisible, and
the more talented the medium, the more
evolved the spirits he or she will be able
to contact. One of Brazil's most famous
mediums, Chico Xavier, has transcribed
well over a hundred books on science, literature, history, Kardecist philosophy,
and children's stories, yet lives in poverty.
He modestly claims that his spirit guides
are the true authors.
Kardec acknowledged that such humility does not characterize every medium. His Medium's Book (1861) outlined in detail the function of a medium,
and any charlatan who wished to learn
the tricks of the trade only had to study
Kardec's work. Little research has been
done of Spiritist phenomena, since believers consider Kardecismo a religion, not
a science. The only major organization
collecting and studying Spiritist work is
the Instituto Brasileiro de Pesquisas
Psicobiofisic (IBPP), or the Brazilian Institute for Psycho-Biophysical Research,
founded by Hernani Andrade in 1963.

Spiritists do not proselytize, trying to

convince others of the rightness of their
faith, but only desire tolerance and the
freedom to practice. They accept unquestioningly the existence of spirits and their
powers. Proofs, such as table-rapping,
voices from beyond, and lying objects,
are to believers just so many parlor
games. See Healing, faith and psychic;
Macumba; Psychic surgery; Reincarnation; Spiritualism.
Sources: Guy Lyon Playfair. The Unknown
Power. New York: Pocket Books, 1975; D.
Scott Rogo. The Infinite Boundary. New
York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1987; Alberto
Villoldo and Stanley Krippner. Healing
States. New York: Simon & Schuster/
Fireside, 1987.

Spirit photography (also

paranormal photography)
Photographs of images of unseen people
or spirits. Spirit photography had its beginnings in 1861, when Boston jewelry
engraver William Mumler took a selfportrait and after developing the photographic plate, noticed the image of a dead
person next to his. Since then many individuals have claimed to photograph these
"extras." For example, psychic photographer William Hope said he took more
than 2,500 pictures of extras in his
twenty-year career during the early part
of the twentieth century. In most spirit
photographs, the extras are seen seated
next to or standing alongside the individual whose picture had just been taken.
Spirit photography appeared as Spiritualism was sweeping America, and it
quickly became popular with some Spiritualists who took it as proof of survival
after death. As Spiritualism moved across
the Atlantic to Britain, so did spirit photography.
Spirit photography then sank into
disrepute for a number of years because
many of the photographs looked fake, a

Spirit photography (also paranormal photography)

565

raphy, anymore than for thoughtography, because the spirit, being a pure reality, transcends the physical laws of light
and acts directly upon the (film) plate,
without going through the camera."
Images of extras found on film not
exposed in a camera are actually known
as scotographs, another example of spirit
photography. Closely related is psychography, messages written on film in the
hand of a dead person.
Spirit photography is used by some
ghost hunters in their investigations of
haunted sites. When the film is developed, the photographer looks for anom:: alous lights, shadows, and shapes that
~ were not visible to the naked eye. As eve idence of paranormal phenomena, spirit
~ photography remains controversial. See
J Thoughtography .
...,

Hereward Carrington. "Experiences in Psychic Photography." Journal of

Sources:
Spirit photograph

claim supported by numerous cases involving outright fraud. In some instances

photographers exposed negatives of a
supposed extra on a film plate to create a
double exposure. Other times photographs of individuals said to be extras
turned out to be pictures of people who
were very much alive. Even so, in some
cases these individuals had never been
photographed before, making it difficult
to explain how these photographs could
have been faked if there was no negative.
Debate continues among researchers
over whether the images are created by
the spirits of the dead themselves, or
whether the person sitting for the photograph or the photographer mentally
projects the image onto the film, creating
a "thoughtograph."
In Clairvoyance and Thoughtography (1931), Tomokichi Fukarai, president of the Psychical Institute of Japan,
drew links between spirit photography
and thoughtography. He noted that the
camera "is of no use for spirit-photog-

566

the American Society for Psychical Research 19 (1925): 258-67; T. Fukurai.

Clairvoyance and Thoughtography.
1931.

Reprint. New York: Arno Press, 1975; F.

W. Warrick. Experiments in Psychics. New
York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1939; Benjamin
B. Wolman, ed. Handbook of Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold,
1977.

Spiritual emergence
A range of non ordinary states of consciousness which, though transformative
and healing in nature, can be unsettling
because of their sudden or dramatic onset. These can include sudden arrivals at
new levels of awareness or states of consciousness, transformational
energies,
and psychic phenomena such as visions of
nonphysical beings, clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, telepathy, and
so on.
The term "spiritual emergence"
evolved from "spiritual emergency," a
term coined in the late 1970s by transper-

Spirit photography

(also paranormal

photography)

sonal psychiatrist Stanislav Grof and his

wife, Christina Grof, after Christina suffered her own psychospiritual crisis. In
founding the Spiritual Emergence Network (SEN) in 1980, Christina Grof
opted to replace "emergency" with
"emergence" so as not to imply that all
such experiences are traumatic. Spiritual
emergences can involve spiritual emergencies, however. From the standpoint of
traditional psychotherapy, such experiences can be interpreted as signs of mental illness (a breakdown), when in fact
they are indications of spiritual awakening (a breakthrough).
The seeds of Grof's own spiritual
emergence began with the birth of her
two children by a previous marriage.
During the first birth, in 1968, she experienced a release of tremendous energies
and an explosion of white light in her
head. Similar phenomena occurred during the second birth. In both cases she
was given drugs to counteract the expenences.
Over several years she had a variety
of non ordinary experiences of different
intensities, including inner visions of
birth and death, clairaudience of choral
music and chanting, unsettling synchronicities, spontaneous yoga asanas (postures associated with meditation), and
painful rushes of energy through her
body. At the time she did not know that
the rushes of energy were the awakening
of kundalini, or that what she was experiencing was similar to "shamanic illness."
In 1974 she met Swami Muktananda
and began a spiritual quest. Mythologist
Joseph Campbell urged her to go to Esalen Institute to meet Stanislav Grof,
whose research in LSD psychotherapy included phenomena similar to what Christina had experienced.
Shortly after their marriage, Christina experienced her first full spiritual
emergency: several days and nights in
which she was nearly overwhelmed with

Spiritual emergence

energies, emotions, and inner experiences. Rather than trying to quell them,
she learned to work through them.
As a result the Grofs and Rita Rohan
founded the SEN as an alternative to help
others "find their way through unexpected and often unsettling mystical and
psychic openings" rather than stop them
through traditional psychotherapy. SEN
also provides networking, referrals, and
information.
The Grofs identified six patterns that
are followed in any combination during a
spiritual emergence: (1) opening to life
myth, an interaction with the archetypal
realm of the collective unconscious; (2)
shamanic journey; (3) kundalini awakening; (4) emergence of a karmic pattern,
such as in past-life recalls; (5) psychic
opening, the manifestation of extrasensory abilities; and (6) possession by predatory entities.
Spiritual crises happen both intentionally and unintentionally. They may
last seconds, minutes, hours, or weeks.
Curiously, the opening to life myth usually lasts forty days, perhaps as a parallel
to the forty days Jesus spent in the desert.
Spiritual emergence is most likely to occur during times of great physical stress
or crisis, such as childbirth, surgery, sex,
or near-death; during times of emotional
stress and crises; during spiritual practices such as meditation; and during transitional stages of life. Frequently, spiritual
emergence temporarily disrupts a person's ability to carryon a normal life.
Spiritual emergences are common in
natural human development, and need to
be integrated, not suppressed or ignored.
Integration, which can go on over a period of years, leads to spiritual growth
and enhanced creativity, compassion, relaxation, inner peace, and desire to be of
service to others. Failure to integrate
them can lead to a deterioration of
mental health. See Archetypes; Kundalini; Psychology; Near-death experience
(NDE); Past-life recall; Shamanism.

567

Sources: Emma Bragdon. The Call of Spiritual Emergency: From Personal Crisis to
Personal Transformation.
San Francisco:

Harper & Row, 1990; Stanislav and Christina Grof. "Spiritual Emergency: The Understanding and Treatment of Transpersonal Crises." ReVision 8, no. 2 (1986);
Charles T. Tart. 0pen Mind, Discriminating Mind. San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1989; Keith Thompson. "Navigating the
Hero's Journey in Tandem: A Profile of
Stan and Christina Grof." The Common
Boundary 6, issue 6 (NovemberlDecember
1988): 8-11+.

Spiritualism
Religious movement that began in 1848
in the United States and swept both
America and Britain, peaking by the early
twentieth century but still in existence today. Its original appeal lay in the purported evidence it provided of survival after death, manifested through mediums
who communicated with spirits and performed paranormal feats.
Public receptivity to Spiritualism was
made possible by the psychism-based
movements that preceded it, Swedenborgianism and mesmerism, both of which
started in Europe in the late eighteenth
century and were exported to the United
States.
The concepts of eighteenth-century
Swedish philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg, while quite popular in parts of Europe, had a limited following in America.
Bur mesmerism fascinated the masses
with its trances in which "somnambules"
saw visions of the spirit world, became
mediums for spirits of the dead, and exhibited various psychic abilities.
One of the most important figures in
America who paved the way for the transition from mesmerism to Spiritualism
was Andrew Jackson Davis, a student of
Swedenborg who at age seventeen became a successful mesmeric subject in the
psychic diagnosis of illness and in proph-

568

ecy. In 1845 Davis began touring the

country giving lectures in tra~ce on what
he called "Harmonial Philosophy," his
divine revelations on the origin and nature of the universe, what happens to the
soul after death, and what is required in
the physical life in order to benefit in the
spirit life.
As a definable movement, Spiritualism began in 1848, when the Fox sisters
of Hydesville, New York, created a press
sensation with their communications
with spirits by rappings. Margaretta
(Maggie) was fourteen and her sister
Catherine (Katie) eleven when they and
their parents began to hear strange
thumping noises at night, which Mrs. Fox
believed were caused by a ghost. Maggie
and Katie discovered that if they clapped
their hands, the raps answered back. By
rapping in response to yes-no questions
and the spelling out of letters of the alphabet, the spirit allegedly claimed to be
a murdered peddler named Charles Rosa,
whose throat had been slashed by John
Bell, a former occupant of the house, who
buried the remains beneath the cellar
floorboards. Digging in the cellar yielded
some human teeth, hair, and a few bones.
The press had a field day with the
story. The girls' older sister, Leah, a
shrewd opportunist, took charge of the
girls and turned them into a stage act.
People flocked to see them. Their seances
grew more elaborate, featuring the presence of famous spirits of the dead such as
Ben Franklin, and physical phenomena
such as levitating and moving objects and
tables.
P. T. Barnum brought the girls to
New Yark City, where they impressed
William Cullen Bryant, James Fenimore
Cooper, George Ripley, Horace Greeley,
and others. Skeptics routinely charged
them with fraud, claiming the girls had
mastered surreptitious joint cracking,
ventriloquism, and operation of secret
electrical gadgets. However, no trickery
was found despite numerous tests.

Spiritual

emergence

The success of the Fox sisters inspired others to discover their own mediumistic powers. While many mediums
worked for free, many more discovered
there was money to be made from a public hungry to witness spirit manifestations. In 1852 Spiritualism was exported
to Britain by a Boston medium, Mrs.
Hayden, who astonished the British by
charging money for her seances. By 1855
Spiritualism claimed 2 million followers
and appeared to be a new religion in the
making. Spiritualists claimed that the immortality of the soul would at last be
proved.
The movement, however, began to
suffer. It was condemned by leaders of
organized religion, who attempted to get
laws passed banning Spiritualism. Many
mediums, most of whom were women,
found themselves ostracized by family
and friends. Investigations of mediums,
beginning in the 1850s in Britain and in
the 1880s in the United States, exposed
numerous frauds, although some gifted
mediums remained impressive under the
scrutiny. There was increasing internal
dissension; and the mediumistic phenomena claimed as proof of survival were
never validated by science. By the turn of
the century, Spiritualism was virtually
finished as a widespread cohesive movement.
The Fox sisters themselves fell victim
to their own success. By 1855 both were
alcoholics. Maggie became disillusioned
with Spiritualism and converted to Catholicism. She attempted to leave the act,
but family pressure kept her in until Leah
abandoned her younger sisters in 1857
following her marriage to a wealthy businessman.
Katie continued to perform irregularly, achieving new heights with mirrorwriting, or backward automatic script,
which had to be held up to a mirror to be
read. In 1861 she allegedly manifested the
spirits of the dead in materializations. In
1871 she went to Britain, where re-

Spiritualism

searcher William Crookes declared no

one approached her in talent.
In 1888 Maggie and Katie made a
public appearance in New York, at which
Maggie denounced Spiritualism as a
fraud and an evil characterized by sexual
licentiousness. She said that she and Katie
had created the rappings in Hydesville to
play a trick on their mother, and they
were able to do so by surreptitious toe
cracking. They had learned to use muscles below the knee which are supple in
children but stiffen with age; their practice had kept the muscles flexible. Maggie
demonstrated on stage how she rapped
with her toes. She also stated that Leah
had led them around like lambs because
she wanted to create a new religion, and
that they had rapped at seances in response to body cues from Leah.
Devoted Spiritualists refused to believe Maggie. The sisters then went on
tour exposing Spiritualism, although
Katie continued to work as a medium. In
1889, for reasons that are unclear, Maggie recanted her confession.
Leah died on November 1, 1890.
Katie died of acute alcoholism on July 2,
1892, at age fifty-six. Maggie, ill and destitute, died on March 8, 1893, at age
fifty-nine, at a friend's home in Brooklyn.
Spiritualism spread more slowly in
Britain than in America, due largely to
differences in social conditions and to the
great influence of the well-established
Church of England. However, it took a
firmer and more enduring hold. Efforts to
organize groups and churches began as
early as 1865. In 1869 The Spiritualist
published an article on how to form a
home circle for seances, which encouraged interest.
One of the most famous British
home circles was that of Hannen Swaffer,
a journalist known as the "Pope of Fleet
Street," who helped Spiritualism gain respect in the popular press. Swaffer's circle
featured the medium Maurice Barbanell,
"Mr. Spiritualism," famed for his Native

569

Photograph of alleged Native American

spirit guide at a US Spiritualism camp

American control, Silver Birch. Barbanell,

who founded Psychic News, still a leading Spiritualist newspaper in London,
was a key figure in Spiritualism for more
than sixty years.
In 1872 the Marylebone Spiritualist
Association was formed to study psychic
phenomena and disseminate evidence obtained through mediumship. Now known
as the Spiritualist Association of Great
Britain and based in London, it is one of
the two largest Spiritualist organizations
in the world.
The British National Association of
Spiritualists was formed in 1884. From
that, the London Spiritualist Alliance incorporated in 1896, and later was renamed the College of Psychic Studies.
The college is an educational charity that
offers programs, mediumship training,
consultation services with mediums, and
healing services.
In 1890 the National Federation of
Spiritualist Churches \vas formed as a result of the efforts of Emma Hardinge
Britten, founder of the Spiritualist journal
Two Worlds, and others. In 1901 it re-

570

organized as the Spiritualists National

Union (SNU) with the purpose of uniting
Spiritualist churches and encouraging research into mediumship and healing.
Based in Manchester, it is the other of the
two largest Spiritualist organizations in
the world.
Spiritualism enjoyed a resurgence of
popularity during and after World War I,
as thousands of bereaved turned to mediums in hopes of contacting loved ones
killed in the war. In Britain cOEversions
were helped by the endorsements of respected figures such as Sir Oliver Lodge,
who lost a son in the war, and Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle, who campaigned tirelessly
on behalf of Spiritualism, calling it the
basis of all religious beliefs. Unfortunately, the war also opened opportunities
for many fraudulent mediums.
The heyday of the great medium was
largely over by 1920, but interest in Spiritualism continued on both sides of the
Atlantic and elsewhere in the world. Psychical research and Spiritualism began to
go separate ways in the 1930s, when
American parapsychologist J. B. Rhine
was instrumental in taking psychical research into the laboratory.

Modern Spiritualism
Spiritualist churches continue to
have followings in America, Britain,
Brazil, and other countries. Many of the
churches are modeled on Protestant
churches, although there is no organized
priesthood.
Spiritualist phenomena fall into three
main categories: mental mediumship,
spiritual healing, and physical mediumship. Mental mediumship includes trance
work, automatisms, psychometry, and
clairvoyance. (Psychometry generally is
not employed in Britain because it is still
an offense under the Vagrancy Act as
"pretending to tell fortunes.") Spiritual
healing takes two forms: contact healing,
which is a laying on of hands; and absent

Spiritualism

healing, in which a medium works with

spirit doctors and has no direct contact
with the patient, who may not even be
aware of the treatment. Absent healing is
used when long distances prevent contact, and with skeptical patients. Physical
mediumship involves the excrescence of
ectoplasm from the medium as an interface with the spirit world, and is characterized by levitations, rappings, apports,
telekinesis of objects, psychic lights, music and smells, and other activities. Physical mediumship, very popular in the
early days of Spiritualism, is now rare.
Mental mediumistic skills are employed by Spiritualist pastors, who sometimes deliver their sermons in trance.
Other main church activities include seances, which usually feature communication with spirits; psychic readings, called
"spirit greetings," for members; spiritual
healing; and the teaching of psychic and
mediumistic skills and meditation techniques. Some Spiritualists discourage
communication with the dead in favor of
contact with highly evolved entities and
spiritual masters.
Healing is of particular importance
in Spiritualism. In Britain many Spiritualist healers are members of organizations such as the National Federation of
Spiritual Healers and the SNU's Guild of
Spiritualist Healers, and are registered
with the Confederation of Healing Organizations (CHO). The CHO follows a
conduct code set by the General Medical
Council. The CHO also requires healers
to undergo training, and to work for at
least two years under supervision. See
Healing, faith and psychic.
Modern Spiritualist teachings include concepts from all major world religions and theosophy. Spiritualist tenets
hold that a human being is a spirit and is
part of God; in worshiping God one
strives to understand and comply with
the physical, mental, and spiritual laws of
nature, which are the laws of God. Spiritualism considers itself a science because

Spiritualism

it investigates and classifies spirit phenomena. From a philosophical standpoint, Spiritualism studies the laws of nature of both the physical and spirit
worlds, and maintains that mediumship
and parapsychology have proved that
mediums
may
obtain
information
through channels besides the five senses.
Spiritualists are divided on reincarnation. Most accept preexistence of the
soul and believe in life after death, but
consider reincarnation a matter of free
will, not a spiritual law. The Spiritists of
Allan Kardec, a branch of Spiritualism
more popular in Latin America, accept
reincarnation as a central doctrine.
The incidence of mediumistic fraud
in Spiritualism has declined greatly with
stricter controls on mediums, and remedial measures taken in the wake of exposes. Most of the fraud in earlier times
involved physical mediumship.
Many Spiritualists attend summer
camps for lectures, classes, psychic readings, consultation of mediums, and mediumistic training. The camps began in
the United States in the nineteenth century, and were based on the popular Chatauqua camps.
Spiritualism enjoys a larger following in Britain than in the United States,
with thousands of churches. The religion
had no legal status prior to 1951, when
the last Witchcraft Act (of 1735) was repealed. Under the Witchcraft Act it was
possible to charge a medium with witchcraft. In the same year, the Fraudulent Mediums Act was passed, which
amended the Vagrancy Act of 1824. The
Vagrancy Act had been used since 1874
to prosecute mediums. Spiritualists argued that mediumship was essential to
their religious worship and practice. Controversy exists over Christian elements in
some Spiritualist churches. See Mediumship; Spiritism.
Sources: Roger 1. Anderson. "Spiritualism
Before the Fox Sisters." Parapsychology
Review 18, no 1 (January/February 1987):

571

9-13; Jean Bassett. 100 Years of National

London: The Spiritualists National Union, 1990; Norman Blundson. A
Popular Dictionary of Spiritualism. New
York: The Citadel Press, 1963; Slater
Brown. The Heyday of Spiritualism. New
York: Hawthorn Books, 1970; Alfred Douglas. Extrasensory Powers: A Century of
Psychical Research. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1976; Alan Gauld. The
Founders of Psychical Research. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968; Herbert G.
Jackson, Jr. The Spirit Rappers. Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1972; Howard Kerr
and Charles 1. Crow, eds. The Occult in
Spiritualism.

America: New Historical Perspectives.

Ur-

bana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1983;

R. Laurence Moore. In Search of White
Crows. New York, Oxford University
Press, 1977; Janet Oppenheim. The Other
World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research
in England, 1850-1914.
Cambridge, En-

gland: Cambridge University Press, 1985;

Tony Ortzen. "Spiritualism in England and
America." In The New Age Catalogue.
New York: Doubleday/Dolphin, 1988.

Spiritualist Association
Great Britain

of

See Spiritualism.

Spiritualists National
Union
See Spiritualism.

Sports, mystical and psychic

phenomena in
Athletes who push themselves to the edge
of endurance often experience a wide
range of phenomena, from a heightened
sense of awareness to paranormal experiences such as clairaudience, to mystical
illumination. The experience surprises the
person, coming at a moment of intense
physical effort and mental concentration.
It is almost as though one bursts through

572

time and space into another dimension;

athletes refer to this state as "the zone."
Mystical and psychic experiences are
commonplace among professional athletes; some athletes try to cultivate "the
zone" because their performance is
greatly enhanced as a result. For some the
mystical experience is so wondrous that it
far outshines victory.
A study of 4,500 paranormal incidents in professional sports, by Michael
Murphy and Rhea A. White, identified at
least sixty different sensations that occur
in "the zone." At the low end of the scale
are bursts of energy, strength, coordination, speed, and endurance; the ability to
make the right instinctive move; and a
profound sense of well-being. More complex experiences include out-of-body
trips, clairaudience, extrasensory perception in terms of knowing what opponents
are going to do next, shape changing, a
feeling of weightlessness, changes in the
perception of time, and willing objects to
move (psychokinesis). Transcendent sensations are the awareness of spirits; a
sense of unity with all creation; feelings
of immortality, ecstasy, and supreme joy;
a sense of profound peace and calm; or
mystery and awe.
The type of experience varies with
the sport. Long-distance runners, for example, often have feelings of floating, flying, and weightlessness. Football players
experience changes in shape and size,
having the perception that they are suddenly bigger and stronger. This change is
sometimes witnessed by other players.
John Brodie, former quarterback for the
San Francisco 4gers, stated that on five or
six occasions, he had seen running backs
get larger, then drop in size. Baseball and
basketball players and golfers cite
changes in time, in which time becomes
very compressed or seems to stop. In this
compression they are able to accomplish
an extraordinary amount of activity.
Golfers who are aware of this try to slow
time in order to pack more power into

Spiritualism

their swing. Baseball star Stan Musial

said time compression enabled him to accurately gauge the speed of the ball so he
could decide whether or not to swing and
coordinate his movements to the ball-all
in about two/fifths of a second in real
time.
Awareness of the presence of ethereal beings is most common in solitary
sports, such as mountaineering, flying,
and sailing. The being may be nebulous
or may take on the appearance of a human being, and may converse with the
athlete and offer advice. In his historic
flight across the Atlantic in 1927, Charles
Lindbergh said that he was accompanied
by a host of vaporous spirits who offered
guidance. See Lindbergh, Charles. Phantoms of ships and crews seen at sea by
sailors are legendary. Joshua Slocum,
who sailed around the world by himself
in the 1890s, claimed the spirit of one of
Columbus's crew members took over the
helm when he was sick and incapacitated
with food poisoning.
Mountaineers who have scaled the
Himalayas report the presence of silent
"companions." For Frank Smythe, who
climbed Everest in 1933, the companion
was an invisible presence. In 1975 a British expedition to Everest experienced different paranormal phenomena. Phantom
climbers, using telepathic communication, guided Doug Scott and Nick Estcourt through a dangerous area of ice
ridges. On another occasion Estcourt,
climbing alone, sensed he was being followed and turned around to see a human
figure far behind him. He had no idea
who it was, but thought it might be one
of the Sherpa guides from another of the
expedition's camps. Estcourt waited, but
the figure never caught up with him,
though it kept moving and climbing. Estcourt shouted to it and got no reply. He
decided to continue on. At another point
he turned around again and looked, but
the mysterious climber had vanished. Estcourt could see quite a distance behind

Sports, mystical and psychic phenomena in

him. Chris Bonington, who led the expedition, offered two theories about the
companion: that it may have been the
spirit of a Sherpa who had worked
closely with Estcourt in 1972, and who
was killed in an avalanche in 1973 at a
spot near where Estcourt was climbing;
or that Estcourt may have had a premonitory extrasensory experience related to
the death of a member of the expedition,
which happened soon after Estcourt's expenence.
The ecstatic experiences in sportsthe sense of oneness with the universe,
illumination, ecstasy, and joy-are similar to those experienced in yoga and Eastern philosophies and martial arts disciplines. In sports and in martial arts, such
experiences make possible superior, peak
performances. The attainment of this
state of being requires a stillness of mind,
relaxation, and a letting go that frees the
performer from the anxiety of performing
and winning, and allows him or her to
"be in the moment"; it is "right-brain"
thinking. What often follows is a superior
performance that seems effortless, encased in a timeless envelope of space, in
which the performer allows the mind and
body to do what they have been trained
to do. Many describe this moment as
trancelike or being on automatic pilot.
"Left-brain" thinking-anxiety, analysis, judgment of performance as good or
poor, negative thoughts, fear of mistakes,
excessive verbalization during performance-cause a paralysis that leads to inferior results or defeat.
Cultivating "the zone" has become
increasingly important in sports psychology, especially in the West, which previously lagged in applying Eastern concepts
to training. Athletic training now includes biofeedback, meditation, relaxation, and creative visualization techniques. Athletes who can enter "the
zone" most easily tend to be the best in
their fields. Research with subjects in
problem-solving shows that during in-

573

tense concentration, there is a marked decrease in the brain's overall metabolic

rate, indicating a more efficient brain. It
is postulated that the same conditions occur during sports performance: The
lower the overall metabolic rate of the
brain, and thus the more efficient it is, the
better the performance.
Sports psychologists say the same
conditions that lead to peak performances in sports can be applied in the
business world and any creative endeavor. See Biofeedback; Creative visualization; Martial arts; Relaxation.
Sources: Charles A. Garfield and Hal Z.
Bennett. Peak Performance: Mental Training Techniques of the World's Greatest
Athletes. Los Angeles: Jeremy Tarcher,

1984; Michael Murphy and Rhea A.

White. The Psychic Side of Sports. Reading,
MA: Addison-Wesley, 1978; Lawrence
Shainberg. "Finding 'The Zone.'" The
New York Times Magazine (April 9, 1989):
35-39; Adam Smith. Powers of Mind. New
York: Random House, 1975.

Stained-glass window effect

A term coined by W. T. Stead (18491912), British journalist, psychic investigator, and Spiritualist, to describe how
psychic perception is distorted by the subconscious mind. Stead attended numerous mediumistic seances and discovered
his own ability for automatic writing.
From his experiences and observations,
he concluded that the subconscious stains
and distorts all information that passes
through it to the waking self, just as a
stained-glass window imposes patterns
and colors upon the white light that
passes through it.
The stained-glass window effect appears in psychic perception when information received psychically is distorted
by the receiver's subconscious prejudices,
attitudes, predispositions, and aversions.
Psychically received information, no matter from what alleged source, may be sup-

574

pressed or altered to fit those factors

without the receiver being aware of it. See
Channeling; Psychic reading.
Sources: W. E. Butler. How to Develop
Clairvoyance. 2d ed. New Yark: Samuel

Weiser, 1979; Corinne McLaughlin. "Tuning in to the Best Channel." New Realities
7, no. 6 (July/August 1987): 37-42; Janet
Oppenheim. The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical

Research

in England,

1850-1914. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1985; Alan

Vaughan. "Channeling." New Realities 7,
no. 3 (JanuarylFebruary 1987): 43-47;
Joan Windsor. The Inner Eye: Your
Dreams Can Make You Psychic. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985.

Starhawk
See Witchcraft.

Steiner, Rudolf (1861-1925)

Philosopher, artist, scientist, and educator, whose "Spiritual Science" movement,
called Anthroposophy, is a unique blend
of Rosicrucian, Theosophical, and Christian traditions. Rudolf Steiner's teachings
address philosophy, social sciences, natural sciences, agriculture, the arts, education, psychology, and religion.
Steiner was born on February 27,
1861, in Kraljevic, then part of Hungary
and now in Yugoslavia. His parents were
Austrian; his father was a railway clerk
and intended for his son to become a railway civil engineer.
By the age of eight, Steiner had clairvoyant awareness of the unseen. His experiences included perception of an apparition of a dead relative and the invisible
energies of the plant kingdom. When he
discovered geometry in school, he perceived geometric forms as living realities.
At age fifteen he met Felix Kotgutski,
an herbalist who taught him the occult
lore of plants. When he was nineteen, this

Sports, mystical

and psychic phenomena

in

individual introduced him to another

whom Steiner called "the Master," an
adept who gave him his spiritual initiation. Steiner never revealed his identity, in
accordance with occult tradition.
From the Master he learned his spiritual mission in life: to develop a knowledge that synthesized science and religion. For the remainder of his life, Steiner
dedicated himself to this task, guided by
what he called "the occult powers behind
me,"

In 1879 Steiner went to the Technische Hochschule in Vienna to study mathematics and science, which, as he later acknowledged, gave him a better basis for a
spiritual conception of the world than he
could have obtained from a study of humanities. He also studied the philosophies of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel and the
natural scientific writings of- Goethe. At
age twenty-two he was invited to edit the
definitive edition of Goethe's natural scientific writings.
In 1886 Steiner was hired by the
Specht family to tutor four boys, one of
whom was autistic. His exceptional tutoring enabled the boy to attend high
school, college, and medical school and
become a doctor.
Steiner earned his doctorate at the
University of Rostock in 1891. His thesis,
"Truth and Knowledge" (also entitled
"Truth and Science") on the scientific
teaching of German philosopher Johann
Gottlieb Fichte was followed in 1894 by
his major philosophical work, Die Philosophie der Freiheit (1894), which has
been translated into English as The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and The Philosophy

of Freedom.

At age forty Steiner felt ready to

speak publicly about his spiritual philosophy, his clairvoyant experiences, and
what he had learned from them. He explained in an autobiographical sketch
that no one under the age of forty was
ready to appear publicly as a teacher of
occultism, according to the intention of

Steiner, Rudolf

(1861-1925)

Rudolf Steiner
the Masters; anyone who did so was
bound to make mistakes.
By this stage in his life, he had accumulated a great deal of experience in
nonphysical realms. Through profound
and concentrated meditation, he learned
to bridge the physical and nonphysical
realms, and to test repeatedly what he experienced in the nonphysical and relate it
to the physical. He believed the Hermetic
axiom that humankind is the microcosm
within the macrocosm of Creation and
we have within us the clues to the secrets
of the universe. These secrets could be revealed by discovering the true nature of
humankind.
Steiner claimed to be able to access
the Akashic Records, from which he
learned the true history of human evolution. He said that at one time humankind
was more spiritual and possessed supersensible capabilities, but lost them in a
descent to the material plane. At the nadir of human descent, Christ arrived and
provided the opportunity to reascend to
higher spiritual levels. For Steiner the life,

575

death, and resurrection of Christ were the

most important events in the history of
humankind and the cosmos.
In the course of his personal development, Steiner began to perceive countless spiritual beings who exist in higher
planes but interact constantly with human beings on the physical plane. He discovered that some beings encourage the
advancement of humankind's spiritual
consciousness, while others wish people
to remain mired in a materialistic, mechanistic world. These latter spirits Steiner
called "Ahrimanic" beings, after the Persian personification of evil.
Steiner faced serious inner battles
with these forces of evil. His salvation
was his immersion in the mysteries of
Christ. He warned that the path to higher
consciousness, though attainable by anyone who followed an ordered discipline
of thought, feeling, and will, required
great patience and perseverance, and the
preparedness for challenging experiences
that had to be faced with great moral
courage.
In his lectures Steiner found an enthusiastic audience in the Theosophical
Society. His popularity led to his appointment in 1902 as general secretary of the
newly founded German Section of the
Theosophical Society. Marie von Sievers
was named secretary. She became Steiner's second wife in 1914; his first marriage, to Anna Eunicke, a widow, had
previously ended in divorce.
Steiner soon became concerned by
what he termed the "triviality and dilettantism" he observed in the Theosophical
Society. He grew disillusioned with Annie
Besant's cultist championship of Jiddu
Krishnamurti as the next messiah. He did
not believe it possible to build a spiritual
science on Eastern mysticism, which he
said was not suitable to the spiritual
needs of the Western mind. Furthermore,
he considered cofounder Madame Helena
P. Blavatsky to have distorted occult
truths. Within the Society he found an

576

audience willing to follow his own esoteric research. In 1913 he left the Society
and formed the Anthroposophical Society
as a vehicle to continue his work. Steiner
described Anthroposophy as a path for
spiritual growth on four levels of human
nature: the senses, imagination, inspiration, and intuition.
The same year that he formed the
Anthroposophical Society, Steiner designed and established the Goetheanum,
a school for esoteric research, at Dornach
near Basel, Switzerland, where he intended to produce Goethe's dramas and
his own mystery plays. The Goetheanum
opened in 1920 and was burned down in
1922. A new building was designed and
constructed, and now serves as the international headquarters for the General
Anthroposophical Society, which Steiner
reorganized as an international organization with himself as president in 1923.
Steiner died at Dornach on March
30, 1925.
During his last twenty-five years,
Steiner traveled around Europe, Scandinavia, and Great Britain to give more
than six thousand lectures on spiritual
science, the arts, social sciences, religion,
education, agriculture, and health. His
published works include more than 350
titles, most of which are collections of
lectures, as well as books, articles, reviews, and dramas. His key works outlining his occult philosophy are Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its
Attainment
(1904-1905);
Theosophy:
An Introduction to the Supersensible
Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man (1904); and An Outline of
Occult Science (1909). The foundation
for his views on Christ and Christianity
are in more than a dozen lecture cycles on
the Gospels.
One of Steiner's greatest legacies is
the Waldorf School Movement, an approach to the education of children,
which he developed from his spiritualscientific research concerning child devel-

Steiner, Rudolf (1861-1925)

opment. Steiner's social philosophy,

which he advanced in 1919 with the
phrase, "threefold social order," conceives of ideally consisting of three equal
but separate spheres: economic, political,
and spiritual-cultural. Education, he said,
belonged to the spiritual-cultural sphere.
In 1919 he established the first Waldorf
School for Boys and Girls in Stuttgart.
With five hundred schools, the Waldorf
system is now the largest nonsectarian
system of education in the world. Steiner
also addressed the educational needs of
retarded children. Clinics and homes, referred to as Campbell Villages, that teach
his methods are highly reputed.
Steiner's agricultural methods for
preparing soil inspired chemical-free, biodynamic farming and gardening. With
Marie von Sievers he created eurythmy,
the art of moving the body, particularly
the limbs, to express the inner meanings
of music and speech. His guidelines for
holistic medicine and pharmacology are
widely followed.
The Anthroposophical Society has
branches throughout the world; it is
strongest in Europe and Britain. See illuminati.
Sources: Robert A. McDermott, ed. and intro. The Essential Steiner. San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1984; Robert McDermott.
"Anthroposophy" and "Rudolf Steiner." In
the Encyclopedia of Religion. New York:
Macmillan, 1987; A. P. Shepherd. Rudolf
Steiner:

Scientist

of the Invisible.

1954.

Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International, 1983; Leslie A. Shepard, ed. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology.

2d ed. Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1984;

Rudolf Steiner. An Autobiography.
New
trans. First English trans. published as The
Story of My Life. 1928. Blauvelt, NY: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1977.

Stevenson, Ian
See Reincarnation; Xenoglossy.

Stigmata

Stigmata
The spontaneous discharge of blood from
wounds on the body, generally replicating those of Christ on the cross. Stigmatics have been measured bleeding as little
as a half-pint to as much as a pint and a
half a day.
The first recorded stigmatic was
Francis of Assisi (who later became
St. Francis) in September 1224. He reportedly began to bleed from his palms
and feet following an extended fast and
contemplation on the crucifixion of
Christ.
Although the actual number of stigmatics is not known, Dr. A. Imbert
Goubeyre, a French medical professor,
catalogued over 320 cases in a twovolume book, La Stigmatisation, l' ecstase
divine, les miracles de Lourdes, reponse
aux libres penseurs, published in 1894. In

subsequent years other cases have been

reported, including Padre Pio, a wellknown Italian monk who died in 1968,
and Jane Hunt, an English housewife
who began bleeding from her palms in
July 1985.
Stigmata do not mirror a single pattern in all manifestations. Instead they
seem to match the placement of wounds
on the stigmatic's favorite crucifix or
other religious object showing Christ on
the cross.
In the early stages, the body seems to
discharge blood through the skin. When
wiped away, there are no wounds or
marks beneath the blood. In later stages
blisters appear, followed by actual
wounds. Some strongly resemble actual
puncture wounds, going all the way
through the skin. In some cases the skin
forms what looks like the head of a nail
protruding from the wound.
On some stigmatics the wounds have
appeared to close up for a period of time,
disappear completely, and then manifest
again later, usually around the time of religious holidays.

577

Most stigmatics have been deeply religious individuals, often associated with
religious orders where they lived contemplative lives. Similarly, the appearance of
stigmata is generally preceded by lengthy
meditations on the crucifixion of Christ,
frequently following a deep personal crisis or grave illness. And, in just about every case, the stigmatic had been deeply
focused on a favorite religious item, such
as a crucifix or statue of Christ on the
cross, prior to the onset of spomaneous
bleeding.
Ian \:S;7ilson,a British researcher who
conducted one of the most comprehensive studies of stigmatics, The Bleeding
Mind (1988), has argued that the bleeding is self-induced by individuals undergoing some form of personal stress. Seeking shelter from their personal suffering,
these stigma tics turn to prayer and contemplation.
He also drew parallels between the stigmatic and individuals who
develop multiple personalities:
What is evident is that stigmata and
multiple personality seem to be so closely
linked that they could be two different
aspects of the same phenomenon.
Both
seem to be stress induced, seemingly as a
response to a metabolism tortured to the
end of its tether. In both we find the individual caught up in a flight from reality, providing some sort of release or escape from the constraints on the everyday
self, and on the other into an established
fantasy world of religious figures and a
personal dramatization
of the events surrounding the death of Jesus.
Wilson also suggested that the mind,
in addition to bringing on the stigmata,
can manifest the nail-like formations on a
person's flesh. In hypnosis experiments
have shown that the body has the ability
to make wans and other skin disfiguremems disappear.
Other experiments
have shown the
reverse effect of spomaneous
bleeding.
Under self-hypnosis
hemophiliacs
have

578

been able to stop themselves

ing uncontrollably.

from bleed-

Sources: Mysteries of the Unexplained. Edited by Caroll C. Calkins. Pleasantville,

NY: Reader's Digest, 1982; Strange Stories, Amazing Facts. Pleasantville, NY:
Reader's Digest, 1977; Ian Wilson. The
Bleeding Mind. London: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd., 1988.

Stonehenge
One of the most famous ancient megalithic sites in the world, located on the
chalk plain of Salisbury in Wiltshire, England. The remains include a henge and a
horseshoe arrangement of standing sandstones and bluestones
weighing up to
twenty-six tons apiece. Some of the sarsens are topped by limels, thus suggesting
to the Saxons the name "Stonehenge,"
which means "Hanging Stones."
The original purpose of the site is
unknown. It has no associations with the
Druids, despite the antiquarian
theories
of John Aubrey and William Stukeley.
Aubrey also believed the site to be a repository of psychic power, a belief which
remains popular to the presem.
Stonehenge served astronomical purposes and likely had religious, social, and
political functions as well. Fifty-six burial
pits, named "Aubrey Holes" after their
discoverer, contain the remains of cremated human bones, flint and pottery
chips, and animal bones. It has been suggested that these holes were associated
\vith entry points to the Underworld.
Stonehenge was built in three major
phases from about 3500 B.C. to 1100 B.C.
by different peoples. Over the course of
construction,
ponions
were left unfinished, were dismantled, and were rebuilt.
The arrangemem
essentially assumed its
present shape by about 2000 B.C.
The construction
of the trilithons,
the lintel-topped sarsens, represents a stupendous engineering
feat for primitive

Stigmata

Stonehenge
times. According to one legend, a double
circle of giant bluestones was erected
with magical help from Merlin, the Celtic
wizard of the Arthurian court. Merlin
supposedly transported the stones, which
were magical healing stones, from Ireland, where they had been delivered by
giants. The stones were for a monument
to the slain soldiers of Aurelius Ambrosius, who had fought off a Saxon invasion. See Merlin. The bluestones, which
are believed to come from the Preseli
mountains in South Wales, probably
were transported over land and sea by a
slow process that took up to one hundred
years to complete.
In the eighteenth century, Stukeley
observed astronomical alignments between four burial stones, the so-called
Heel Stone (named by Aubrey because it
bears a mark shaped like a heel imprint),
and the sun and moon. Sir Norman Lockyear, a British astronomer at the turn of
the twentieth century, determined that
Stonehenge was constructed to point to
the summer solstice. He also theorized
that observations of the stars were made

Stonehenge

according to stone alignments. In 1965

British astronomer Gerald S. Hawkins
stated that "there is no doubt that Stonehenge was an observatory," based on his
computer calculations of 165 alignments
of the stones with the sun and moon.
Hawkins believes Stonehenge was built
much more recently and quickly, between
1900 B.C. and 1600 B.C.
Other astronomical theories have
been put forward by modern researchers
such as John Michell, who concluded that
Stonehenge was a solar temple, based
upon his gematria and computer calculations. In 1974 Alexander Thorn theorized
that Stonehenge was an observatory for
studying lunar movements, and served as
a prototype for observatories elsewhere
in Britain.
Until 1985 Stonehenge served as a
festival site during the seasonal pagan
rites, attended by modern-day Druids,
Witches, Pagans, Morris dancers, occultists, and others. In 1900 there was a
falling-out between the Druids and the
owner of the site (Stonehenge was private
property until 1915), when a stone was

579

knocked over during seasonal rites. The

owner fenced the site and began charging
admission. The Druids responded by ritually cursing him. In 1915 the site was
sold to Cecil Chubb, who turned it over
to the government, which reopened it to
free festivals. The pagan rites were
banned in 1985 due to increasing vandalism by hecklers and spectators.
Dowsers say the stones and the site
are charged with powerful geomagnetic
energies, perhaps deliberately fixed by the
ancient builders. However, research conducted in 1987 and 1988 by the Dragon
Project Trust, an organization that studies ancient sites in Britain, showed no
magnetism registering on a compass, nor
any unusual radiation emissions. Subsequent research has revealed no energy
anomalies that can be detected by instruments. Anecdotal reports exist of light
and sound anomalies associated with the
stones. See Leys; Megaliths; Power point.
Sources: Peter Lancaster Brown. Megaliths,
Myths and Men. New York: Taplinger

Publishing Company, 1976; Aubrey Burl.

of Stone. New York: Ticknor &
Fields, 1979; Christopher Chippindale.
Stonehenge Complete. New York: Cornell
University Press, 1983; Paul Devereux.
Places of Power. London: Blandford, 1990;
J. Havelock Fidler. Earth Energy: A Dowser's Investigation of Ley Lines. 2d ed. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England:
The Aquarian Press, 1988; Rosemary Ellen
Guiley. The Encyclopedia of Witches and
Witchcraft. New York: Facts On File,
1989; Gerald S. Hawkins. Beyond Stonehenge. New York: Harper & Row, 1973;
Francis Hitching. Earth Magic. New York:
William Morrow, 1977; John Michell. The
New View Over Atlantis. Rev. ed. San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983; Leon E.
Stover and Bruce Kraig. Stonehenge: The
Indo-European Heritage. Chicago: NelsonHall, 1978; Jennifer Westwood, ed. The
Atlas of Mysterious Places. New York:
Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1987.
Rings

580

Sufism
A branch of Islam that teaches personal,
mystical worship and union with Allah,
or God. Sufism arose in opposition to the
formal, legalistic theology of the early
Moslems in the ninth century A.D. It derives its doctrines and methods from the
Koran and Islamic revelation.

The Sufi Philosophy

The term "Sufism" comes from the
Arabic suf, meaning "wool," and refers
to the plain wool gowns worn by the
early Sufis ("wool-clad"). Rejecting the
luxurious excesses of the Caliphs, the Sufis lived simple, communal, ascetic lives,
much like the early Christian monks. In
fact, Arab conquerors
encountering
Christian monks or mystics in the Middle
East were greatly impressed by them and
incorporated many of their habits and beliefs in Sufi tradition. Other influences on
Sufi mysticism came from Buddhism,
Hinduism, and Persian Zoroastrianism.
Mystical love and oneness with God
(tawhid) form the basic tenets of Sufi
faith.
Worshipers observe faqr, or "pious
poverty," and are therefore known as faqirs (fakirs). They follow a Path, or
tariqa, to divine knowledge (gnosis)
through reading, study, prayer, and most
especially the dhikr: endless repetition of
God's holy name or sacred passages from
the Koran leading to self-hypnosis, much
like recitation of a mantra. Devotees use
prayer beads, similar to rosaries.
Following the Sufi Path to enlightened love takes a lifetime, since there is
no one moment when true union with
God-the vision of God's face described
in the Koran - has occurred. Sufis believe
that humankind has always been one
with God, and the Path merely serves as
remembrance of this realization. Death
does not stop the faqir's spiritual communications and training but is only an-

Stonehenge

other stage of development. According to

Grand Sheikh Idries Shah, the Sufi makes
four journeys:
1. Fana, or annihilation. At this stage
the Sufi becomes harmonized with
objective reality and seeks unification of his consciousness. He is intoxicated with divine love.
2. Baqa, or permanency. Here the Sufi
becomes a teacher or qutub: the
magnet to which all turn for wisdom. He has stabilized his objective
knowledge and become the Perfect
Man. Rather than uniting with God,
the Perfect Man has subordinated his
will to God and lives in and through
God. (Traditionally, Sufi teachers are
male.)
3. Sufis attaining the Third Journey become spiritual guides for all in accordance with their abilities, whereas
Stage Two teachers work only in
their local areas.
4. In the Fourth Journey, the Perfect
Man guides others in the transition
at death from physical life to another
stage of development invisible to ordinary people. Few attain this plateau of wisdom.
Sufis consider guidance by a wise
teacher essential to staying on the Path.
These sheikhs-venerated
as saintsprovide the only access to the secret
knowledge of God. Yet Sufi teachers discourage disciples. The goal of Sufism is
for each believer to become his own man
of wisdom and develop a line of communication with the Beloved.
Such self-awareness takes a long
time, however, and most Sufis follow
their leader, or sheikh, throughout life.
He is the supreme ruler, possessing the
greatest knowledge of God, charismatic,
and the most disciplined. He is also
known as pir (Persian for "old man") or
murshid (Arabic for "one who directs").
Devotees bind themselves to the sheikh
by an oath of allegiance and pledge to do

Sufism

Sufi student meditating near mosque in

Isfahan, Iran
his bidding without any sense of their
own desires.
Various teachers have established
schools, or Orders, which succeeding
sheikhs follow or amend. Yet the schools
come and go, since their ultimate goal is
to prepare Seekers for the Truth. The
schools provide the circumstances in
which members can attain stabilization of
their inner beings comparable to that of
the students of Muhammad and are in
fact organized similar to Muhammad's
early gatherings. One of the most famous
is the Order of the Whirling Dervishes, or
Mehlevi, founded by Jalaluddin Rumi in
the thirteenth century. Darwish, or dervish, is another name for faqir. Other
Orders include the Rifa'i, or Howling
Dervishes; the Qalandari, or Shaven Dervishes; the Chis(h)ti, or Musicians; and
the Naqshbandi, or Silent Dervishes, who
use no musIc.
The dervishes' frenzied dancing is
but one example of the music, poetry,
and dance accompanying Sufi worship.
Poets have always been the chief disseminators of Sufi thought, using secret metaphorical language to guard the sanctity
of the mystic messages and protect them

581

from heretical examination. The word

"troubadour," the medieval songmaster
of love, comes from the Arabic root TRB,
or "lutanist."
Endless recitation of the dhikr, in
concert with chanting songs, swaying,
dancing, and rhythmic drum-beating,
places the worshiper in trance or a state
of possession, much like that seen in
Vodoun. Devotees can pierce their bodies
with needles or stakes, hold hot coals,
and even pull swords across their abdomens with no pain and hardly any blood
or wound. At this point the worshiper
has become one with the Beloved.
Such ecstatic union with God does
not represent the ultimate reward for the
Sufi, however. The constant pursuit of
the love of God can lead to ecstasy, but it
only serves a purpose if the Sufi can take
that boundless joy and use it in the temporal world as an experience of love: to
live "in the world, but not of it," free
from ambition, greed, and intellectual
pride, showing love in living and not just
knowing it.
Spiritual healing is one love duty
practiced by the Sufis, but not before they
have studied for at least twelve years. The
Sufi healer, like a teacher, acts merely as
a guide, leading the patient to diagnose
himself or herself under hypnosis brought
on by breathing techniques. Healers
chant prayers over the patient and pass
their hands over the patient's body. Demands for healing cannot come from
friends or relatives, and the Sufis cannot
impose their will upon the patient. Unlike
more orthodox faith-healing methods,
patients are not expected to believe they
will be cured. Payment may be no more
valuable than a handful of barley.
Muhammad decried the worship of
the sheikhs as saints, teaching that Allah
was the only deity. Yet the Sufis believe
that knowledge of the Path to God comes
only from the master teachers, who attain
saintly blessedness (baraqa).
Devotees
worship these men openly, making pil-

582

grimages to their tombs and petitioning

their intercession. True living saints keep
their special powers under wraps, holding
them of no account.
The Three Periods of Sufism
There are three main periods of Sufism: classical, medieval, and modern.
One of the most important classical Sufis
was Junayd (died 920), who turned to the
Koran for proof that human struggle in
this world was to fulfill God's covenants
and become perfect through God.
Taking his ideas further, Junayd's
pupil, Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj,
taught that humankind was God incarnate. He looked not to the Prophet Muhammad but to Jesus Christ as the supreme example of humankind's glorified
humanity. If God is love, then Hallaj reasoned God had created humankind in his
image so that people might recognize
such divinity within themselves and attain a union with God. Hallaj uttered heretical statements such as "I am the
truth," and was crucified in 922 for his
beliefs. Like Christ he reportedly cried
out, "Father, forgive them, for they know
not what they do," as he was nailed to
the cross. Hallaj is best remembered as a
symbol of the mystic lover.
Establishment of communal brotherhoods and less overt professions of faith
characterized the medieval period. The
Sufis turned to music and poetry to describe their knowledge of God, hiding
their search for the Beloved in beautiful
but abstruse verse. Sufic poetry shows
many parallels with medieval courtly romance, which also sang of abandoning all
for love. The sheikhs consolidated their
power during this period.
The most important Sufi of this era,
and perhaps the movement's greatest representative, was Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali
(1059-1111). A professor at Nizamiyya
Madrasa
(college) in Baghdad and
learned expert on Moslem theology and

Sufism

law at age thirty-three, Ghazzali despaired of finding God in dry study and
abandoned his career, wife, and family to
seek the truth of his religion. He wandered as a mendicant dervish for twelve
years, learning that human beings must
rid themselves of evil thoughts, clear their
minds, and commune with God through
the dhikr. In his books The Revival of the
Religious Sciences and The Niche of the
Lights, Ghazzali managed to explain the
theology of Islam in connection with humankind's mystical relation to God,
bridging the gap between Sufi heresies
and Islamic orthodoxy.
Another great medieval Sufi writer
was Mohieddin ibn-Arabi (1165-1240),
a Spanish Moslem and mystic. Ibn-Arabi
described the Prophet Muhammad as the
manifestation of the Perfect Man, the
man God created to exemplify the divinity of God in man. He also wrote of Muhammad's ascent to Paradise, telling of
the Prophet's journey through the infernal regions and purgatory, and his travels
through the heavens accompanied by a
beautiful guide and serenaded by angelic
choirs. Such stories had a powerful influence on Dante Alighieri's The Divine
Comedy.
Other medieval Christian writers
and thinkers influenced by Sufism included Friar Roger Bacon, Cervantes,
Averroes, St. Francis of Assisi, Avicebron,
and Chaucer. The Kn.ights Templar also
took inspiration from the Sufis, sharing
esoteric knowledge of alchemy, masonry,
and the Jewish Kabbalah. The name of
Hugues de Payns, founder of the Knights
Templar in 1118, means "ofthe pagans."
His father was known as "the Moor,"
originating from southern Spain. See Order of the Knights Templar.
Sufis claim that Freemasonry actually began in the medieval period with the
teachings of Spanish Sufi Ibn Masarra
(883-931). Idries Shah sees Masonry as a
metaphor for rebuilding, or reedification,
of the spiritual human being, and says

Sufism

that the three tools in the Masonic emblem symbolize the three Sufi postures of
prayer. He also notes that Freemasons
honor Boaz and Solomon, the latter the
son of David, as the builders of King Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, and explains that these two men were actually
Sufi architects who built the Temple of
the Dome of the Rock on the ruins of
King Solomon's temple. The architectural
measurements for the temple were allegedly numerical equivalents of Arabic root
words that conveyed holy messages, each
part relating to every other part in definite proportion. See Freemasonry.
Modern Sufism reached its peak under the Mogul and Ottoman empires, in
the 1500s to 1800s. Sufis swelled the
ranks of Moslem armies during Islamic
expansion in the Middle and Far East
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, infiltrating local trade unions and
marrying royal princesses. Sufis fought
fiercely against European expansion on
Islamic soil, becoming mujahidin ("holy
warriors") in the jihad ("holy war").
By the twentieth century, however,
Sufism had lost much of its influence.
Members of the Wahhabi sect, a large puritan revivalist movement in Islam,
scorned the Sufis for their mystical excesses and worship of sheikhs and other
holy men. Many of today's Muslims continue to practice Sufism, but their brotherhoods are usually secret societies keeping mainly to themselves. Sufism still
attracts a wide following in India, and
has large groups of devotees in England
and the United States. See Muhammad;
Mysticism.
Sources: Keith Crim, gen. ed. Abingdon
Dictionary of Living Religions. Nashville,
TN: Abingdon Press, 1981; Jacques De
Marquette. Introduction to Comparative
Mysticism. New York: Philosophical Library, 1949; Gaetan Delaforge. "The Templar Tradition Yesterday and Today."
Gnosis no. 6 (Winter 1988): 8-13; Emile
Dermenghem. "Yoga and Sufism: Ecstasy

583

Techniques in Islam." Forms and Techniques of Altruistic

and Spiritual Growth.

Edited by Pitirum A. Sorokin. Boston: The

Beacon Press, 1954; Cyril Glasse. The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam. San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1989; Alfred Guillaume.
Islam. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin
Books, 1954; Ja'far Hallaji. "Sufi Hypnotherapy." Critique: A ] oumal of Conspiracies and Metaphysics no. 25; F. C.
Happold. Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology. Rev. ed. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1970;
Thomas W. Lippman. Understanding Islam: An Introduction
to the Moslem
World. New York: New American Library,
1982; Geoffrey Parrinder, ed. World Religions from Ancient History to the Present.

1971. New York: Facts On File, 1983;

John Sabini. Islam: A Primer. Washington,
DC: Middle East Editorial Association,
1983; Idries Shah. The Sufis. Garden City,
NY: AnchorlDoubleday, 1971; "What If?
The Mantram of the New Age: An Interview with Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan." The
Quest 2, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 54-59; Peter
Lamborn Wilson and Nasrollah Pourjavady. "The Drunken Universe." The Quest
1, no. 2 (Winter 1988): 88-91.

Sun Bear (b. 1929)

Chippewa Native American and founder
and medicine chief of the Bear Tribe
Medicine Society, the purpose of which is
to spread Native American spiritual
teachings.
Sun Bear was born Gheezis Mokwa
in 1929 on the White Earth Reservation
in northern Minnesota. He experienced
visions as early as age three, and received
his spiritual name, Sun Bear, during a vision when he was ill with diphtheria at
age four. In the vision he saw a large
black bear surrounded by a brilliant rainbow. The bear stood on its hind legs and
touched him on the forehead. Since then
visions have continued throughout his
life, and Sun Bear has felt guided by the
spirits.

584

Sun Bear received his early medicine

training from uncles who were medicine
men. His formal education stopped at the
eighth grade. The Depression forced his
family to move around to find work, and
at age fifteen he left home to work at various jobs. He eventually went to Hollywood, where he spent ten years as a
technical consultant to such programs
as "Bonanza," "Broken Arrow," and
"Brave Eagle." In 1961 he founded Many
Smokes, a magazine to promote intertribal communications, Native American
writers, and Earth awareness.
After leaving Hollywood Sun Bear
worked as an economic development specialist for the Intertribal Council of Nevada, and taught through the Tecumseh
Indian Studies Program, which he helped
to develop, at the University of California
at Davis experimental college.
Until 1970 Sun Bear worked as a
medicine man only with Native Americans. A series of powerful visions of cataclysmic Earth changes, such as in the
prophecies of Native Americans and others, directed him to expand his audience.
The same year he founded the Bear Tribe
Medicine Society, named after the Bear
Clan, the traditional medicine clan. In
Native American mythology the bear inherits the healing powers from the Great
Spirit.
The Bear Tribe Medicine Society
first settled near Placerville, California,
then moved near Reno, Nevada. In 1975
it relocated to its present site near Spokane, Washington, which was named Vision Mountain. No alcohol or drugs are
allowed at Vision Mountain. The tribe
raises most of its own food. Among its
numerous activities are various internship
and apprentice programs, medicine wheel
gatherings, wilderness retreats, vision
quests, and a publishing program. Many
Smokes, renamed Wildfire, is the tribe's
magazme.
Most of those who seek out the tribe
are non-Native Americans. That, plus

Sufism

Sun Bear's commercial success in book

publishing and on the international
lecrure-seminar-workshop
circuit, has
earned him criticism from many more
traditional Native Americans, who believe the old ways should not be shared
so freely. Sun Bear responds to his critics
by saying he is following the directives of
the Great Spirit, who says it is time for
Natives to share their wisdom with others. Also, one of his medicine man uncles
told him that anyone could study and
learn the medicine ways. He notes that
many non-Native Americans, however,
are in too much of a hurry to learn. First,
one must be accepted by the spirits, and
then begin working with them.
Sun Bear espouses "practical spirituality," which involves connecting with
one's own power and learning how to use
it, and living in cooperation and peace
with others. One of his primary purposes
is to teach people how to live in harmony
with the Earth without destroying it.
Technology is not inherently evil, he says,
only the ways it has been misused. He
teaches self-sufficiency on the land, and
has established a "medicine wheel network" across the United States of wilderness retreat centers established on donated properties.
Sun Bear believes the self-sufficiency
and harmony are necessary to prepare for
cataclysmic Earth changes, which are
forecast in many Native prophecies, as
they are in the Christian tradition.
Sun Bear's books include Sun Bear:
The Path of Power (1984), his autobiography, written with Wabun and Barry
Weinstein; The Medicine Wheel: Earth
Astrology, with Wabun; At Home in the
Wilderness (rev. ed. 1973); Buffalo
Hearts (1976); and The Bear Tribe's SelfReliance Book (rev. ed. 1977), with
Wabun and Nimimosha. See Black Elk,
Nicholas; Mysticism; Rolling Thunder;
Shamanism.
Sources: Alan Morvay. "An Interview with
Sun Bear, Founder and Medicine Chief of

Sun Dance

Sun Bear
the Bear Tribe Medicine Society." Shaman's Drum no. 3 (Winter 1985): 20-22;
Robert Neubert. "Sun Bear: Walking in
Balance on the Earth Mother." New Realities 7, no. 5 (May/June 1987): 7-14; Sun
Bear. "Native Prophecies: Earth Changes
Essential for Cleansing." Venture Inward
4, no. 3 (May/June 1988): 12-17+; Sun
Bear. Sun Bear: The Path of Power. Spokane, WA: The Bear Tribe, 1984.

Sun Dance
Ceremony of Plains Native Americans for
health, fertility, and plentiful food. The
Sun Dance, one of the most sacred of Native American rites, was at one time outlawed by the US federal government because its elements of self-sacrifice were
misunderstood and considered barbaric.
Traditionally, the dance is performed
annually during the summer, at a time
when the moon is full, by tribes in the
North American Plains and prairie west

585

of the Missouri River. The name "Sun

Dance" comes from the Dakota; the rite
is so-named because fasting dancers gaze
at the sun. The dance is called the New
Life Lodge by the Cheyenne, the Sacred
Dance or Mystery Dance by the Ponca,
and the Dance Looking at the Sun (wiwanyag wachipi) by the Oglala Sioux.
The purpose of the ceremony is to commune with the Earth, sun, spirits, and
winds so that a tribe will prosper and
have successful hunts.
As a full-fledged ceremony, the Sun
Dance dates only to around 1800; the
last tribe to adopt it was the Ute in 1890.
The dance developed with the coming of
the horse, which by the beginning of the
nineteenth century enabled Natives,
pressed by the spread of white settlers
from the east, to migrate throughout the
American Plains and hunt large numbers
of buffalo. Its development also coincided
with the rise of warrior and medicine societies, although the ceremony itself requires no priesthood, permanent lodge,
or medicine bundle. The dance incorporates some ancient elements from the Algonkian vision quest and the Omaha reverence of the sacred pole, which is a
symbol of the cosmos and the Supreme
Being.
Elements of the dance vary among
tribes; the following description offers
general characteristics. In many cases the
dance is sponsored by an individual who
has been instructed to do so in a vision or
dream. All items used in the Sun Dance
are purified in sacred smoke, and the sacred pipe is smoked. A circular Sun
Dance Lodge is constructed of poles. The
lodge represents the sacred universe with
its central pole as the axis mundi. The
Oglala Sioux, for example, use twentyeight poles attached to the central pole,
for twenty-eight represents various combinations of four and seven, two sacred
numbers, as well the number of days in
the lunar cycle, the number of feathers
in a war bonnet, and the number of ribs

586

in a buffalo. The lodge is purified by

dancing.
Male dancers are chosen and are
painted with sacred symbols. Fasting begins prior to the ceremony. The dancers
declare which of various sacrifices they
will make in the dance. Those who
choose to do so have the flesh of their
breasts and backs pierced, traditionally
with eagle claws or skewers, but in modern times with surgical scalpels. Wooden
pegs are inserted under the skin and ropes
or leather thongs are fastened to the pegs.
The dancers are tied to the center pole,
which symbolizes the tying of their spirits
to the Great Spirit. They dance, gazing at
the sun, until the thongs are ripped free
of their flesh. They blow whistles made of
eagle bone and decorated with eagle
plumes, which represent the sun. By recreating the cry of the eagle, the dancers
become the eagle, thus mixing their vital
breath with the essence of the sun and
life. Sacred pipes are exchanged among
the dancers and then with the onlookers.
Traditionally, a dancer was hung
from the center pole until his weight
caused him to rip free. Also traditionally,
buffalo skulls were attached to a dancer's
flesh.
The dancers are encouraged by onlookers to persevere. The onlookers wipe
the wounds and sweat with bundles of
sage leaves. The dancing lasts from two
to four days, during which the dancers do
not eat or drink. If they do not rip free of
all their thongs, they are cut free with a
knife. Outside the lodge others fast, sing,
and conduct minor ceremonies. At the
conclusion there is great feasting and celebration.
The sacrifice of flesh is considered a
supreme sacrifice, an indication to the Supreme Being of earnestness and sincerity.
The dancer makes this sacrifice on behalf
of his people, even all humankind. The
flesh represents darkness and ignorance,
and its tearing in the Sun Dance represents the breaking free of such bonds.

Sun Dance

Without suffering and sacrifice, it is not

possible to find identity, freedom, and sacredness. The moment of tearing free is
one of ecstasy.
Flesh sacrifices are part of the majority of tribal variations of the Sun
Dance, but not by all. The damage to
muscle tissue is temporary. Sun gazing is
part of a minority of rites. Dancers can
blind themselves, usually temporarily.
By the beginning of the early twentieth century, the Sun Dance was outlawed; the sacrifice of living flesh was
considered primitive and degenerate. The
Sioux petitioned the courts, arguing that
the Sun Dance was a sacred rite necessary
to the survival not only of the tribes, but
of everyone on the Earth. After about
fifty years, the Sun Dance was permitted
again, but without flesh-piercing. In 1978
the Native American Religious Freedoms
Act was passed, and flesh-piercing was al,lowed once again. See Altered states of
conSCIOusness.
Sources: Joseph Epes Brown, ed. The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven
Rites of the Oglala Sioux. 1953. New

York: Penguin Books, 1971; Joseph Epes

Brown. The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian. New York: Crossroad, 1987;
Carl A. Hammerschlag. The Dancing Healers: A Doctor's Journey of Healing with
Native Americans. San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1988; Ake Hultkrantz. The Religions of the American Indians. 1967.

Berkeley: University of California Press,

1979; John (Fire) Lame Deer and Richard
Erdoes. Lame Deer Seeker of Visions. New
York: Washington Square Press, 1972;
Ruth M. Underhill. Red Man's Religion.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1965.

Super-ESP
A hypothesis that negates survival after
death by attempting to explain how apparitions of the dead and communications from the dead are the result of ex-

Super-ESP

traordinary ESP of the living. Though it

may explain away some cases of alleged
life after death, super-ESP must be
stretched to ridiculous lengths to explain
others.
The term "super-ESP" was coined in
the late 1950s by American sociologist
and psychical researcher Hornell Hart,
and was then popularized by British psychical researcher Alan Gauld. The concept was studied in the nineteenth century
by French physiologist Charles Richet,
and by the early founders of the Society
for Psychical Research (SPR) in England
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. In researching the question of
survival after death, the SPR studied mediumistic communications, in which a
medium claimed to communicate with
the dead, and countless reports of apparitions of the dead. Some researchers believed that mediums could falsify contact
with the dead by using telepathy and
clairvoyance to glean personal information from the minds of the sitters.
The telepathy hypothesis received a
great boost in 1925 with the celebrated
Soal case. Psychical researcher S. G. Soal
participated in a series of sittings with
Blanche Cooper, a London trance medium, who contacted Gordon Davis, a
friend of SoaPs whom Soal believed was
killed in World War 1. The discarnate
Davis provided personal reminisces, used
idiosyncratic speech patterns, and talked
about his concern for his wife and "kiddie." Soal was later shocked to find out
that Davis was alive and living in London. He theorized that Cooper had
picked up information from his own
mind or, perhaps even from Davis's
mind.
American psychical researcher Gardner Murphy formulated a theory with
other researchers that the phenomena of
super-ESP (telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and retrocognition) may create
pseudo-spirit personalities, as well as apparitions of the dead.

587

But other researchers reject that, and

say super-ESP cannot explain numerous
other cases in which mediums provide information unknown to the sitters. If
super-ESP were responsible, mediums
would perform phenomenal feats of
mind-reading, scanning the thoughts of
perhaps dozens of persons who knew the
deceased-and who just happened to be
thinking about him or her at the time of
the sitting-or
clairvoyantly viewing
newspaper articles and books for information.
At numerous sittings conducted by
British medium Leonora Piper, one of her
controls, the deceased George Pellew, recognized and talked with about thirty of
Pellew's living friends, who were introduced pseudonymously to Piper. To use
ESP to scan the complexities of thirty
relationships, and to deliver the information mimicking Pellew, strains believability.
Super-ESP fails to explain the cases
of "drop-in communicators," unknown
entities who show up unexpectedly at a
seance or sitting, and provide verifiable
information, or speak through the medium in a foreign language the medium
does not know. See Drop-in communicator. Nor does super-ESP explain apparitions of the dead. To fit the hypothesis,
an apparition is a hallucination projected
by a living person who is thinking intensely about the deceased. If more than
one person sees the apparition, then, according to super-ESP, it is created by one
person and picked up telepathically by
the others, who read the thoughts of the
creator.
Despite these drawbacks super-ESP
maintains a sizable number of adherents,
and has been hotly debated over the decades. It cannot be disproven, for there
are no known limits to ESP. However,
super-ESP requires a degree of ESP functioning that surpasses any feat demonstrated in the laboratory. Support for
super-ESP has fallen since the 1970s,

588

in the wake of research into other areas.

See Mediumship.
Sources: Alan Gauld. "The 'Super-ESP' Hypothesis." Proceedings of the Society for
Psychical Research 53, pt. 192 (October
1961): 226-46; Alan Gauld. Mediumship
and Survival. London: William Heinemann
Ltd., 1982; Hornell Hart. The Enigma
of Survival. Springfield, IL: Charles C.
Thomas, 1959; Edgar D. Mitchell. Psychic
Exploration:

A Challenge for Science. Ed-

ited by John White. New York: Paragon

Books, 1974; Gardner Murphy. "Difficulties Confronting the Survival Problem."
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 39 (1945): 67-94; Karlis Osis.

"Linkage Experiments with Mediums."

Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 60 (1966): 91-124; D. Scott
Rogo. Psychic Breakthroughs Today. Well-

ingborough, Northamptonshire, England:

The Aquarian Press, 1987; Benjamin B.
Wolman. Handbook of Parapsychology.
New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977.

Survival after death

See Cross correspondence; Deathbed visions; Mediumship; Near-death experience (NDE); Reincarnation.

Sutphen, Richard (b. 1937)

American author, seminar trainer, and
hypnotist who has acquainted a wide
popular audience with metaphysics, reincarnation, and "human potential" topics.
Richard Sutphen is best known for his
work in past-life regression, and was a
pioneer in the use of group hypnosis for
that purpose.
Sutphen's educational background is
in art and advertising. He attended the
Art Center in Los Angeles, and later
worked for ad agencies in the Midwest
for several years. In the late 1960s, after
the breakup of his first marriage, he
moved to Arizona, living in Prescott and

Super-ESP

Scottsdale, where he worked as an advertising freelancer.

Experiences with a Ouija board led
him to investigate the paranormal
and
past-life regression. His own initial pastlife memories were of a Mayan life in
which he was killed by Christian invaders. He studied
hypnosis
and selfhypnosis,
and began experimenting
in
hypnotic regression with others. In 1971
he began group regression sessions and
research work with various metaphysical
organizations
in the Scottsdale-Phoenix
area. In 1972 he met Trenna, who helped
him in his research and later became his
second wife. In hypnotic regressions the
two discovered they had shared previous
past lives, including one as Indians in
what is now Mexico, and one in the early
1700s as poor peasants
in Marseilles,
France.
Sutphen's interest in the power point
near Sedona, Arizona, began soon after
his move to Arizona, fueled by Lyall Watson's The Romeo Error. He visited one of
the Sedona vortices and had powerful
psychic experiences, leading him to develop programs
and materials to bring
pilgrims to the area. See Sedona, Arizona.
In 1973 Sutphen founded and directed the Hypnosis Center in Scottsdale,
which conducted regression research for
six months until it was closed in January
1974. He continued to conduct seminars
and classes. His first book, You Were
Born Again to Be Together, appeared
in 1976. The same year he conducted
the first nationally broadcast past-life regression on Tom Snyder's
Tomorrow
show.
In 1980 Sutphen moved to Malibu,
California,
where his second marriage
ended. His third wife, Tara, helps him
run the Sutphen Corporation,
which has
two divisions: Sutphen Seminars, which
conducts
seminars
in approximately
twenty cities every year, and Valley of the
Sun Publishing, which publishes books,
audio tapes, and videotapes.

Sutphen,

Richard

(b. 1937)

Richard

Sutphen

In 1984 Sutphen established

Reincarnationists,
Inc., an organization
to
conduct and sponsor seminars on reincarnation themes, directed by Tara Sutphen.
The "New Age Activists" were formed as
the "spiritual action" arm to counteract
the activities of various Fundamentalist
Christian groups. Plans to establish
incarnationists
center in Sedona

a Rewere

abandoned by 1987 due to lack of public

interest and financial support, and the organization became inactive.
Sutphen
has written
more than
thirty-seven books. Other well-known titles are Past Lives, Future Loves (1978),
Unseen Influences
(1982), Predestined
Love (1988), and Finding Your Answers
Within (1989).
Sources: Darlene Carter. "A Very Outspoken Interview with Dick and Tara Sutphen." Self-Help Update issue 31 (1986);
Dick Sutphen. Past Lives, Future Loves.
New York: Pocket Books, 1978; Dick Sutphen. You Were Born Again to Be Together. New York: Pocket Books, 1976;
Paul Zuromski.
"Dick Sutphen."
Body
Mind Spirit (September/October
1987):

14-18.

589

Suzuki, D. T.
See Zen.

Swaffer, Hannen
See Spiritualism.

Sweat
A rite of purification of the body and
spirit in the ceremonies of many Native
Americans. Sweats take place in a small,
circular lodge or tipi in which a central
pit has been dug in the earth. Rocks are
heated on an outside fire and brought inside to be placed in the pit. Water is
thrown on the rocks to create steam,
which becomes scented with herbs, such
as sagebrush, carried in by the participants. The herbs also serve to protect the
face against the intense heat.
There are different kinds of sweats
with varying intensities of heat. Baby
sweats, the equivalent of a christening,
are the mildest, while healing sweats are
the hottest. Sweats are undertaken before
all sacred ceremonies, rites of passage,
and vision quests. In most sweats prayers
and petitions are made on behalf of others. There is chanting and self-blessing,
in which participants pat themselves.
Thanksgiving sweats give thanks to the
spirits for the blessings received.
The sweat ceremony is efficiently organized and conducted by a leader. No
one may enter or leave the lodge, or drink
water, without his permission. Other individuals have specific responsibilities,
such as tending the fire and heating the
rocks, or singing the chants.
Sweats are conducted in rounds. At
the end of a round, the flaps to the lodge
are opened and water is brought in for
those who desire a drink. More hot rocks
are brought in for another round. At the
end of the sweat rounds, there is a round
of smoking a sacred pipe.

590

With the intense heat and chanting,

it is not uncommon to enter an altered
state of consciousness in which one experiences visions or clairaudient phenomena. One also may "see one's spirit," that
is, confront one's true nature or fears. See
Sacred pipe; Vision quest.
Sources: Joseph Epes Brown, ed. The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven
Rites of the Oglala Sioux. Harmonds-

worth, Middlesex, England: Penguin

Books, 1953; Evelyn Eaton. I Send a Voice.
Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing
House, 1978; Carl Waldman. Atlas of the
North American Indian. New York: Facts
On File, 1985.

Swedenborg, Emanuel
(1688-1772)
Swedish scientist and scholar who turned
mystic and medium in his later years,
communing with spirits to develop a
highly detailed description of the structure of the afterlife and universal laws.
Swedenborg's views were far ahead of his
time, and many of his contemporaries
dismissed him as mad. But his works endured, creating a profound impact on
Western spiritual beliefs outside the context of religion, the effects of which have
lasted to the present. Swedenborg was a
major influence upon the secret societies
of his time, and on the development of
Spiritualism in the nineteenth century.
Today's New Age spiritual concepts and
philosophies borrow heavily from his
work.
For nearly two-thirds of his life, Swedenborg led a creative but unremarkable
existence. He was born the second son of
the Lutheran bishop of Skara, and exhibited an early talent for science and mathematics. From age eleven to twenty-one,
he studied at the University of Uppsala,
learning Greek, Latin, several European
and Oriental languages, geology, metallurgy, astronomy, anatomy, mathematics,

Suzuki,

D. T.

economics, and other subjects. Upon

graduation he traveled to Holland, Germany, and England, where he formed a
lasting love for the English.
In 1716 King Charles XII of Sweden
named him special assessor to the Royal
College of Mines. He worked energetically, publishing scientific works, inventing devices such as air-guns and submarines. He attempted twice to marry but
was rebuffed both times. He remained
single for his entire life, but indulged in
mistresses. He was courteous, a gentleman, and gave no clue of the mystical life
that was to unfold.
In 1743 the spiritual world burst
abruptly upon the fifty-six-year-old Swedenborg in a dream in which he traveled
to the spiritual planes. He had paid scant
attention to spiritual matters before, although he had argued for the existence of
the soul in one of his scientific works,
The Animal Kingdom. Now he began
having dreams, ecstatic visions, trances,
and mystical illuminations in which he
visited heaven and hell, talked with Jesus
and God, communicated with the spirits
of the dead (whom he called angels), and
saw the order of the universe, which was
radically different from the teachings of
the Christian church. Swedenborg became convinced that he had been designated by God as a spiritual emissary to
explore the higher planes and report his
findings back to his fellow men and
women, who were woefully ignorant of
the truth.
So excited was he by what he saw
that Swedenborg resigned his government
job and retired on a half-pension so that
he could devote all his waking-and
sleeping- hours to further spiritual explorations. He began recording the dictations of angels, which he automatically
wrote while in light trances. Some of his
visionary trances were so deep that he remained in them for up to three days. He
nonchalantly explained to his worried
housekeeper that he was merely out talk-

Swedenborg, Emanuel (1688-1772)

ing to his friends in the spirit world. The

trances were spontaneous at first; then
Swedenborg used breathing control to induce them.
He became an ascetic and a semivegetarian, giving up meat and existing primarily on bread, milk, and coffee. Others
thought he had gone insane. Immanuel
Kant, who studied Swedenborg and
found many similarities with his own
views, was nonetheless put off, understandably, by Swedenborg's claims of
conversations with Plato, Aristotle, and
other historical luminaries, and his interplanetary travels.
Swedenborg's first of a prolific outpouring of books, Worship and the Love
of God, was published in 1745. In 1749
he published the first of the eight volumes
of Arcana Coelestia, a ponderous exposition of the spirit teachings he received.
His most widely read work is Heaven and
Hell, descriptions of the afterlife. In
Earths in the Universe, he described his
visionary trips to other, inhabited planets. The moon, he said, was peopled by a
race which, due to the strange atmosphere, spoke through their stomachs,
which sounded like belching.
Swedenborg's ideas, expressed in his
stilted and dry writing, were greeted with
little enthusiasm by the public at large,
and were opposed by the church. He was
forced to publish his books at his own
expense. His views did not gain a significant following until after his death, when
English translations began to circulate in
America and England, and laid the
groundwork for Spiritualism.
Swedenborg exhibited psychic powers of clairvoyance and remote viewing
on numerous occasions. One of the most
famous occurred in 1759, when he witnessed a fire in Stockholm from a location three hundred miles away. See Remote viewing. He impressed Queen
Louisa Ulrica, sister of Frederick the
Great, by delivering a private message
from her dead brother, Augustus Wil-

591

liam. In another incident a widow came

to him for help in finding the receipt for
an expensive silver service, which she believed her husband had paid for prior to
his death, though the merchant claimed
he had not. Swedenborg directed her to a
secret compartment in a bureau, where
the receipt was found.
He spent much of his later years in
England. He died at the age of eightyfour in London and was buried there.

The Doctrines of Swedenborg

Swedenborg believed that God created humankind to exist simultaneously
in the physical, or natural, world and the
spiritual world. The spiritual world belonged to an inner domain, along with
will. We have lost the ability to recognize
and use this inner domain, though we remain in constant contact with it, and are
influenced by it. The inner domain has its
own memory, which is what survives after death. This memory includes an eternal record of every thought, emotion, and
action accumulated over a lifetimeSwedenborg's version of the Akashic
Records-and
influences whether the
soul goes to heaven or hell.
Swedenborg's concepts of heaven
and hell are a significant improvement
over those offered by Christianity, which
feature a bland eternal bliss of adoration
and angels singing, or eternal pain and
torment under the dominion of Satan.
Swedenborg's hell is frightening, but it
has no Satan; his heaven is populated by
the spirits of the dead who carryon lives
and habits much the same as they did on
earth. Both have societal structures and
governments. Both are the products of
state of mind, self-created by each individual during life on earth. According to
Swedenborg Jesus' crucifixion did not
atone for the sins of humankind; we
make our own heaven and hell.
Upon death the spirit enters a transition plane so earth-like that many souls

592

cannot believe they are dead. They are

met by dead relatives and friends, then go
through a self-evaluation process that
leads them to choose their heaven or hell.
Regardless of choice, souls continue to
wear clothes, eat, sleep, carryon activities, and marry. Some remarry their
earthly spouses, while others choose new
and more compatible ones.
Selfish, materialistic people naturally
choose hell, which is a horrible, dark
demiworld of souls with monstrous faces.
Souls are free to do anything they did on
earth, including murder, rape, torture, lie,
and manipulate. The only punishment is
incurred when a soul develops vices in excess of his earthly ones; then he is beaten
by other souls. The demons who rule hell
are human souls, not supernatural beings
of another order.
Nor did Swedenborg believe in angels; he used the term to describe certain
souls. All angels once were humans.
Souls may choose heaven, which is
comprised of city-like communities in
which everyone works for the communal
good. It is possible for souls to progress
in the afterlife, but never to leave heaven
or hell, which are permanent states. Swedenborg did not believe in reincarnation.
Swedenborg's visions inspired his
followers to establish a religion in his
name after his death, and different
churches and societies were formed in
countries around the world. The first was
the Church of the New Jerusalem,
founded in England in 1778 and in the
United States in 1792. The Swedenborg
Society was established in 1810 to publish new translations of his works, create
libraries, and sponsor lectures and meetings. As a religion Swedenborgianism has
not become a major force.
The Spiritualists of the nineteenth
century adopted many of Swedenborg's
views, but rejected his hell and divided
his heaven into seven spheres through
which the soul passes after death. Swedenborg's ideas have survived and been

Swedenborg, Emanuel (1688-1772)

spread throughout the general population

largely by intellectuals and writers who
have been influenced by them. Blake,
Coleridge, Emerson, and Henry James
are among writers who have used Swedenborgian themes; James and Emerson
were attracted to Swedenborg's ideas
even though they were critical of him.
Swedenborgianism ran heavily in the
James family: theologian Henry James,
Sr., father of novelist Henry James, was a
Swedenborgian. William James, son of
Henry James, Sr., reflected Swedenborg
in his philosophical works. In addition to
being influenced by his family, William
James took his doctrine of pragmatism
from Charles Sanders Peirce, a Swedenborgian.
In the eclectic spiritual outlooks that
developed in the second half of the twentieth century, Swedenborg's influence is
evident in the popular concept of a selfmade, self-chosen heaven or hell. See
Spiritualism.
Sources: Slater Brown. The Heyday of Spiritualism. New York: Hawthorn Books,
1970; Alfred Douglas. Extrasensory Powers: A Century of Psychical Research. Lon-

don: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1976; Edgar D.

Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge
for Science. Edited by John White. New
York: Paragon Books, 1974; Kurt Seligmann. The History of Magic and the Occult. New York: Pantheon Books, 1948;
Emanuel Swedenborg. Divine Providence.
1764. New York: The Swedenborg Foundation, 1972; Emanuel Swedenborg. Divine Love and Wisdom. 1763. New York:
American Swedenborg Printing and Publishing Society, 1894; Emanuel Swedenborg. The Four Doctrines. 1763. New
York: The Swedenborg Foundation, 1976;
Colin Wilson. The Occult. New York: Vintage Books, 1973.

Symbol
Usually, an object or visual image that
expresses a concept or idea beyond the
object or image itself. Author J. E. Cirlot

Symbol

defined symbols as "the art of thinking in

images" (A Dictionary
of Symbols,
1971), while psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli defined them as preservers, transformers, and conductors of "a dynamic psychological charge or voltage."
Symbols playa vital role in religions
(in archaic societies, all symbolism was
religious), but also permeate the whole of
society; people respond to symbols both
consciously and unconsciously on a daily
basis. Historian of religion Mircea Eliade
observed that symbols translate the human situation into cosmological terms,
and disclose the interdependence of human existence and cosmic structures. The
understanding of symbols and the integration of them into the conscious is an
important factor in various psychologies.
Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung, who devoted a great deal of his life to studying
symbols, said that objects and forms that
are transformed into symbols become endowed with a great psychological and redeeming power, and carry messages to
the psyche. Symbols are the language of
the unconscious, and in particular, the
collective unconscious, where reside the
accumulated racial memories of humankind. Symbols have a numinous quality
that connects them to the archetypes in
the collective unconscious.
Jung's break with psychiatrist Sigmund Freud was in part due to a disagreement over what is meant by "symboL" Freud maintained that the contents
of the consciousness that provide clues to
the unconsciousness are symbols. Jung
said these were not symbols but merely
signs or symptoms, for the meaning of
true symbols is not obvious. To be effective symbols must always be beyond the
reach of comprehension. Assagioli, agreeing with Jung, said that those who take
symbols literally cannot pass beyond
them to arrive at their underlying truth.
While symbols usually are thought
of as images, pictures, and designs, anything can become a symbol: natural and

593

manmade objects, numbers, the elements,

animals, the Earth, the sky, the heavenly
objects, deities, myths, folktales, and even
words. Humankind itself is a symbol and,
according to Jung, the whole cosmos is a
potential symbol. Philosopher Manly P.
Hall stated that man is the oldest, most
profound and universal symbol, as found
in the ancient mysteries, which taught
that the macrocosm of the universe was
symbolized by man, the microcosm. In
fact, symbols comprise the language of
the mysteries and of philosophy, mysticism, and all Nature, according to Hall.
Symbols both conceal (to the uninitiated)
and reveal (to the initiated). See Mysteries.
Cirlot stated there are three types of
symbols and three components of symbols. The types are (1) conventional,
which include constants such as those
found in industry and mathematics; (2)
accidental, which result from transitory
contacts; and (3) universal, which express
an intrinsic relationship between the symbol itself and whatever it represents. The
components of symbols are (1) the symbol in and of itself; (2) its link to a utilitarian function; and (3) its metaphysical
meanmg.
Symbols may become degraded over
time if original meanings are lost and replaced by lesser values. For example,
pearls are now largely regarded as cosmetic objects in jewelry, but once were
integral to medicine, magic, religious offerings to gods and the moon, funerary
rites, and fertility rituals. Jung said that
symbols that are not constantly renewed,
and thus lose their dissolubility, lose their
redeeming power. Symbols that become
too well known also lose their power, becoming mere signs.
Symbolistic thought is believed to
have origins in the late Paleolithic Age,
when people lived in nomadic hunterl
gatherer societies that found shelter in
caves and expressed their magico-supernatural beliefs in rock carvings and

594

paintings. Symbols were part of everyday

life. Three of the most universal symbols
to emerge (in addition to humankind)
were stones, animals, and circles. Natural
stones were believed to be the dwelling
places of deities and spirits. Stones also
could be imbued with animation by
sculpting. Animals (which include the entire animal kingdom) appear as symbols
as early as the Ice Age, c. 60,000 B.C. to
10,000 B.C., and represent humanity's instinctual and primitive nature. This nature was projected onto deities, who bore
animalistic attributes or were sometimes
represented by animals. The circle is perhaps the most powerful of all symbols,
representing the sun, illumination, wholeness, the wheel of life-death-rebirth, the
Christ, and the philosopher's stone. In the
East the circle often is expressed in the
lotus shape and in mandalas. See Circle;
Lotus; Mandala. In Jungian thought the
circle represents the Self, the totality of
the psyche.
Symbols are important to all esoteric
teachings, for they contain secret wisdom
accessible only to the initiated. In Western magic symbols are the keys to raising
within the magician the qualities or abilities expressed by the symbols. Poet William Butler Yeats, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, said of
the magical power of symbols, "I cannot
now think symbols less than the greatest
of all powers whether they are used consciously by the master of magic or half
unconsciously by their successors, the
poet, the musician, and the artist"
(Harper, Yeats's Golden Dawn, 1974.)
See Magic.
While symbols remain integral to
daily life in primitive and tribal societies,
modern people feel removed from them.
Yet symbols continue to permeate our
lives in religion, art, literature, folklore,
myth, science, and commerce, and act
upon us unconsciously. See Mythology.
Jung said that the human mind has its
own history, expressed in symbols, spe-

Symbol

cifically archetypes, or models. Symbols

surface in dreams, but some have become
completely unfamiliar to us. See Dreams.
Jung lamented the deterioration of
the symbolic nature of Christianity.
Christian symbols, he said, died of the
same disease that felled the classical
gods: Humankind discovered it had no
thoughts on the subject. Jung also lamented Western efforts to adopt symbols
from Eastern religions, which he did not
think could be assimilated meaningfully
into Western culture. He said it was better to admit that Christianity suffered
from a poverty of symbols. than to attempt to possess foreign symbols to
which the West could not be the spiritual
heir. See Alchemy; Archetypes; Collective
unconscious; Dreams; Grail, the; Hermetica; Magic; Mythology; Tarot.
Sources: Roberto Assagioli. Psychosynthesis: A Manual of Principles and Techniques. 1965. New York: Penguin Books,

1976; Roberto Assagioli. "Symbols of

Transpersonal Experiences." The Journal
of
Transpersonal
Psychology
(Spring
1969): 33-45; J. E. Cirlot. A Dictionary of
Symbols. New York: Philosophical Library,
1971; Mircea Eliade. Patterns in Comparative Religion. New York: New American
Library, 1958; Mircea Eliade. Symbolism,
the Sacred, and the Arts. Edited by Diane
Apostolos-Cappadona. New York: Crossroad, 1988; Manly P. Hall. The Secret
Teachings of All Ages. 1928. Los Angeles:
The Philosophical Research Society, 1977;
George Mills Harper. Yeats's Golden
Dawn. 1974. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England: The Aquarian Press,
1987; Carl G. Jung, ed. Man and His Symbols. First published in the United States
1964. New York: Anchor PresslDoubleday,
1988; C. G. Jung. Psychological Reflections. 1945. Rev. ed. 1949. Bollingen Series
31. Ne\v York: Pantheon Books, 1953; Andrew Samuels, Bani Shorter, and Fred
Plaut. A Critical Dictionary of Jungian
Analysis. London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1986; Charles T. Tart, ed. Transpersonal Psychologies. New York: Harper &
Row, 1975.

Synchronicity

Synchronicity
The unifying principle behind "meaningful coincidences." Psychiatrist Carl G.
Jung termed synchronicity "an acausal
connecting principle" that links seemingly unrelated and unconnected events.
The concept is integral to Eastern
thought, but in Western thought runs
contrary to cause and effect. In the West
"coincidences" are popularly discounted
as chance happenings.
The concept of synchronicity was developed largely by Jung, who credited Albert Einstein as his inspiration. Einstein
and Jung met on several occasions during
Einstein's professorships in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1909 to 1910 and 1912 to
1913. At that time Einstein was developing his theory of relativity; Jung was inspired to consider a possible relativity of
time as well as space.
Later, in the mid-1920s, as Jung was
probing the phenomena of the collective
unconscious, he encountered numerous
synchronicities he could not explain.
They were, he said, '''coincidences' which
were connected so meaningfully that their
'chance' concurrence would represent a
degree of improbability that would have
to be expressed by an astronomical figure" (Synchronicity, 1952). As an example he cited incidents that happened to
the wife of a patient: Upon the deaths of
her mother and grandmother, birds gathered outside the windows of the deathchamber. Jung noted the connection of
birds to the soul or to messengers of the
gods in various mythologies.
In 1930 Jung first used the term
"synchronicity," in his memorial address
for Richard Wilhelm, who translated the
I Ching into German. (Jung was fascinated by the patterns found in divination
systems such as the I Ching, astrology,
numerology, and the like.) Years later
Jung equated synchronicity with Tao.
In further developing the concept,
Jung was greatly aided and influenced by

595

the Viennese physicist Wolfgang Pauli, a

Nobel Laureate and associate of Einstein,
who proved the existence of non-local
causality. Pauli sought out Jung for psychotherapy in 1928. Their ensuing relationship led to a collaborative authorship
of The Interpretation and Nature of the
Psyche (1952), of which Jung's essay,
Synchronicity, forms the second part.
Jung said synchronicity can be found
in events that are meaningfully but not
causally related (that is, do not coincide
in time and space), as well as in events
that do coincide in time and space and
have meaningful psychological connections. In addition, synchronicity links the
material world to the psychic; synchronistic events, he said, "rest on an archetypal foundation."
Jung applied the term "synchronicity" to various psychological and parapsychological phenomena, such as parapsychologist J. B. Rhine's ESP card
guessing experiments at Duke University,
which normally would not be considered
acausal today. In his own experiment
with horoscopes, Jung proposed synchronicity as an explanation for the connection between birth signs and choice of
spouses. He drew severe criticism because
he relied on subjects biased in favor of
astrology.
Synchronicity increasingly is coming
to light in the modern research of psychologists, parapsychologists, and scientists on the nature of consciousness. The
validities of findings in each discipline
are frequently and dramatically underscored by the fact that their complimentary or nearly identical conclusions have
been derived independently of each other.
Similarities between quantum physics
and Eastern mystical thought have been
pointed out, as in Fritjof Capra's The Tao
of Physics (1984), while the parallels between them and the findings of Jungian
psychology are verified by mythologists,
most notably Joseph Campbell.
In Synchronicity: The Bridge Be-

596

tween Matter and Mind (1987), F. David

Peat cites the neural research of Eric Kandel, whose studies of the sea slug demonstrate Kandel's theory that the human
brain is "structurally unfolding" during
each moment of the day. Kandel suggests
that this process takes place "from a
background of active information which
is present both in its own structure and in
the external environment." The result, he
says, is an "eternally fresh brain." Moreover, the brain is not only receptive in the
process, but simultaneously "acts upon
the environment to change it and to create a new 'reality.''' Completing the circle, the new reality acts back upon the
brain through "a constant process of formation and information." This has profound implications; for the brain's structuring of reality includes not only
physical actions but also human relationships, the nature of society, and every
person's self-image.
Peat observes that synchronicity appears naturally to a mind that is constantly sensitive to change. As we simultaneously act and react, creativity is
energized in our personal synthesis. Synchronicity thus makes integration possible between the analytic and the more
heuristic approaches to reality; subjective
meaning of phenomena is combined with
objective explanations.
Synchronicity also sheds new light
on Platonic dualism, which separates
body and spirit. This dualism has contributed to many contemporary problems
in Western society, as may be seen in materialism, in allopathic medicine's disregard for the influence of the mind in illness and disease, and in the destruction of
the environment. An understanding of
synchronicity can foster a more holistic viewpoint characteristic of Eastern
thought.
Modern interest in syncronicity is
appropriate,
since even rudimentary
awareness of the phenomenon sensitizes a
person to the realities and possibilities of

Synchronicity

universal harmonies and complementariness, even where none was once thought
possible. The resulting openness to alternative worldviews could lay a philosophical foundation, if not also a theological
framework, for new political, cultural,
and even ecumenical unities. See Jung,
Carl Gustav.
Sources: David Bohm and F. David Peat.
Science, Order and Creativity. New York:

Bantam, 1987; "Beyond Relativity and

Quantum Theory." Interview with David
Bohm. Psychological Perspectives 19, no. 1
(Spring-Summer 1988): 25-43; "Consciousness and the New Quantum Psychologies." Psychological Perspectives 19, no. 1
(Spring-Summer 1988): 4-13; Nick Herbert. Quantum Reality. New York: Doubleday, 1985; C. G. Jung. Synchronicity.

Synchronicity

From Collected Works. Vol. 13. 1952.

Princeton, NJ: University of Princeton
Press, 1973; The I Ching or Book of
Changes. German translation by Richard
Wilhelm, rendered into English by Carey F.
Baynes. Forward by C. G. Jung. 3d ed.
Princeton, NJ: University of Princeton
Press, 1967; C. A. Meier. "Science and Synchronicity." Psychological Perspectives 19,
no. 2 (Fall-Winter, 1988): 322; F. David
Peat. "Divine Contenders: Wolfgang Pauli
and the Symmetry of the World." Psychological Perspectives 19, no. 1 (SpringSummer 1988): 14-24; F. David Peat. Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and
Mind. New York: Bantam, 1987; Andrew
Samuels, Bani Shorter, and Fred Plaut. A
Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis.

London: Routledge

& Kegan Paul, 1986.

597

T
T'ai Chi Ch'uan
See Tai Ji Chuan.

T ai Ji Chuan (also T ai Chi

Ch'uan and T' ai Chi Ch'uan)
A major style of "soft," or internal, Chinese boxing (Kung Fu). Tai Ji Chuan, the
more recent and more correct phonetic
spelling, means "grand or great ultimate
fist." It is popular in the West as a form
of moving meditation, exercise, and stress
reducer. It is steeped in Taoist philosophy
and is characterized by slow, fluidic, and
continuous movements of the body. Tai Ji
stresses harmony with nature and generates physical, psychological, and emotional benefits.
Tai Ji draws on centuries of early
Chinese and Taoist philosophies concerning the union of breathing, movement,
and meditation as a means to health, longevity, immortality, and, later, as a principle of martial arts. Perhaps the earliest
precursor of Tai Ji dates to around 2700
B.C., when Huang Ti, the Yellow Emperor, began to practice a form of exercise called Daoyin (dao means "guide"
and yin means "leading") for longevity. The exercises, also called T'u Na
(for "exhale" and "inhale"), combined
breathing with movement of the limbs designed to increase oxygen circulation and
flush poisons out of the body. Huang Ti
was advised by the immortal sage Kuang

598

Cheng-tze to sit quietly with a peaceful

mind. Thus, through exercise and meditation, Huang Ti is said to have reigned
for one hundred years, during which he
had many wives. He allegedly achieved
immortality .
Tai Ji itself was developed in the
thirteenth century by Chang San-feng, a
Taoist monk, who is said to have been
inspired by watching a snake and crane
fight. The snake avoided the crane by
twisting and turning. According to different versions of the story, Chang San-feng
either devised Tai Ji as a method of combat or intended it as a health-promoting
discipline complementary to meditation.
Tai Ji is still most effective when practiced in conjunction with sitting meditation.
Tai Ji is based on the Taoist philosophy of living in harmony with nature
and going with natural flows of energy.
The Tao Teh Ching, the central text of
Taoism, states that soft overcomes hard,
and emphasizes the unity of mind and
body, which in Chinese alchemy is essential to longevity and immortality. As a
"soft" form of Kung Fu, Tai Ji relies on
internal power (qi, the universal life
force), rather than on the external powet
of muscles, as in the "hard" forms of
Kung Fu.
Tai Ji consists of various physical
postures and movements called the Form.
Some of the movements are adapted from
animals and birds-such as "Bring Tiger

Tai Chi Ch'uan

to the Mountain" and "Snake Creeps

Down" -the origins of which date to at
least the time of the great Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu, c. 200 B.C. Some
teachers stress formality in movements,
while others do not. The body remains
soft and springy, and the movements are
slow and fluid, as though one is either
floating or moving through viscous liquid. As one moves one is aware of slowmotion waves of energy (qi) interacting
throughout the body. A high degree of
concentration is required, but with practice it becomes effortless.
Tai Ji facilitates the flow of qi
through the body. Qi exists as yang, a
masculine energy, and yin, a female energy. Both must be in balance in an environment and organism for health and
happiness. Yang is pulled down from the
heavens and yin is pulled up from the
earth through breathing techniques.
"Breathing through the feet" is important
to T ai Ji, and is based on the works of
Chuang Tzu, who said that "The breathing of the true man comes from his heels,
while men generally breathe only from
their throats."
Qi is circulated throughout the body
in eight psychic channels and twelve meridians associated with various organs. Its
flow is the basis of internal power, which
is controlled through the dantian, the
central energy center located about two
inches below the navel. Through ChuGung, the advanced teachings of Tai Ji,
one learns to become aware of and use
this power instinctively. It is a state of
"not doing" or "no mind," in which one
lets go of the mind and lets the body react
to energy flows.
Push Hands are movements done
with a parmer, in which one learns balancing and counterbalancing of forces.
The practice of Tai Ji gradually dissolves blockages of qi energy within the
body, and between the body and the environment. As a result one maintains better health. There are specific Tai Ji tech-

Talisman

niques for massage (similar to acupressure, only lacking specific pressure

points); the prevention and healing of
burns; and energy transfer healing. See
Bodywork. T ai Ji also is said to enhance
lucid dreaming. See Dreams.
In Chinese tradition Tai Ji is practiced outdoors at sunrise and sunset.
As a form of combat, Tai Ji relies on
using the energy of the opponent to defend oneself. The fighter remains relaxed
and still. When the opponent moves, the
fighter absorbs the opponent's energy
and repulses it. Twists and turns are used
to avoid strikes. See Martial arts; Meditation; Qi Gong; Taoism; Universal life
force.
Sources: Milton Friedman. "Chungliang Al
Huang: A Master of Moving Meditation."
New Realities 9, no. 5 (May/June 1989):
10-20; Bob Klein. Movements of Magic:
The Spirit of Tai-Chi-Ch'uan.
North Hollywood, CA: Newcastle Publishing, 1984;
Peter Lewis. Martial Arts of the Orient.
New York: Gallery Books, 1985; Da Liu.
Tai Chi Ch'uan and Meditation.
New
York: Schocken Books, 1986.

Talisman
An object, drawing, or symbol believed to
be endowed with supernatural or magical
power, which then confers its power
upon its possessor. In occult lore talismans also attract good luck, success, fortune, health, fecundity, virility, love, and
power. The use of talismans has been universal throughout history.
Talismans are active objects-they
are transformers and lightning rods. Talismans often are confused with amulets,
which protect and ward off, and are passive. An example of a talisman is the
magic hat, which renders the wearer invisible, or transports the wearer wherever
he or she wishes in the blink of an eye.
Magic swords, such as King Arthur's Excalibur and Siegfried's Nothung, are talismans, as are magic wands and magic

599

lamps. In the Middle Ages, holy objects

and relics were prized as talismans for
their alleged curative powers. During the
Renaissance alchemists sought the talisman of the philosopher's stone, the elusive substance or object that would enable them to transmute base metals into
silver or gold, or transmute consciousness
into a higher state. Precious stones also
are considered to be talismans, some amulets as well.
Talismans, like amulets, have provided people with tools in their attempt
to control the forces of nature. A talisman can be virtually any object, but generally is endowed with power through
one of three ways: from nature (such as a
gem); from God, the gods, or supernatural entities (such as Excalibur); and by
creation in precise magic ritual (such as a
wand). Many rituals exist in the grimoires, or textbooks, of ceremonial
magic for the creation of talismans for
any purpose, such as acquiring wealth or
making good speeches. Such talismans
usually are seals or inscriptions made
upon metal, stone, parchment, or wax.
See Amulet; Magic.
Sources: Francis Barrett. The Magus. 1801.

Reprint. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1967;

E. A. Wallis Budge. Amulets and Superstitions. 1930. New York: Dover Publications, 1978; Richard Cavendish. The Black
Arts. New York: Perigee Books, 1967;
Emile Grillot de Givry. Witchcraft, Magic
and Alchemy. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931; Maria Leach, ed., and Jerome
Fried, assoc. ed. Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology,
and Legend. San Francisco: Harper &

Row, 1979.

Taoism
System of mysticism and philosophy, and
the only indigenous religion of China,
based on the Tao Teh Ching, a slim work
attributed to the legendary mystic, Lao

600

Yin and yang symbol with trigrams

Tzu (born c. 604 B.C.). Scholars, however,
date the work to the fourth century B.C.
Tao means "the Way." Taoism, expanded upon by various sages, provided
a metaphysics that was lacking in Confucianism, and facilitated the emergence
of neo-Confucianism during the Sung Dynasty from A.D. 960 to 1279. It also
helped the entrance of Buddhism into
China, and the development of Ch'an
(Zen) Buddhism. With Confucianism,
Taoism forms the central Chinese
thought. It has found popularity in the
West.
Little is known about Lao Tzu; there
is controversy as to whether or not he
existed. According to the biographer
Ssuma Ch'ien (145 B.C. -86 B.C.), Lao-tzu
came from the southern state of Ch'u,
which is now the provinces of Hunan and
Hupei. His family name was Li, his personal name was Erh, his courtesy name
was Po-yang, and his posthumous name
was Tan. He worked as Custodian of the
Imperial Archives of the Chou House in
the city of Loyang. He reportedly granted
an interview to Confucius, who was some
fifty years younger, and came to him with
questions about rituals.
Lao-tzu's cultivation of Tao allegedly enabled him to live for more than

Talisman

two hundred years, outliving Confucius

by 129 years, according to Ssuma Ch'ien.
He retired from his job when the Chou
House began to decline. As he took the
pass westward, Hsin Yi, the warden of
the pass, asked him to write a book for
his enlightenment. Lao-tzu wrote a twopart book on the meaning of the Tao (the
Way) and the Teh (Virtue or Power), totaling 5,350 words. Initially, the book
was called Lao Tzu. The name was
changed to the Tao Teh Ching, or "Classic of the Way of Its Virtue," sometime
during the Western Han Dynasty (202
B.C.-A.D. 9). Approximately one thousand
commentaries have since been written on
the work, the most notable by Han Fei
Tzu (d. 233 B.C.), Chuang Tzu (369 B.C.286 B.C.), Ho Shang Kung (d. 159 B.C.),
and Wang Pi (A.D. 226-249). Ho Shang
Kung's commentary was the first in detail
and comprehensiveness, and was a major
influence in the later development of the
religion of Taoism.
Taoism is permeated with mysticism.
Tao is the Absolute Truth, the Ultimate
Reality, the Eternal Ground of Being. It is
the origin of all temporal phenomena, including the One, which is the creative
principle of Tao and preceded all other
things. Unlike Logos, the personal Godhead of Christianity, or Heaven, the remote but purposeful Supreme Being of
Confucianism, Tao is impersonal. Tao
has a dual nature. The Eternal Tao is unnameable, indescribable, and beyond discussion. It is the mysterious essence of the
universe, unborn, non being, above and
beyond heaven, above and beyond the
universe. Manifest Tao is the named,
being.
Within Tao are two complementary
principles, the yin, or passive/female!
earth principle, and the yang, or active!
male/heaven principle. Yin and yang are
in constant interaction, ebb and flow, and
their balance governs the harmony and
well-being of all things.

Taoism

This key principle of Taoism is expressed in its symbol, the Tai Ji Tu ("Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate"): two
fishlike figures, one black and one white,
contained in a circle. The white figure
represents yang and the black figure represents yin. Within each figure is a dot of
the opposite color, the lesser yang and
lesser yin, demonstrating that each opposing force contains its opposite. The
figures are separate yet originate from
each other and flow into each other in a
perpetual cycle. The Tai Ji Tu shows that
these fundamental forces are in continual
opposition and interaction, which nourishes all things. The Tai Ji Tu also represents the human being, who is comprised
of light and dark.
According to legend, the symbol
originated in prehistoric times, though
there is no evidence to support that contention. The earliest written description
of yin and yang is found in the divinatory
book the I Ching, which tells of the Great
Primal Beginning generating two primary
forces, which in turn generate four images, which in turn generate the eight trigrams upon which the I Ching is based.
See I Ching.
Diagrams to express the concept appeared by the Sung Dynasty. An important work was the Tai Ji Tu Shuo ("The
Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate Explained") of the neo-Confucian philosopher Chou Tun-i (1017-1073), who said
the diagram symbolized the production
and evolution of all things.
Teh, the virtue or power of Tao, is
expressed in wu wei, which is nonaction
in terms of noninterference. Nature is
spontaneous and effortless, and Wu-Wei
constitutes going with the flow. Thus in
Taoism one avoids aggression and challenges, and instead seeks passivity.
Toughness and aggression may be overcome with softness, gentleness, meekness
and humility: yang is countered and balanced with yin.

601

Tao is often identified with Nature,

and the same passive principle is applied.
One does not seek to control Nature, but
to have respect for it and bend to its
forces. See Feng shui.
Spiritual purification in Taoism
comes through purity of heart and avoidance or elimination of desires, which enable the seeker to embrace the One. The
best way to accomplish this is through
meditation. Taoist meditation is characterized by several features: (1) concentration; (2) breath control; (3) purification
of heart and mind; (4) practice of WuWei in daily life; (5) the ability to play the
female, or yin, role during mystical union
with Heaven, the yang principle.
Breath control is of great importance, as it is in yoga. Lao Tzu favored
natural breathing, which induces tenderness, the essential characteristic of life (as
opposed to rigidity, the characteristic of
death). Lao Tzu considered the infant to
be the perfect symbol of Tao, and said it
was highly desirable to breathe as an infant does. Later Taoists advocated "fetus
breathing," which is so faint that it is
nearly extinguished, and which when
done precedes the mystical state of samadhi.
The return to a newborn state as a
way to Tao is expressed in Taoist yoga,
which advises (for men) the sublimation
of the vital male force at age sixteen,
when it is at its apex of strength, into
hsien t'ien, the prenatal vital force, which
leads to spiritual immortality.
Lao Tzu saw immortality in spiritual
terms, but some later Taoists looked for
physical immortality. From the time of
Chuang Tzu to the century following,
there was great interest in alchemy and
the search for an elixir or yoga of immortality. The elixir specialists, Fang Shih,
enjoyed great prestige.
Taoism has had a significant influence on Zen Buddhism meditation practices. See Alchemy; Meditation; Mysticism; Yoga; Zen.

602

Sources: Yong Choon Kim. Oriental

Thought. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1973; Da Liu. T'ai Chi Ch'uan and
Meditation. New York: Schocken Books,
1986; Stephen Mitchell, trans. and intro.
Tao Te Ching. New York: Harper & Row,
1988; Henry Wei. The Guiding Light of La
Tzu. Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1982; Holmes Welch. Taoism: The Parting of the Way. Boston: Beacon Press, 1966.

Tarot
A type of card deck used for divination,
self-help, spiritual growth, and the cultivation of intuition and psychic ability.
The term "Tarot" is a French derivative
of the Italian tarocchi, meaning "triumphs" or "trumps."
The Tarot deck consists of seventyeight cards divided into two parts, the
twenty-two-card
Major
Arcana,
or
Trumps, and the fifty-six-card Minor Arcana, which has four suits of ten cards
each and resembles today's deck of playing cards. The four suits traditionally are
wands (which correspond to clubs in
playing cards), swords (spades), cups
(hearts), and pentacles (diamonds). Each
suit has one additional court card not
contained in playing cards, the page.
The original purpose and the development of the Tarot are unknown. Numerous theories, many of them fanciful,
have been advanced. The earliest surviving records of cards of any type date to
the early fourteenth century. Cards that
may have been Tarot were created in
1392 for King Charles VI of France by a
painter, Jacquemin Gringonneur. The
earliest known Tarot cards date to the
early fifteenth century in Milan and were
designed for the Visconti and ViscontiSforza families. These early decks were of
only the Major Arcana, whose unnumbered images, possibly allegories, represented death, fortune, wisdom, virtues,
sciences and arts, and so on. At some

Taoism

~
";;
~
-;
~

Aquarian Tarot cards in Celtic cross

spread

point the Tarot cards probably were

merged with playing cards in use
throughout Europe, and by the mideighteenth century, the seventy-eight-card
Tarot deck had become standardized in
the "Marseilles" deck, still in use today.
The Major Arcana had names and numbers. The cards were used in a game.
At about the mid-eighteenth century,
Antoine Court de Gebelin (1725-1784),
a French archaeologist and Egyptologist,
put forward the theory that the Tarot
cards were fragments of ancient Egyptian
esoteric wisdom contained in the mythical Book of Thoth. This theory had no
basis in fact whatsoever-the
Rosetta
Stone had yet to be discovered - but it
caught the popular fancy. The theory was
further promoted by a popular fortuneteller, Etteilla, the pseudonym of a Parisian wig-maker named Alliette. Etteilla
used the Tarot in fortune-telling. In the
nineteenth century, French occultist
Eliphas Levi (1810-1875), the pseudonym of Alphonse Louis Constant, linked
the Tarot to the Kabbalah and corresponded the Major Arcana to the letters
of the Hebrew alphabet, another spurious
interpretation.
In 1910 English occultist Arthur Edward Waite published his interpretation

Tarot

of the Tarot deck, with images designed

by fellow occultist Pamela Colman Smith.
Waite believed the Tarot cards were no
older than the fourteenth century, but
their symbols were much older. He said
he restored the symbols to their original
meanings. He drew in part on the Hermetic Kabbalah, a blend of true Kabbalah
and Hermeticism favored by occultists,
including the Hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn, of which Waite was a
member.
The Rider-Waite deck, as it became
known, set the standard for nearly all
Tarot decks to follow. Unlike earlier
decks the Minor Arcana pip cards were
represented pictorially. Since then hundreds of Tarot decks have been designed
and published, and many have broken
away from traditional symbolism and
names.
Tarot cards are read in rituals of
shuffling and laying out cards in various
spreads. Each position in a spread holds a
particular significance. Each card has a
different meaning, which is influenced by
its position: upright or reversed. In addition, each suit of the Minor Arcana has
a meaning. Traditionally, they are:
swords-ill fortune or strife; pentaclesfinancial and material success; cupsgood fortune and love; and wandsenterprise and distinction. The Major
Arcana have been subject to broad interpretations. Essentially, they are archetypes, and their sequence from 0 to 21
seems to represent the soul's journey to
self-realization, the process of individuation or becoming whole, or the alchemical process of spiritual transmutation resulting in the philosopher's stone.
Like the I Ching, the Tarot should
not be read for definitive "yes" or "no"
answers, but for a reflection of existing
energies and directions concerning a
given situation. Though each card and its
position has a unique meaning, the entire
layout must be considered synergistically.
The Tarot is best used as a tool for seeing

603

one's life from new perspectives. Skillful

reading requires good inruition. Tarot
cards-particularly
the Major Arcanaalso are used in meditation and creative
visualization exercises as a means of personal growth. The Hermetic Kabbalah as
a path of Tarot study continues to draw
many srudents. See Archetypes; Divination. Compare to I Ching.
Sources: Joseph Campbell and Richard
Roberts. Tarot Revelations. San Anselmo,
CA: Vernal Equinox Press, 1979; Alfred
Douglas. The Tarot: The Origins, Meaning
and Use of the Cards. New York:
Taplinger, 1972; Eden Gray. A Complete
Guide to the Tarot. New York: Bantam
Books, 1972; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The
Mystical Tarot. New York: New American
Library, 1991; Sruart R. Kaplan. The Encyclopedia of Tarot. New York: U.S.
Games Systems, 1978; Genie Z. Laborde,
Ph.D. "Tarot as a Hook to Fishing." New
Realities 5, no. 2 (1984): 50-54; Sallie
Nichols. Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal
Journey. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser,
1980; Carl Sargent. Personality, Divination, and the Tarot. Rochester, VT: Destiny
Books, 1988; Arthur Edward Waite. The
Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Secaucus, NJ:
Citadel Press, 1959; Jan Woudhuysen.
Tarot Therapy: A New Approach to Self
Exploration. First published as Tarotmania. 1979. New ed. Los Angeles: Jeremy P.
Tarcher, 1988.

Tart, Charles T.
See Altered states of consciousness.

T eilhard de Chardin, Pierre

(1881-1955)
Theologian, philosopher, and paleontologist, whose religiously oriented concepts
of cosmic evolution are influential in
New Age thought. His key concept is that
the universe has its own evolutionary history, and that an increasingly complex
consciousness is an integral part of the
evolution.

604

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was born

on May 1, 1881, in Sarcenat, France. He
was the son of a gentleman farmer; his
mother was the great-grandniece of the
French novelist known as Voltaire. Early
on he had an interest in geology. He began boarding at the Jesuit College of
Mongre at age ten, and entered the Society of Jesus in Aix-en-Provence at age
eighteen. He was ordained in 1911 and
remained a Jesuit for the rest of his life,
despite controversy with religious authorities, especially concerning his views related to Darwinism.
From age twenty-four to twentyseven, Teilhard served as professor at the
Jesuit College in Cairo. During World
War I he was a stretcher bearer, and was
awarded the Legion of Honor and a military medal for his bravery at the front.
After the war he taught at the Catholic
Instirute of Paris. He earned his doctorate
in geology in 1922.
In 1923 he took his first trip to
China for paleontological and geological
research, and returned to his teaching
post in Paris in 1924. His teachings on
evolution and Original Sin were not well
received in the anti-Modernist climate
fostered by Pope Pius XI, and he was ordered to repudiate some of his statements. In 1925 he was ordered to remove
himself from France.
Teilhard returned to China, where
he lived until 1946. He participated in the
archaeological excavations at Choukoutien in north China, which led to the discovery of Peking Man. His work in China
inspired his examination of evolution,
and he began work on one of his bestknown books, The Phenomenon of Man
(1955). The manuscript was completed in
1938, but, like all of his major writings,
was not published until after his death.
In 1946 Teilhard returned to France,
but was barred from teaching at the College de France. Frustrated, he accepted a
research position at the Wenner-Gren
Foundation in New York City in Decem-

Tarot

I
1.

[
I

ber 1951. In 1954 he sought but was denied permission to return to France permanently. He suffered a stroke and died
on April 10, 1955.
Among his other major works are
The Divine Milieu (1957); The Future of
Man (1959); Human Energy (1962); The
Activation of Energy (1963); Hymn of
the Universe (1964); and Christianity and
Evolution (1969).
The church's opposition to his writings continued posthumously, and in
1962 the church issued a monitum (warning) against the uncritical acceptance of
his views. Teilhard also has been challenged by scientists and philosophers.
As a young man Teilhard was profoundly influenced by Henri Bergson's
Creative Evolution, which argued against
dualism in favor of an evolving universe.
Teilhard was first to perceive of a cosmic
evolution in four phases: galactic, Earth,
life, and human. Central to his concept of
evolution is the integration of the psychic
with the physical. Evolution implies the
law of complexification, which means
that as physical matter becomes more
complex, so does consciousness, which is
intrinsic to all life forms. Thus the human
race has arisen from, and is connected to,
all other life forms on Earth, both physically and psychically. In its human form,
evolution becomes conscious of itself.
The convergence of various human
groups progressively will shape the ultrahuman, a process now underway. The
ultimate goal is a convergence toward
Christ, the "Omega point" at which human consciousness finds the ultimate integrity and unity.
Teilhard used such phrases as "cosmogenesis," for the development of a
world with humankind at its center;
"noosphere," a collective human consciousness within the biosphere of the
Earth; "noogenesis," for the growth of
the human mind; "hominization" and
"ultra-hominization,"
for the future
stages of humankind's transcendent hu-

manization. According to Teilhard the increasing numbers of humans, and the improving communications, are fusing all
parts of the noosphere together. As a result humankind will achieve more integrated and intense mental activity. This
will facilitate the upward climb to higher
stages of hominization. However, Teilhard said, the evolutionary process requires more intense psychic energy than
that exerted during most of the twentieth
century.
One of Teilhard's greatest contributions was his emphasis on the cosmic
Christ, a shift from the dominant redemption orientation of Christianity to a
creation orientation. He identified the
cosmic Christ as a dimension of the
evolving universe. He termed humankind's psychic identity with all forms of
life the "cosmic sense," with which human beings see their function in the evolutionary scheme. As a conscious cocreator, people can direct renewed energy to
the developmental process.
Teilhard also saw science as an essentially mystical discipline, and perceived the need for science and religion to
reconverge.
Despite his great vision, Teilhard did
not see beyond the prevailing thought of
his day that human exploitation of the
planet was essentially a good thing.
Rather, he saw the subordination of the
Earth to humankind as the fulfillment of
the Earth's true meaning, and necessary
to the glorious fulfillment of human evolution to ultrahuman. Teilhard showed
a certain disdain for those individuals
who advocated living in harmony with
the Earth. In Teilhard's view the advances
of technology, and the growth of the industrial state, provided good energy to be
harnessed. He was confident that the industrial sources would find solutions to
whatever problems arose with the Earth's
shrinking resources.
Nonetheless, Teilhard's thought can
be applied to modern ecological con-

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (1881-1955)

605

cerns. If humankind
is psychically connected to all other life forms and has the
power to become a cocreator in the evolutionary process and direct further upward development,
then it behooves the
human race to cease the wanton exploitation of the Earth, its resources, and
other life forms-the
very basis of humankind's
present evolutionary
status.
To destroy these things is to destroy an
intrinsic part of ourselves, and perhaps
prevent the attainment
of the Omega
point. Teilhard did perceive modern humanity to be at a biological turning point,
"where it must either lose all belief in the
universe or quite resolutely worship it."
See Creation spirituality; Planetary conSClousness.
Sources: Thomas Berry. Teilhard in the Ecological Age. Monograph, Teilhard Studies
No.7. Chambersburg, PA: ANIMA Books,
1982; Donald P. Gray. The One and the
Many: Teilhard de Chardin's Vision of
Unity. New York: Herder & Herder, 1969;
John and Mary Evelyn Grim. Teilhard de
Chardin: A Short Biography. Monograph,
Teilhard Studies No. 11. Chambersburg,
PA: ANIMA Books, 1984; Teilhard de
Chardin. The Divine Milieu. 1957. Rev. ed.
New York: Harper & Row, 1968; Teilhard
de Chardin. The Future of Man. 1959.
New York: Harper & Row, 1969; Teilhard
de Chardin. The Phenomenon
of Man.
1955. New York: Harper & Row, 1965.

Te Kwon Do

of thought over any distance. The term

was coined in the late nineteenth century
by Frederic W. H. Myers, one of the
founders of the Society for Psychical Research in London. Telepathic
hypnosis
has been of particular interest to Russian
scientists.
The ability to hypnotize a person at
a distance was an early discovery of animal magnetists
and mesmerists in Europe. As early as 1818, D. Velinski, a
Russian surgeon and professor of physiology at the Imperial Academy in St. Petersburg,
documented
experiments
that
demonstrated
how a magnetist could act
on a patient at a distance simply by concentrating his thought. Velinski considered this a dangerous practice, and urged
his colleagues not to use it for anything
other than healing.
In 1845 another Russian, a hypnotist
named Andrey Ivanovitch Pashkov, documented
his telepathic
hypnosis
of a
woman who lived three hundred miles
away. At his command she fell into a
somnambulistic
sleep, which alleviated
her rheumatoid
arthritis.
In the late 1880s in France, "Leonie
B.," a celebrated French medium, was
telepathically
hypnotized
on numerous
occasions by psychologists
Pierre Janet
and M. Gibert. On several occasions in
Le Havre in 1886, Gibert demonstrated
that he could telepathically hypnotize Leonie from a distance of about two-thirds

A combination
of telepathy and hypnotism, in which a person may be induced
into a hypnotic trance by the projection

of a mile. The experiments were observed

and documented by Myers.
Beginning in 1924 Russian scientists
conducted extensive experiments with telepathic hypnosis, much of it under cover
during the repressive Stalinist regime. The
experiments
have focused on manipulation of behavior and inducement of pain,
and have been led by L. L. Vasiliev, who
said he successfully hypnotized a subject
more than 1,700 kilometers away to fall
asleep and awaken on command.
The question remains as to whether
a person may be telepathically
hypno-

606

Teilhard

See Martial

arts.

Telekinesis
See T eleportation.

Telepathic hypnosis (also

hypnosis-a t-a-distance)

de Chardin,

Pierre (1881-1955)

,
f

I
I

l
~

l
t

tized without being aware of it. Russian

scientists say they may be, although the
phenomenon may be limited to a narrow
segment of the population.
In general, a
subject must give conscious or unconscious approval to being hypnotized. It is
estimated that about four in one hundred
persons may be put into deep hypnotic
trance; it is these, Soviet scientists say,
who are most vulnerable
to telepathic
hypnosis without knowing it. Even so, it
would be virtually impossible to command such people to perform acts they
would not do when conscious, either for
dislike or moral objections. If telepathic
hypnosis is feasible, advocates say it may
prove useful to the military for espionage
and warfare.
In the 1978 world chess championship, held at Baguio, the Philippines, Victor Korchnoi, a Soviet defector who was
challenging
champion
Anatoly Karpov,
claimed he was the victim of "telehypnosis." Korchnoi said he was hypnotized to
lose the game by a Dr. Vladimir
Zoukhar, a Russian hypnotist and parapsychologist, who sat in the fourth row
of spectators and stared at him throughout the match. See Hypnosis; Telepathy.
Sources: Eric Cuddon. The Meaning and
Practice of Hypnosis. New York: Citadel
Press, 1965; Martin Ebon. Psychic Warfare: Threat or Illusion? New York:
McGraw-Hill,
1983; Ron McRae. Mind
Wars. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984;
Frederic W. H. Myers. Human Personality
and Its Survival of Bodily Death. Vols. 1
and 2. 1903. New ed. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1954; Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
1970;
Russell Targ and Keith Harary. The Mind
Race. New York: Villard Books, 1984.

Telepathy
The

mind-to-mind

communication

of

thoughts, ideas, feelings, sensations, and

mental images. Telepathy is described in

Telepathy

writings and oral lore around the globe.

In some tribal societies, such as the Aborigines of Australia, it is an accepted human faculty; in other societies it is considered the province
of mystics and
psychics. Telepathy has not been proved
scientifically, though it has been studied
by numerous psychical researchers.
"Telepathy"
derives from the Greek
terms tele ("distant") and pathe ("occurrence" or "feeling").
It was coined in
1882 by British psychical researcher Frederic W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Myers
thought "telepathy" expressed the nature
of the phenomenon
better than other
terms, such as the French "communication de pensees," "thought-transference,"
and "thought-reading."
Research interest in telepathy began
with mesmerism in the late eighteenth
century. Magnetists discovered that telepathy was among the so-called "higher
phenomena"
observed in many magnetized subjects, who read the thoughts of
the magnetist and carried out unspoken
instructions.
Later, psychologists and psychiatrists
observed telepathy occurring with their
patients. Sigmund Freud experienced it so
often that he finally had to address it,
terming it a regressive, primitive faculty
lost in the course of evolution, but which
still had the ability to manifest under certain conditions. Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung
took it more seriously, considering it a
function of synchronicity.
Psychologist
and philosopher William James also was
interested in telepathy, and tried to encourage more research of it.
With the founding of the SPR in
1884 and the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) in 1885, telepathy became the first psychic phenomenon
to be studied scientifically.
Early tests
were simple: A sender in one room tried
to transmit a two-digit number, a taste,
or a visual image to a receiver in another
room. French physiologist Charles Richet

607

introduced mathematical chance to tests,

and also discovered that telepathy occurred independent of hypnotism. With
the introduction of chance, tests grew
more sophisticated. Interest in telepathy
increased following World War I, as
thousands of bereaved turned to Spiritualism to attempt to communicate with the
dead. Telepathic parlor games called
"willing" became popular, and mass telepathy experiments were attempted in
the United States and Britain.
Research has shown that telepathy
most often occurs spontaneously in crisis
situations, in which an individual becomes aware of danger to another person
at a distance. The information comes in
different ways: as fragments of thoughts
that "something is wrong"; in dreams, visions, hallucinations, and mental images;
in clairaudience; and in words that pop
into the mind. The individual may be
prompted to action, such as suddenly
changing travel plans or contacting the
other person. Some cases involve apparent telepathy between humans and animals. See Animal psi.
Telepathy appears to be closely tied
to emotions, both of the sender and receiver. In cases collected most receivers
are women, perhaps because women tend
to be more closely linked to their emo"
tions and intuition than men. Geriatric telepathy is fairly common, perhaps because the physical senses become
impaired as age advances. Telepathy can
be induced in the dream state. It appears
to have some biological connections:
blood volume changes during telepathic
sending, and electroencephalogram monitors show that recipients' brain waves
change to match those of senders. Telepathy is adversely affected by dissociative
drugs and positively affected by caffeine.
In 1930 American parapsychologist
J. B. Rhine began his famous extrasensory perception (ESP) tests at Duke University in North Carolina, using playing
cards and special decks with symbols. See

608

ESP cards. Rhine discovered that it was

often difficult to determine whether information was communicated through telepathy, clairvoyance, or precognitive
clairvoyance. He concluded that telepathy and clairvoyance are essentially the
same psychic function manifested in different ways. Rhine also found that telepathy is not affected by distance or obstacles between sender and receiver.
Other tests have spanned thousands
of miles. In 1971 astronaut Edgar D.
Mitchell, aboard Apollo 14, conducted a
telepathy experiment with four recipients
on Earth 150,000 miles below. The experiment was not authorized by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and was not revealed until
after the Apollo 14 mission was completed. Mitchell concentrated on sequences of twenty-five random numbers.
He completed two hundred sequences.
Guessing forty correctly was mean
chance. Mitchell said that two recipients
had guessed fifty-one correctly, which far
exceeded his expectations but nonetheless
was only moderately significant.

Theories of Telepathy
Although various theories have been
advanced over the centuries to explain
how telepathy works, none is adequate.
Telepathy, like other psychic phenomena,
transcends time and space. The ancient
Greek philosopher Democritus advanced
wave and corpuscle theories. William
Crookes, a nineteenth-century British
chemist and physicist, believed telepathy
rides on radio-like brain waves. Much
later, in the twentieth century, Russian
scientist L. L. Vasiliev proposed an electromagnetic theory. American psychologist Lawrence LeShan proposes that every
person has his or her own reality, and
that psychics and mystics share different
realities, which enable them to access information not available to others. See Ap-

Telepathy

plied psi; Extraterrestrial encounters; Psi;

Telepathic hypnosis.
Sources: J. Allen Boone. Kinship with All
Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1954;
Vincent and Margaret Gaddis. The Curious
World of Twins. New York: Hawthorn
Books, 1972; Eileen Garrett. Telepathy.

New York: Creative Age Press, 1941; Alan

Gauld. The Founders of Psychical Research. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1968; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. Moonscapes: A Celebration of Lunar Astronomy,
Magic, Legend, and Lore. New York:

Prentice-Hall, 1991; Edmund Gurney, Frederic W. H. Myers, and Frank Podmore.

Phantasms of the Living. London: Kegan
Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd., 1918;
Budd Hopkins. Intruders. New York: Random House, 1987; Lawrence LeShan. The
Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist: Toward a General Theory of the Paranormal.

I
I
I
,

New York: Viking Press, 1974; Edgar D.

Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge
for Science. Edited by John White. New
York: Paragon Books, 1974; Frederic W.
H. Myers. Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. Vols. 1 and 2. 1903.
New ed. New York: Longmans, Green &
Co., 1954; J. B. Rhine. New Frontiers of
the Mind. New York: Farrar & Reinhart,
1937; J. B. Rhine. The Reach of the Mind.
New York: William Sloane Assoc., 1947;
Gertrude Raffel Schmeidler and R. A. McConnell. ESP and Personality Patterns.
New Haven, CT: Yale, 1958; Berthold Eric
Schwarz. Psychic Nexus: Psychic Phenomena in Psychiatry and Everyday Life. New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1980;
Harold Sherman and Sir Hubert Wilkins.
Thoughts through Space. Rev. ed. Amherst,
WI: Amherst Press, 1983; Ian Stevenson.
Telepathic
Impressions.
Charlottesville,
VA: University Press of Virginia, 1970;
Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff. MindReach: Scientists Look at Psychic Ability.

New York: Delacorte Press, 1977; Russell

Targ and Keith Harary. The Mind Race.
New York: Villard Books, 1984; Lyall
Watson. Beyond Supernature. New York:
Bantam Books, 1987; Debra H. Weiner
and Dean 1. Rudin, eds. Research in ParaMetuchen, NJ: Scarecrow
psychology.

Teleportation

(also telekinesis)

Press, 1985; Joan Windsor. The Inner Eye:

Your Dreams Can Make You Psychic. En-

glewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985;

Danah Zohar. Through the Time Barrier:
A Study in Precognition and Modern Physics. London: William Heinemann Ltd.,

1982.

Teleportation

(also telekinesis)

The movement of bodies or objects over

great distances; a form of psychokinesis
(PK). Also, the passage of solid objects
through matter by dematerialization and
materialization. Teleportation allegedly is
accomplished by an adept who combines
methodic breathing and intense concentration with manipulation of universal
forces of energy. It is ascribed to spiritual
adepts during states of ecstasy when the
body frees itself from gravity, levitates,
and floats through the air, sometimes apparently traveling at great speed. Physical
mediums during early Spiritualism featured teleportation of small objects (apports), which seemed to materialize suddenly in front of the sitters.
Apparent teleportation is a common
phenomenon of poltergeist cases, where
objects seem to materialize from nowhere
or distant locations. American parapsychologist William G. Roll has theorized
that such manifestations are part of the
psychological side to poltergeist outbreaks. A strong neural discharge may
combine two distant images so that physical and mental space become synonymous.
Teleportation, or the "apport phenomen on, " as it is sometimes called, allegedly has been studied by the United
States and Soviet governments for its potential in espionage operations. See Apport;
Materialization;
Psychokinesis
(PK); Sai Baba; Siddhis.
Sources: Ormond McGill. The Mysticism
and Magic of India. Cranbury, NJ: A. S.
Barnes & Co., 1977; Ron McRae. Mind

609

Wars. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984;

Edgar D. Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A
Challenge for Science. Edited by John
White. New York: Paragon Books, 1974;
D. Scott Rogo. Psychic Breakthroughs Today. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire,
England: The Aquarian Press, 1987; Russell Targ and Keith Harary. The Mind
Race. New York: Villard Books, 1984;
Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook of
Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand
Reirihold, 1977.

Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the

Fourteenth Dalai Lama
See Dalai Lama.

Teresa of Avila, St. (1515-1582)

Spanish mystic and Carmelite nun, often
known as "Teresa of Jesus" or the "Great
St. Teresa," to distinguish her from another Carmelite nun, St. Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897), known as "The Little
Flower." Teresa of Avila is one of the
best-loved contemplative Christian saints.
She was born Teresa de Cepeda y
Ahumada to a noble family on March 28,
1515, in or near Avila in Castile. Her
mother died when she was fifteen, which
upset her so much that her father sent her
to an Augustinian convent in Avila. She
stayed for a year and a half, and was
brought home by her father when she fell
ill. Her exposure to the monastic life convinced her she wanted to become a nun,
but her father forbade it as long as he was
living. At about age twenty or twentyone, she left home secretly and entered
the Incarnation of the Carmelite nuns in
Avila. Her father dropped his opposition.
Teresa was plagued by ill health
much of her life, and when serious illness
once again befell her in 1538-it appears
to have been malaria - her father took
her from the convent and put her under
the care of doctors. She remained ill,

610

however, and undertook experimental

cures given by a woman in the town of
Becedas. These measures left her in a
death-like coma for three days, and unable to walk for three years. During her
illness and convalescence, she took to
daily mental prayers, which in turn led to
her experiences with mystical prayer. She
attributed her recovery to St. Joseph.
In 1555 she experienced visions and
revelations. In 1557, after a two-year
gap, she experienced her first ecstasy,
when she felt carried out of herself. After
that she had many extraordinary mystical
experiences, including visions of Christ
and a sense of his presence at her side.
She also had terrifying visions of hell, and
once dismissed Satan by calling him
"Goose!"
Teresa did not seek out these experiences, but resigned herself to God's will
and considered them a divine blessing.
She spent long periods in intense meditation, which she called the "prayer of
quiet" and the "prayer of union." During
these prayers she often fell into a trance,
and at times entered upon mystical flights
in which she felt as though her soul were
lifted out of her body. She likened ecstasy
to a "delectable death," saying that the
soul becomes awake to God as never before when the faculties and senses are
"dead."
In 1562, despite opposition, Teresa
founded a convent in Avila with stricter
rules than those which prevailed at Carmelite monasteries. She sought to establish a small community that would follow
the Carmelite contemplative life, in particular unceasing prayer. In 1567 she was
permitted to establish other convents,
and went on to found sixteen others. She
dedicated herself to reforming the Carmelite order. At age fifty-three she met
the twenty-six-year-old John Yepes (later
known as St. John of the Cross), who
worked to reform the male Carmelite
monasteries. After a period of turbulence
within the Carmelites, from 1575 to

Teleportation

(also telekinesis)

1580, the Discalced Reform was recognized as separate.

By 1582 Teresa had founded her seventeenth monastery, at Burgos. Her
health was broken and she decided to return to Avila. The rough journey proved
to be too much, and upon arriving at the
convent, Teresa went straight to her
deathbed. Three days later, on October 4,
1582, she died. The next day the Gregorian calendar went into effect, dropping
ten days and making her death on October 14. Her feast day is October 15. Teresa was canonized in 1662 by Pope Gregory XV and was declared a Doctor of the
Church-the first woman so honored-in
1970 by Pope Paul VI.
During Teresa's travels throughout
Spain on her reform mission, she wrote a
number of books, some of which have become spiritual classics. The first of those
was Life, her autobiography, written in
1565. On November 18, 1572, Teresa
experienced a spiritual marriage with
Christ as bridegroom to the soul. One of
the fruits of that marriage was a new outflowing from her pen: The Way of Perfection (1573), about the life of prayer,
and The Interior Castle (1577), her bestknown work, in which she presents a
spiritual doctrine using a castle as the
symbol of the interior life. The latter
book was revealed to her in a vision on
the eve of Trinity Sunday, 1577, in which
she saw a crystal globe like a castle that
had seven rooms; the seventh, in the center, held the King of Glory. One approached the center, which represents the
Union with God, by going through the
other rooms of Humility, Practice of
Prayer, Meditation, Quiet, Illumination,
and Dark Night. She often referred to
Christ as the "heavenly bridegroom," but
her later visions became less erotic and
more religious in character.
Teresa's literary method of linking
images has recently been found to be
much more intricate and extensive than
previously thought. Recent studies have

Theosophy

found a timelessness to the wntmgs of

Teresa, and elements of feminist spirituality. However, it is also her life and her
"centering prayer" that inspire; as she
once said to her followers, "I will give
you a living book." See John of the
Cross, St.; Levitation; Meditation; Mysticism; Prayer.
Sources: Carmelite Studies: Centenary of
St. Theresa, Catholic University Sympo-

sium, 1982, Institute for Carmelite Studies,

1984 IX, 227; John Ferguson. An Illustrated Encyclopedia
Mystery Religions.

of Mysticism

and the

New York: Seabury

Press, 1976; F. C. Happold. Mysticism: A
Study and an Anthology. Rev. ed. New
York: Penguin, 1970; Robert Maynard
Hutchins, ed. Great Books of the Western
World. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica,
1952; Louis Kronenberger, ed. Atlantic
Brief Lives. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971;
Willard Johnson. Riding the Ox Home: A
History of Meditation from Shamanism to
Science. 1982. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986;

Irvin Paul. "Santa Teresa de Jesus de

Avila." Journal of Religion and Psychology
Research 4 (July-October, 1981): 179-81;
Teresa of Avila. The Interior Castle. Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez. New York: Paulist Press, 1979;
Teresa of Jesus. Complete Works of Saint
Teresa of Jesus. Translated by E. Allison
Peers. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1946.

Thanatology
See Deathbed visions.

Theosophy
A philosophical system that teaches that
one can gain knowledge of a transcendent
reality through revelation or through
practice of the occult tradition. The term
"theosophy" comes from the Greek
words theos, "god," and sophia, "wisdom." As practiced in modern times,
Theosophy claims that all religions stem
from the same roots of ancient wisdom,

611

repeating myths and symbols, and that

study of these secrets will lead to truth
and spiritual oneness.
The primary exponent of Theosophy
is the Theosophical Society, an international nonsectarian, nonpolitical, and
nondogmatic organization founded in
New York City in 1875 by Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (known as HPB),
a Russian-born mystic; Colonel Henry
Steel Olcott, an American attorney and
federal government official; William Q.
Judge, an American attorney, and others.
According to HPB the term "theosophy" dates back to the third century A.D.
Ammonius Saccas and his disciples in
Eclectic Theosophy saw that all religions
shared three major ideas: (1) belief in one
Supreme, Absolute deity as the Source of
all; (2) humankind's immortal nature is a
radiation from that deity; and (3) by
making oneself as pure as the Source, one
could receive the divine secrets. Such efforts are called theurgy, or "divine
work."

Theosophical Concepts and the

Masters
HPB believed that earlier civilizations, such as the Egyptians and Greeks,
understood esoteric wisdom better than
do modern societies, and that their teachers were proficient in occult arts. These
Masters, or "Mahatmas," as they are
called in India, live on through the centuries in various incarnations, guarding
their knowledge and teaching it to worthy students. Most of the Masters, HPB
said, reside in remote regions of Tibet,
Mongolia, or India, forming the Brotherhood of Adepts. The concept of such
brotherhoods exists in numerous occult
traditions.
HPB identified the Masters Koot
Hoomi (also Kuthumi), Lal Singh, and
Morya as the real founders of the Theosophical Society. She said that the Master
Morya, or Master M., had overshadowed

612

her most of her life. Koot Hoomi, or

K.H., was the more communicative of the
two, sending frequent letters and notes to
HPB and her disciples. HPB said he was
a Punjabi and had attended the University
of Leipzig during the 1870s.
Other Masters important to the Society were Ilarion (also Hilarion), a Greek
whom HPB said she had known since the
1860s, and Djwal Kul, who carried messages between Masters. The Maha
Chohan, or Supreme Master, also spoke
with HPB.
The Masters inspired HPB's writing
and are central to understanding her
work. Olcott said that he and HPB were
visited by the Masters, conversed with
them, and were taught by them.

Cycles of Evolution
In The Secret Doctrine, HPB conceived of a great cosmic evolutionary
plan in which divine potential is unfolded
through an orderly progression, moving
down from Spirit to matter and back up
again. While science sees evolution as the
product of external forces and factors,
Theosophy views it as the urge to release
the potential of consciousness, which becomes more and more defined. Humankind is "the masterpiece of evolution,"
and all nature tends toward evolving the
human potential.
HPB's evolutionary scheme divides
stages into Chains, Rounds, and Races,
each of which has its own complete cycle.
Reincarnation, governed by karma, is a
tenet of Theosophy. See Karma; Reincarnation.

History of the Theosophical

Society
HPB said she first heard from Master
Morya in 1851 and was instructed to begin the work that later developed into the
Society. Its actual conception occurred af-

Theosophy

ter HPB emigrated to the United States in

1873. In the summer of 1874, HPB, who
was interested in Spiritualism, read accounts of psychic disturbances and the
appearances of spirits at the Eddy farmhouse in Chittenden, Vermont, written
for the New York Graphic by Colonel
Henry Steel Olcott. HPB went to the
Eddy homestead; after her arrival the
spirits changed from Eddy family members to servants from Russian Georgia,
Kurdish tribesmen, and other exotic personalities. She and Olcott became friends,
and upon returning to New York, attracted a following of occult enthusiasts.
On March 9, 1875, Olcott received a
letter in gold ink on green paper signed
"Tuitit Bey, Grand Master of the mystical
Brotherhood of Luxor," instructing him
to study the occult under HPB. He continued to receive letters and was inspired
by them.
In September 1875, at Olcott's suggestion, he, HPB, and others formed the
Theosophical Society. The name was proposed by Charles Sotheran, editor of the
American Bibliopolist. Olcott was named
president. The first regular meeting was
held on November 11, 1875, with HPB
as corresponding secretary and Judge as
counsel.
In 1877 HPB's first book, Isis Unveiled, was published and well received.
But by 1878 the Society was nearly defunct. HPB merged it with the Arya Samaj, a "back to the Vedas" reform movement in India. In February 1879 she and
Olcott arrived in India. There HPB made
her most important contact in India: the
British journalist A. P. Sinnett, who managed an English newspaper in Allahabad
and who was interested in the occult. Sinnett invited HPB and the Colonel out to
his home in Simla, where HPB captivated
the house guests with mysterious tappings, disembodied music, and the materialization of jewelry and dishes.
Sinnett began a correspondence with
Master KH., facilitated by HPB. The

Theosophy

Masters were said not to actually write

the letters themselves by hand, but to
"precipitate" them onto paper through a
sort a telepathy and concentration. Koot
Hoomi allegedly said that often the
agents of the Brotherhood wrote their
dictated communications. The letters
then would be delivered by apparent
paranormal means, such as materializing
in a drawer or dropping through a ceiling. Some critics believe HPB wrote the
letters herself, but the allegation was
never proved. Sinnet received more than
one hundred letters from the Masters,
which are housed at the British Museum.
HPB and Olcott began a magazine,
The Theosophist, in July 1879. The
Society was thriving among the British
in India, and also attracted high-caste
Indians. Sections were established all
over Europe. In 1882 HPB and Olcott
moved the Society's headquarters from
Bombay to an old British summer estate
in Adyar, near Madras, where it remains
today.
In 1884 HPB, Olcott, and a Brahmin, M. M. Chatterji, went to Britain,
where they met members of the Society
for Psychical Research (SPR) in London.
The SPR sent Richard Hodgson to India
in December 1884 to investigate the paranormal phenomena said to be happening
at Adyar. Hodgson's conclusions of fraud
created a great controversy and were
never proved. See Blavatsky, Madame
Helena Petrovna.
In 1889 HPB met Annie Wood Besant, an ardent Freethinker and feminist
activist who had reviewed The Secret
Doctrine and converted to Theosophy.
Besant became HPB's last major disciple.
Following HPB's death in 1891, Besant and Judge shared control of the Esoteric Section, but had a falling out in
1894 when Judge sought to take sole control. This divided the Society, and on
April 28, 1895, most of the American
branches reorganized independently as
the Theosophical Society in America.

613

Judge was appointed lifetime president;

he died in 1896. Olcott died in 1907.
Besant teamed with Charles W.
Leadbeater, a British clergyman and clairvoyant who became assistant secretary of
the European Section. The two expanded
the Society's membership but favored an
"Esoteric Christianity" over the "Esoteric
Buddhism" espoused by HPB. Besant was
a gifted writer and orator, and devoted a
great deal of her efforts to social and political reforms in India, at one time serving as president of the Congress Party.
She founded several schools, among them
the present University of Benares.
In 1908 Leadbeater announced that
a young Indian, Jiddu Krishnamurti, was
to be the next World Teacher and incarnation of the Lord Maitreya. Krishnamurti attracted a large following, but left
Theosophy by 1930 to follow his own
path. See Krishnamurti.
During the 1920s Leadbeater and a
few others claimed to continue to receive
messages from the Mahatmas through
clairvoyant communications on the astral
plane.
Besant died at age eighty-six at
Adyar on September 20, 1933. Her body
was cremated.
Both Besant and Olcott are remembered as fighters on behalf of the rights of
native Indians and Sinhalese. Olcott
worked to establish civil protection for
Buddhists in Ceylon, while Besant was
the first woman elected president of
the Indian National Congress. Olcott
founded many Buddhist schools in Southeast Asia, where he is still highly regarded, as well as the first school in India
for the "untouchables," the lowest caste.
After Judge's death in 1896, leadership of the American group passed to
Katherine Tingley, a social worker who
established the first Theosophical commune at Point Lorna, near San Diego,
California. In 1919 Tingley founded
Theosophical University. The Point Lorna
property was sold after Tingley's death in

614

1929. The headquarters moved first to

Covina, California, and then in 1951 to
its present location in Altadena, California. The publishing program is called the
Theosophical University Press.
The American lodges affiliated with
the Society in Adyar are based in
Wheaton, Illinois, as is the Theosophical
Publishing House. The Adyar group
sponsors branches of the Society in approximately sixty countries, and there are
about 5,300 members in the United
States.
Other theosophical organizations include the United Lodge of Theosophists,
founded in 1909 and based in Los Angeles, an independent organization of students devoted to the study of and belief in
Theosophy.
Sources: H. P. Blavatsky. The Key to Theosophy. Pasadena, CA: Theosophical Uni-

versity Press, 1939; H. P. Blavatsky. "Three

Basic Truths of Being." Sunrise (April/May
1984); Bruce F. Campbell. Ancient Wisdom Revived: A History of the Theosophical Movement. Berkeley: University of Cal-

ifornia Press, 1980; Robert S. Ellwood.

Eastern Spirituality in America. New York:
Paulist Press, 1987; Robert S. Ellwood.
Theosophy: A Modern Expression of the
Wisdom of the Ages. Wheaton, IL: The

Theosophical Publishing House, 1986; Michael Gomes. The Dawning of the Theosophical Movement.
Wheaton, IL: The
Theosophical Publishing House, 1987;
Marion Meade. Madame Blavatsky: The
Woman Behind the Myth. New York: G. P.
Putnam's Sons, 1980; J. Gordon Melton.
Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America. New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1986; Leslie Price. Madame
Blavatsky Unveiled? London: Theosophical

History Centre, 1986; "Report of the Committee Appointed to Investigate Phenomena

Connected with the Theosophical Society."
Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 3 (1885): 201-7; Lewis Spence. The
Encyclopedia of the Occult. Reprint. Lon-

don: Bracken Books, 1988; "The Historical

Basis of Modern Theosophy" and "Introducing You to the Theosophical Society."

Theosophy

The- Theosophical Society in America,

Wheaton, IL, n.d.; Gertrude Marvin Williams. Priestess of the Occult: Madame
Blavatsky. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1946.

Therapeutic Touch
See Bodywork.

Third eye
See Chakras.

Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471)

German theologian and compiler or editor of The Imitation of Christ, an influential collection of prayers and maxims
that seem to be communicated directly
from Christ, and which urge readers to
model their lives after Christ.
Thomas a Kempis was born in 1380
in Kempen in what is now Germany. His
family name was Hermerken; he later
took his name from his birthplace. At age
thirteen he was sent to a school in Deventer, the Netherlands, run by the Brethren of the Common Life, an order
founded by mystic Gerard Groote, the father of the Devotio Moderna (New Devotion) religious movement. The Brethren
of the Common Life included both Brothers and Sisters, who educated youth and
functioned as a social service organization.
In 1399 Thomas a Kempis entered
the Augustinian monastery of Mount St.
Agnes near Zwolle, Switzerland (near the
Zuider Zee), where he spent most of the
remainder of his uneventful life. He was
ordained in 1414 and later became procurator, subprior, and novice master. He
devoted himself to reading, studying, and
copying manuscripts. He wrote biographies of Groote and others, sermons,
hymns, prayers, and studies of monastic

Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471)

life. He died on August 8, 1471, and was

buried at the monastery. His remains
were later moved to Zwolle.
Scholars have disagreed over the authorship of The Imitation of Christ, and
some twenty people have been given the
credit. Thomas a Kempis popularly has
been assumed to be the author, but it is
evident that he edited or compiled the
book from the writings of Groote, who
was in turn influenced by the Flemish
mystic John Ruysbroeck. The complete
manuscript was published in Latin in
1427 and was translated into English in
the mid-sixteenth century. It was translated into English in 1530 by Richard
Whitford, and revised by Harold C. Gardiner in 1955.
Imitation is second only to the Bible
in influence and popularity of Christian
writings, in part due to its simplicity of
language and theology, as well as its
practicality; it is a source of brief but
pregnant maxims of inspiration and spiritual guidance. While Groote was influenced by Ruysbroeck, his mysticism is
much less speculative and much more
practical. Typical of the popular spirituality at the time of its origin, Imitation
reflects often on the Passion of Christ and
frequently relates personal mystical experience to the Cross. It espouses a life of
meditation and devotion, and a break
with worldly lusts.
Imitation is divided into four books.
The first concerns breaking the worldly
bonds and preparing for the spiritual life;
the second concerns advice for leading
the devotional life; the third concerns
achieving inner peace of mind; the fourth
concerns the sacrament of the Eucharist,
the union with Christ.
Selections from Imitation are read
daily by members of several religious orders.
Sources: Robert Broderick, ed. The Catholic Encyclopedia. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1976; John Ferguson. An Illustrated
Encyclopedia of Mysticism and the Mystery

615

Religions. New York: Seabury Press, 1976;

Vergilius Ferm, ed. The Encyclopedia of
Religion. Secaucus, NJ: Poplar Books,
1955; F. C. Happold. Mysticism: A Study
and an Anthology.
Rev. ed. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex,
England:
Penguin
Books, 1970; Robert Maynard Hutchins,
ed. Great Books of the Western World.
Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952;
Louis Kronenberger,
ed. Atlantic Brief
Lives. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971.

Thought-form
In occultism a nonphysical entity created
by thought that exists in either the mental
plane or astral plane. Every thought is
said to generate vibrations in the aura's
mental body, which assume a floating
form and colors depending on the nature
and intensity
of the thought.
These
thought-forms
can be perceived visually
by clairvoyants; they may also be sensed
on an intuitive level by others. Thoughtforms radiate out and attract sympathetic
essences.
According to Theosophists and clairvoyants Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater,
thought-forms
fall into three
classes: (1) the image of the thinker (see
Bilocation);
(2) an image of a material
object associated with the thought; and
(3) an independent image expressing the
inherent qualities of a thought. Thoughts
that are low in nature, such as anger,
hate, lust, greed, and so on, create
thought-forms
that are dense in color and
form. Thoughts of a more spiritual nature
generate forms that have greater purity,
clarity, and refinement.
Thought-forms
can be directed at individuals. To have an effect, they must be
able to latch on to similar vibrations in
the aura of the recipient. If they are unable to do so, according to occult tradition, the thought-forms
boomerang back
to the sender. Thus one who directs evil
thoughts toward another
having them return.

616

runs the risk of

The duration of a thought-form,

its
strength, and the distance it can travel depend on the strength and clarity of the
original thought. Thought-forms
are said
to have the capability to assume their
own energy and appear to be intelligent
and independent. Equally intense thought
can disperse them, or they can simply disintegrate when their purpose is finished.
Some may last years. It is believed that
some
particularly
powerful
thoughtforms can go out of control or turn on
their creators.
In magic, thought-forms,
also called
"artificial elementals," are created by ritual that involves intense concentration,
repetition, and visualization. They can be
directed at individuals, to protect or heal,
or to harm. See Psychic attack. In addition, thought-forms
may be created to
perform low-level tasks and errands. See
Magic.
Some thought-forms
occur spontaneously. "Group minds" are formed whenever a group of people concentrates
on
the same thoughts, ideas, or goals, such
as a team of employees or a crowd of
demonstrators.
To some
extent
the
group-mind possesses the group, as witnessed in the psychic bonding and power
that coalesces in crowds, and in the synergy of a close-knit working group. When
the group disperses, the group-mind usually loses power.
In Tibetan occultism thoughts
can
create a temporary phantom form called
a tulpa. Tulpas usually assume human
shape and are created to be sent out on a
mission. In her explorations
of Tibetan
thought, Alexandra David-Neel successfully created a tulpa, though it was not
what she intended and for a time eluded
her control.
David-Neel sought to create a lama
who would be "short and fat, of an innocent and jolly type." After several
months of performing the prescribed ritual, a phantom
monk appeared. It assumed a life-like form over a period of

Thomas

it Kempis

(1380-1471)

time, and existed almost like a guest in

David-Neel's apartment.
The tulpa tagged along with her as
she went out on a tour. Then, to her distress, the tulpa began to change from a
fat, benevolent fellow to a lean and malevolent one. The tulpa went out of her
control and became troublesome. He began touching her and rubbing up against
her. Others began to see him, but he did
not respond to anyone's conversation.
David-Neel decided to dissolve the
tulpa, according to certain Tibetan rituals, but the phantom resisted her efforts.
It took her six months to eliminate him.
The entire episode upset her, and she
termed it "very bad luck." See DavidNeel, Alexandra.
It is theorized that thought-forms
may arise spontaneously out of the collective unconscious as archetypes which
take on phantom or seemingly real form.
This perhaps may explain reports of the
Devil, supernatural monsters, other nonhuman beings, and phenomena associated with UFOs. See Archetypes; Encounter phenomenon; Men in Black; Music;
"Philip"; Psychic attack.
Sources: Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater. Thought-forms. 1925. Abridged ed.
Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing
House, 1969; June G. Bletzer. The Donning International
Encyclopedic
Psychic
Dictionary. Norfolk, VA: The Donning
Co., 1986; Adam Crabtree. Multiple Man:
Explorations
in Possession and Multiple
Personality. New York: Praeger, 1985; Alexandra David-Neel. Magic and Mystery in
Tibet. 1929. New York: Dover Publica-

tions, 1971; Janet and Stewart Farrar. A

Witche's Bible-Compleat. New York: Magickal Childe, 1984; Barbara and Michael
Foster. Forbidden Journey: The Life of
Alexandra
David-Neel.
San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1987; Rosemary Ellen
Guiley. The Encyclopedia of Witches and
Witchcraft. New York: Facts On File,
1989; Colin Wilson. Mysteries. New York:
Perigee Books, 1978.

Thoughtography
A type of paranormal photography in
which images are projected psychically
onto photographic film, with or without
the aid of a camera. The term "thoughtography" was coined by Tomokichi
Fukarai, president of the Psychical Institute of Japan, who conducted the first serious study of it during the early 1900s.
Previous research had focused on spirit
photography, images of dead people and
phantom objects captured on film.
Fukarai stumbled onto the phenomenon while conducting a series of experiments with a Japanese medium, Mrs.
Nagao. To test her clairvoyance, Fukarai
wanted to see if she could discern three
Japanese characters that he had photographed on an undeveloped film plate.
Although it had been wrapped in paper
to seal out any light, Fukarai discovered
that the entire surface of the plate had
been exposed, not just the area containing the Japanese characters. Fukarai hypothesized that the exposure was caused
or influenced by the psychic activity of
Nagao. In follow-up experiments with
Nagao and other mediums, Fukarai obtained actual images on film, or "thoughtographs."
In recent years research into thoughtography was done under the direction of
such leading parapsychologists as psychiatrist Ian Stevenson of the University of
Virginia and Denver psychiatrist Jule
Eisenbud, who attracted national attention in the 1960s for their work with psychic Ted Serios, who created images on
film by staring into the lens of a Polaroid
camera.
Serios was a native of Kansas City,
Missouri, with a penchant for drama and
liquor. He realized his psychic ability in
1955, when working as a bellhop in a
Chicago hotel. A fellow employee discovered Serios was a good hypnotic subject
and possessed remote viewing ability.
During one hypnotic trance, Serios said

I
I

Thoughtography

617

he projected to the astral plane, where he

met a spirit who claimed to be the pirate
Jean Lafitte, and directed Serios to secret
locations of buried treasure in Florida.
No big finds were ever located; the publicity apparently enabled another party to
beat Serios to it. Serios did turn up a few
hundred dollars buried beneath the
ground. The spirit Lafitte abandoned Serios, who kept looking for treasure with
the help of a syndicate he formed. When
Serios had trouble establishing precise locations, an employee handed him a camera and jokingly suggested taking a picture of the image in his mind. Serios did,
and the result was a thoughtograph.
Serios never did strike it rich with
treasure. Poor health forced him to give
up his thoughtography. A psychiatrist
told him they \vere the products of illuSlOn.

Years later Eisenbud met Serios. In

1964, at the invitation of the publisher of
Fate magazine, Eisenbud began a threeyear investigation of the psychic.
In Eisenbud's experiments Serios
spontaneously created both identifiable
and unidentifiable images of buildings,
monuments, and other structures by staring into the lens of a Polaroid camera and
snapping the shutter. The film was developed immediately afterward. In addition
to spontaneous images, Serios created images of specific objects. Eisenbud would
select a target and hold the camera while
Serios stared into it. Eisenbud catalogued
more than four hundred "normally inexplicable" images on more than one hundred themes during the three-year study
period.
Serios also created hundreds of
"blackies," prints in which light appeared
to be almost or totally excluded, and
"whities," prints that were so overexposed they turned white.
Serios frequently held a piece of
small black tubing, about one inch in diameter, over the camera lens. He called
this his "gismo," which he said helped

618

him focus his mental powers. Eisenbud

satisfied himself that the gismo was not a
fraudulent device. In 1967 Eisenbud published his results in his book, The World
of Ted Serios, in which he concluded that
the only explanation for Serios's feats
was psychokinesis.
Despite the fact that Eisenbud and
his team had taken special care to ensure
that Serios could not tamper with the film
at any time before, during, or after a
photo session, critics charged that he was
a fake and that his "thoughtographs"
could be duplicated by holding a negative
over the lens of a camera. Stage magician
and debunker James "the Amazing"
Randi claimed that Serios palmed a gismo
which held a tiny lens with a picture at
one end, which would transfer the picture
to the film of a camera focused at infinity. Serios never confessed to any fraud,
nor was the charge proved.
Both Eisenbud and Stevenson countered that and other charges of fraud by
arguing that many of Serios's images contained distortions that could neither be
explained nor duplicated. For example,
one of his thoughtographs was identified
as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Air Hangar in Ontario. In his version the
word "Canadian" on the hangar's sign is
inexplicably spelled "Cainadian."
Eisenbud, Stevenson, and other researchers showed interest in the early
1980s in a young Japanese boy, Masuaki
Kiyota, who purportedly possessed paranormal abilities to create film images and
bend metal objects. During experiments
in the United States conducted during
1981, Kiyota was not able to produce
any identifiable images on film while under observation. Researchers, however,
were convinced that his powers were genuine, a belief they maintained even after
Kiyota admitted three years later that he
had occasionally cheated during metal
bending experiments. He said he had
been entrapped into using normal means
for bending metal by media efforts to de-

Thoughtography

bunk him. See Psychokinesis (PK); Spirit

photography.
Sources: Jule Eisenbud. "Correspondence
on Ted Serios' Alleged 'Confession.'" journal of the American Society for Psychical
Research 69, no. 1 (January 1975): 94-96;

Jule Eisenbud. "Observations on a Possible

New Thoughtographic Talent." jASPR 71,
no. 3 (July 1977): 299-304; Jule Eisenbud.
The World of Ted Serios. New York:
Pocket Books, 1968; Jule Eisenbud. "Distortions in the Photographs of Ted Serios."
jASPR 75, no. 2 (April 1981): 143-53; T.
Fukurai. Clairvoyance and Thoughtography. 1931. Reprint. New York: Arno Press,
1975; Edgar D. Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science. Edited by
John White. New York: Paragon Books,
1974; Ian Stevenson, et al. "Correspondence on Masuaki Kiyota." jASPR 79, no.
2 (April 1985): 294-95; Colin Wilson. The
Occult. New York: Vintage Books, 1973;
Benjamin B. Wolman, ed. Handbook of
Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold, 1977.

Tobacco
Plant sacred to Natives of the Americas.
Tobacco is believed to be endowed with
supernatural powers to heal, hurt, bring
luck, cause ill fortune, and promote affection between husband and wife. It is
smoked, snuffed, eaten, mixed in drinks
and fermented concoctions, and burned
as incense for rituals of harvest, war, puberty, death, initiation, purification, visions, communication with the spirits and
gods, and as part of pledges and oaths.
Tobacco, along with pipes, is buried with
the dead. According to tradition it should
be used only for sacred purposes, never
for recreation.
The term "tobacco" is a Spanish
adaptation from the Arawak term for
"cigar." Columbus discovered tobacco
among the Arawaks of the West Indies.
From archaeological data tobacco was
used extensively in Precontact times and

Tobacco

was the basis of an elaborate pipe culture.

See Sacred pipe. It was not used in the
Arctic, parts of the Subarctic, and parts
of the Columbia Plateau. According to
the accounts of early European travelers,
some varieties of tobacco were so strong
as to be intoxicating. It is not known
whether any were hallucinogenic, though
some Natives did make use of other hallucinogenic plants.
In Native North American mythologies, tobacco is a gift from the Great
Spirit, a tool with which humans can access all manner of Supernaturals. According to tradition tobacco was grown only
by men in fields that women were prohibited from entering. When smoked it
occasionally was mixed with adulterants,
chiefly red willow and osier, in order to
stretch the tobacco supplies. Whe~ sprinkled in rites, however, tobacco was never
adulterated.
In ritual the tobacco smoke is offered
to the Great Spirit, the spirits of the wind,
moon, sun, water, and thunder, the animistic spirits residing in rocks, trees, and
so on, and the spirits of the dead. The
smoke, which embodies the breath, carries messages and prayers.
As a medicine tobacco traditionally
was mixed with saliva, water, and red sumac as a remedy for head, chest, and
stomach ailments. It was blown on affected parts of the body by a medicine
man, and was inhaled and exhaled by the
patient.
Tribes of South America, the Pacific,
the Caribbean, and elsewhere use tobacco
in shamanic and other rituals. Among the
Jivaro a medicine man squirts tobacco
juice from his mouth into the mouth of a
novice, thus transferring to the initiate supernatural power in the form of an invisible magic arrow. Other initiatory rites
require drinking a hallucinogenic beverage in order to see and meet helping spirits. The Taino of the Greater Antilles
inhale a mixture of tobacco and a hallucinogenic mimosa plant in order to com-

619

mune with ancestors and spirits and produce visions. See Drugs in mystical and
psychic experiences; Shamanism.
Sources: Ake Hultkrantz. The Religions of
the American Indians. 1967. Berkeley: Uni-

versity of California Press, 1979; Holger

Kalweit. Dreamtime and Inner Space: The
World of the Shaman. Boston: Shambhala
Publications, 1984; Elisabeth Tooker, ed.
Native North American Spirituality of the
Eastern Woodlands. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist
Press, 1979; Ruth M. Underhill. Red Man's
Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1965; Carl Waldman. Atlas of the
North American Indian. New York: Facts

On File, 1985; The Museum of the American Indian, New York City; the American
Indian Archaeological Institute, Washington, CT.

Totem

History

See Guardian spirit.

Touch for Health

See Bodywork.

Trance
See Altered states of consciousness; Mediumship; Shamanism.

Transcendental

conSCIOusness

See Transcendental Meditation (TM).

Transcendental

Meditation

(TM)

A system of meditation taught by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (b. 1918?) in which,
through use of a personal mantra, one
achieves a fourth state of consciousness:
transcendental consciousness. Transcendental Meditation, or TM, as it is called,
gained a wide following in the West in
the 19605 and 1970s. It does not require

620

a change in religion, philosophy, or lifestyle. Rather, Maharishi positioned TM

as a technique of the "Science of Creative
Intelligence." TM is said to bring results
more quickly than other methods of meditation, in particular yoga and Zen. It has
been shown to decrease drug use, decrease the amount of sleep needed, and
increase energy, concentration, and resilience to stress and illness.
According to Maharishi (whose
name is Sanskrit for "great seer") TM is
rooted in practices thousands of years
old, for practices similar to TM can be
found in the Vedas. The knowledge has
been lost and found many times over the
centuries. The yoga teachings, he says,
have been distorted from the original
teachings.

Maharishi learned TM from his

guru, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati,
Maharaj, Jagat-Guru Bhagwan Shankaracharya of Jyotir-Math, whom Maharishi
refers to simply as "Guru Dev" ("Divine
Teacher"). After graduating with a degree in physics from Allahabad University
in India, Maharishi became a disciple of
Guru Dev for twelve years.
After Guru Dev's death, Maharishi
retired to a cave in the Himalayas for two
years. He then emerged and traveled to
South India with no specific plans. In
a small town, he was invited to give a
few lectures, the popularity of which
launched his teaching of TM on a broad
scale throughout India. In 1958 he established the Spiritual Regeneration Movement (SRM) in Madras. He conceived of
a plan to spread TM throughout the
world, and traveled to California in
1959, where he taught the technique and
established a national center for the
SRM. He then went to New York and
Europe.
In 1961 Maharishi began training
others as TM teachers in order to meet

Tobacco

demand. The same year he founded the

International Meditation Society (IMS) as
a replacement for the SRM; the neutral
name was more appealing to Westerners.
In 1965 he founded the Students' International Meditation Society (SIMS) to cater to student demand; it was an immediate success with young people seeking
drug-free enlightenment. In 1966 work
was completed on a luxurious ashram,
the Academy of Meditation, in Rishikesh,
India, at the foothills of the Himalayas.
TM received a boost in popularity in
1967 when the Beatles became followers
for a few months.
In 1971 Maharishi founded the Maharishi International University (MID),
now in Fairfield, Iowa, to integrate TM
with other academic disciplines. He also
established the Foundation for the Science of Creative Intelligence. In 1972 he
unveiled an ambitious world plan to introduce TM into educational programs,
social services, prison reform, and psychotherapy.
In the 1980s the growth of TM
slowed. This slowdown was due in part
to negative publicity concerning Maharishi's income tax problems, which
caused him to move his headquarters out
of India; and to a controversial TMsiddhi program he unveiled based on the
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, which involved
paranormal feats such as levitation. See
Levitation; Siddhis.
In 1985 and 1986, Maharishi turned
his attention to health and world peace,
with the founding of the World Federation of Ayurveda (1985), Maharishi's
World Plan for Perfect Health (1986),
and Maharishi's Program to Create
World Peace (1986). His work in health
is directed at spreading the ancient
Ayurveda medicine of India and in finding the key to reversing aging (a secret he
claims to have discovered, despite his
aged appearance).
His world peace program includes
teaching the TM-siddhis to advanced

Transcendental Meditation (TM)

meditators. Maharishi states that if seven

thousand people collectively practice TM,
and especially the TM-siddhis, the coherence of their brain waves will affect others around them, and lead to a reduction
in crime, hostility, accidents, and illness.
Seven thousand people represent the
square root of 1 percent of the world's
population, the minimum necessary to
cause mass change, according to Maharishi. During 1983 and 1984, Maharishi
assembled seven thousand people at MIU
to test this hypothesis. TM researchers
claimed that for the three weeks of the
assembly, global economic indicators improved and crime, accidents, and illness
dropped. Critics contend the study was
selective to prove the hypothesis.
TM meditators claimed to be responsible for the peaceful unification of
Germany in 1988-1989. In April 1990
several thousand TM meditators assembled on four continents. MIU officials
claimed
that
international
conflict
dropped 44 percent.
After Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, Maharishi called for the US
government or a wealthy individual to finance assembling seven thousand people
to meditate to prevent war. No assembly
was undertaken, and a brief war ensued
in January and February 1991. Critics
were doubtful that meditation would
have prevented it.

Technique
TM is different from other meditation techniques in that it involves neither
concentration nor contemplation. According to Maharishi TM can be taught
only through personal instruction from a
qualified teacher. The student is given a
personal mantra and is instructed in how
to use it while meditating twice a day for
about twenty minutes or so. The mantra
has no meaning or associations and, contrary to other Eastern techniques, is not
chanted either verbally or mentally;

621

rather, it is a sound that is thought. TM

mantras are not invocations to Hindu deities, as some Christian church officials
have charged. People who adopt mantras
on their own are said to risk negative effects caused by the improper use of sacred sound.
The meditation does not require special postures. Ideally, it is done in the
morning and early evening.
The key principle of TM is that regular use of the mantra enables the practitioner to reach a state of consciousness
Maharishi describes as the field of Being, pure creative intelligence, or pure
thought. Thoughts rise from the depths of
the mind like tiny bubbles rising in a
pond, growing in size until they reach the
surface level of conscious awareness. Maharishi likens the mind to the ocean: Its
surface is active and its depths are still.
TM enables the practitioner to experience
thought at its origination point, and thus
access greater potential for creative intelligence. Here one encounters the True
Self, a state of restful alertness in which
there is no mental activity. It is a fourth
state of consciousness because it is different from the three ordinary states of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, and from
the states of altered consciousness. In this
transcendental state, the boundaries between subject and object disappear, and
the two become one. At first a seemingly
empty state, it is in fact one of silent joy.
Physiological

Effects

Like other forms of meditation, TM

effects measurable physiological changes,
including lowered respiration, heart rate,
blood pressure, and lactase (a chemical in
the blood associated with strenuous activity and stress), and increased, more
synchronized alpha brain waves. Research has shown the changes to be different from those achieved with other
techniques of meditation or altering of
consciousness. In experiments TM prac-

622

titioners have shown a decreased need for

sleep and increased hand-eye coordination. Practitioners report overall health
improvements. Compare Biofeedback;
Meditation; Relaxation.

Higher States of Consciousness

Three higher states of consciousness
can be achieved with practice. The fifth,
cosmic consciousness, is defined by Maharishi as transcendental consciousness
maintained with the three states of ordinary consciousness in a permanent
awareness of the True Self. In this state of
Self-Realization, the ego and identity continue to function, but one defines one's
self from within rather than from the external world. This state can only be
achieved when one is permanently and
totally free of stress.
In the sixth state of consciousness, a
glorified cosmic consciousness, Maharishi
says the individual becomes aware of the
finest levels of relative existence, but not
the absolute. The more subtle values of
all things are perceived, and everything
seems composed of and pervaded by pure
light.
The seventh state is called by Maharishi unity consciousness, or "Unity," and
is characterized by absolute awareness of
the external world, or experiencing one's
essential unity with all that is. See Mystical experiences. Maharishi claims that
with TM it is possible to reach these
states in a few years, perhaps five to ten,
as opposed to many years, if not a lifetime, through yoga or Zen.

Differences
TM differs from Eastern teachings
that are considered traditional. There is
no espousal of renunciation or withdrawal from the daily world in order to
achieve enlightenment. Rather, Maharishi
acknowledges the importance of well-

Transcendental Meditation (TM)

being and living in a material world, but

without attachment. Nor does he accept
the doctrine of maya, which holds that
the relative, phenomenological world is
illusion and only the absolute is real. Maharishi says the illusion lies in the relationship between absolute and relative.
Because of the differences, it is stressed
that TM not be mixed with techniques
from other systems.
Sources: Harold H. Bloomfield, M.D., Mi-

chael Peter Cain, and Dennis T. Jaffe. TM:

Discovering Inner Energy and Overcoming
Stress. New York: Delacorte Press, 1975;
Jack Forem. Transcendental Meditation.

New York: E. P. Dutton, 1973; Richard

Gibson. "The Yoga Airborne at Maharishi
U. Targets Persian Gulf." Wall Street Journal (October 11, 1990): AI; Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi. Transcendental Meditation.
First published as The Science of Being and
Art of Living. New York: New American
Library, 1963; Peter Russell. The TM Technique: A Skeptic's

Guide to the Program.

First published as The TM Technique.

1976. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1977.

T ranspersonal psychology
See Psychology.

Tree of Life
See Kabbalah; Magic.

Trungpa, Chogyam (1939-1987)

Tibetan Buddhist tulku, religious leader,
and meditation master in the Kagyu
school of Tibetan Buddhism, and one of
the most important modern Buddhist
teachers for his dissemination of Tibetan
teachings in the West.
Chogyam Trungpa was born in a
cattle barrow in Geje, a small village in
northeastern Tibet, on the day of the full
moon during the New Year Festival in

Trungpa,

Chogyam

(1939-1987)

February 1939. His family name was

Mukpo. According to his mother, on the
night of his conception, she had a dream
in which a being of light entered her
body with a flash. That winter flowers
bloomed in the area.
As an infant of less than one year, he
was recognized as the eleventh incarnation of Trungpa Tulku, a great Buddhist
teacher, and was given the religious name
Trungpa Rinpoche. He was raised in
monasteries, where he received his
schooling and was taught meditation. He
rose to supreme abbot of the Surmangt
Monasteries, receiving the degree of Khyenpo, the approximate equivalent of a
Western doctorate of divinity.
In 1959, at age twenty, he fled to
India over the Himalayas when the Chinese invaded and occupied Tibet. His
dramatic journey on foot with a party of
refugees, including other religious leaders, was fraught with the danger of discovery and death the entire way. To keep
warm they practiced the yoga of inner
heat, called tumo. To help guide them
through unfamiliar territory, they used a
form of divination called prasena, which
produces visions.
Trungpa believed he had a duty to
preserve and spread the spiritual wisdom
he had been taught, and devoted the rest
of his life to those ends. In India His Holiness the Dalai Lama appointed him spiritual adviser of the Young Lamas' Home
School.
After two years Trungpa went to
Britain as a Spaulding Fellow, where he
attended Oxford University from 1963 to
1967. In 1966 he published Born in Tibet, an autobiographical account of his
early life and escape from Tibet, the latter
of which he examined within the context
of Tibetan Buddhist spiritual teachings.
Trungpa was invited to lecture at the
Johnstone House Contemplative Community in Scotland, and then was invited
to take it over. He did take it over in
1967 with the establishment of the

623

Samye-Ling Tibetan Centre, named after

Samye, the first monastic center in Tibet.
Located on a twenty-three-acre wooded
estate near the Esk river, Samye-Ling
houses lamas who provide training to
monks and teach traditional meditation
in action.
In May 1969 Trungpa was in an automobile accident in Britain that left him
paralyzed on his left side. As a result he
could no longer wear his religious robes,
which he acknowledged had a devastating effect on him. He continued his teaching "unmasked," as he termed it, which
he said eventually brought him more
closely in touch with wisdom and "finally
cut through the seduction of materialism." He relinquished his monastic vows;
and in January 1970, to the displeasure
of his Tibetan peers, he married a sixteenyear-old Englishwoman, Diane Judith
Pybus.
Within a few months of marriage, he
accepted invitations to teach in North
America. He and Diane moved to the
United States, where Trungpa lectured at
the Tail of the Tiger Community in Bernet, Vermont, founded in March 1970 by
some of his students from Samye-Ling.
Trungpa and Diane then made their
home in Boulder, Colorado, where he established Vajrahadtu, an association of
more than one hundred meditation communities and centers in the United States,
Canada, and Europe; and the Nalanda
Foundation, which includes the Naropa
Institute, a liberal arts college. Trungpa's
arrival in the United States coincided with
the movement of interest in Eastern spirituality, and he was well received by a
wide range of followers, including poet
Allen Ginsburg, novelist William Burroughs, and composer John Cage.
Trungpa wrote eleven books on
meditation and Tibetan Buddhism spiritual teachings, and lectured on "enlightened warriorship," emphasizing principles of sacredness and dignity that have
inspired great people throughout history.

624

Over a period of years beginning in 1976,

he presented a series of "Shambhala
teachings" on that theme, in which he
drew upon the mythical and enlightened
kingdom of Shambhala. The premise of
these teachings is that an enlightened society can be created through the individual discovery of one's inherent goodness
and potential for dignity. A Shambhala
training program, which teaches meditation and the principles of Shambhala
warriorship, is taught through the Vajrahadtu centers. Trungpa also was known
for his poetry, calligraphy, floral arrangements, and environmental designs.
Trungpa reportedly drank heavily.
He died at age forty-eight on April 4,
1987, in Nova Scotia, leaving behind his
widow, Diane, and five children from
their marriage. There was no autopsy,
but the official cause of death was cardiac
arrest and respiratory failure; followers
speculated that the true cause of death
was cirrhosis of the liver. Trungpa's body
was placed in a meditative posture,
packed in salt, and flown to Tail of the
Tiger in Bernet, Vermont, where students
meditated with it until May 26. Some
three thousand people gathered to attend
the cremation of his body, which was
wrapped in gauze, covered with ghee (a
clarified butter), and placed atop a
twenty-five-foot-high kiln. See Shambhala.
Sources: Leslie A. Shepard, ed. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. 2d

ed. Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1984;

Chogyam Trungpa. Shambhala: The Sacred
Path of the Warrior. 1984. New York:
Bantam Books, 1986; Chogyam Trungpa.
Born in Tibet. 1966. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1971;
"In Vermont: A Spiritual Leader's Farewell." Time (June 22, 1987): 10-13.

Tulku
See Lama.

Trungpa,

Chogyam

(1939-1987)

Tulpa

Twitchell, Paul

See Thought-form.

See ECKANKAR.

Tutelary spirit

Tyrrell, G. N. M.

See Guardian spirit.

See Apparition.

Tyrrell, G. N. M.

625

u
See Alternative religious movements.

See Hermetica. The alchemist Robert

Fludd referred to it as spiritus and the
Kabbalists called it the astral light; hypnotist Franz Anton Mesmer called it magnetic fluid, and psychiatrist Wilhelm
Reich termed it orgone energy. More recently, it has been referred to as bioenergy. See Aura.
Regardless of what it is called, the
characteristics of the universal life force
are common. In various systems it can be
controlled and manipulated for improved
health, longevity, healing, or supernormal
physical feats. Following are different
concepts of the universal life force.

Universal consciousness

Prana

See Collective unconscious.

Prana, a Sanskrit term, usually is

translated as "life force," "vigor," or
"vitality." The control of it plays an important role in yoga, Hindu magic, and
healing.
According to ancient Hindu teachings, prana is the divine power that acts
in the akasha, one of the basic elements
of the universe. The universe itself is
manufactured from the akasha by the
power of prana; before existence there
was nonexistence, which was not void,
but prana. It is the soul of energy, the
essence of all motion, force, and power in
all things. Prana manifests in the motion
of all celestial bodies, and in gravity, electricity, and magnetism. It is part of all
forms of life, from the lowest protoplasm

UFOs (unidentified
flying objects)
See Ancient astronauts, theory of; Encounter phenomenon; Extraterrestrial encounters; Men in Black.

Ullman, Montague
See Dreams.

Unification Church

Universal life force

A vital force or energy that transcends
time and space, permeates all things in
the universe, and upon which all things
depend for health and life. Its existence
has been acknowledged universally since
ancient times, and it is known by many
different names. The Hindus call it prana,
the Polynesians and Hawaiians mana, the
Chinese qi, and the Japanese ki. Hippocrates called it the Vis Medicatrix Naturae, and Galen called it the Pneuma. It
is referred to as the Telesma in the writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus.

626

UFOs (unidentified flying objects)

to the most complex being. It is part of

every inanimate object as a living force.
Prana permeates all forms of matter, but
is not matter itself; it is often likened to
electricity. When a being or material substance reaches the end of its life cycle, it
is resolved back into prana.
While prana is all-pervasive, it is
more concentrated at the tops of mountains and near running water. It corresponds with concentrations of negative
IOns.

In yoga the human body maintains a

store of prana, which acts as the body's
vital "bio-motor." The personal prana is
in constant touch with the infinite supply
of universal prana. The chakras are focal
points for transforming the universal
pranic energy into the body's energy system; each chakra funnels a differentcolored ray of prana. Orange light is believed to stimulate the spleen chakra, an
important center for assimilating and directing prana energy throughout the
body. The circulation of prana is highest
in the morning, at noon, and in the early
evening, and is affected by the movements of the planets and stars. See
Chakras.
Prana is not breath, but it is manifested in breath, and it is related to vayu,
the element of air and motion. Pranayama, the control of the flow of prana
through rhythmic breathing, is central to
yoga. The right nostril is positive and represents the sun; the left is negative and
represents the moon. Breathing through
right and left nostrils must be balanced.
The yogi increases prana, thus improving
health and vitality, and enabling remarkable physical feats. Pranayama also controls the mind, which in turn controls
pranayama. During life the mind keeps
prana within the body; at the instant of
death, both mind and prana leave the
body simultaneously.
In Tantra Yoga prana is used to raise
latent psychic powers, called siddhis.
Yoga adepts who raise the kundalini

Universal life force

force see prana as a mystical light of supernormal colors, indescribable in terms

of the physical spectrum. See Kundalini;
Siddhis; Yoga.
In Hindu magic prana is the energy
source for all magical feats. Magicians
use prana to energize the imagination and
will, which are the keys to the Creative
Mind Principle, the controlling instrument of genuine magic. See Fakir.
Healthy people have an excess of
prana, while sick people are depleted in
it. Prana is responsible for regeneration
and the healing of wounds. It may be
transferred from a healthy body to a sick
body by a laying on of hands. See Bodywork.

Qi
The Chinese term Qi literally means
"breath," "gas," or "ether"; it has never
been clearly defined. Qi was developed
as a metaphysical principle, as the source
of vitality, harmony, creativity, and
moral courage, by various philosophers,
including Lao-tzu (e. 604 B.c.-531 B.C.),
the legendary author of the Tao Teh
Ching, Confucius (c. 551 B.c.-479 B.C.?),
Mencius (fourth century B.C.), Huainantzu, and Kuan-tzu. Lao-tzu conceived of
it as a dualistic principle, which evolved
into the concept of yin and yang-yang
being light, the sun, and the active/dry/
masculine principle and yin being dark,
the Earth, and the passive/wet/feminine
principle. From this dualistic concept
arose the Five Elements theory of Chinese
medicine, and the basis for the I Ching.
Yin and yang are seen as in constant
ebb and flow, and must be in balance for
optimum health. Yang energy enters the
body by flowing downward from the
heavens, while the yin flows upward from
the earth. They converge at a point in the
lower belly called the hara, which is located about two inches below the navel
and is deep within the body. The hara is
likened to a stove or furnace where the

627

life force can, in certain disciplines, be

converted into spiritual energy, a process
that creates physical heat.
Qi courses through the body in
twelve meridians connected to the internal organs. Each meridian has a fixed direction, is associated with one of the Five
Elements, and is either yin or yang. The
flow of qi can be enhanced by the manipulation of one thousand points, or tsubas, along the meridians. The speed of
the flow is measured by individuals who
are "meridian sensitive."
The earliest extant descriptions of
qi in relation to health and healing date
to the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220),
in a text entitled Huang-ti Nei Ching Su
Wen (The Yellow Emperor's Classic of
Internal Medicine). The text gives the
name qi and describes thirty-two forms
of it. All living things are in a constant
energy exchange with qi; illness results
when the exchange is restricted, depleted,
or out of balance. If the exchange ceases,
the organism dies. Qi is received
through food, the breath, and from the
environment in general. One's ability to
absorb it declines with age.
In martial arts and the "moving
meditation" of Tai Ji Chuan, qi is controlled through breathing to bring the
mind and body into balance. In addition
to the physical meridians, ch'i flows
through eight psychic channels in the
body, which playa key role in the purification of vital energy. A body filled with
qi is strong and resistant to disease and
illness, and is likely to live a long life. The
term qi is always found in descriptions
of Taoist exercises and breathing techniques. See Feng shui; Martial arts; Meditation; T ai Ji Chuan. See also Qi Gong.

Ki
Ki is the Japanese term for qi. The
metaphysical principle of Chinese qi
was introduced into Japan in the Nara
period (710-794) and Heian period

628

(794-1185). The concept of ki was absorbed into Shinto beliefs about nature,
and many compound words were formed
relating nature to spirit.
Concepts of ki began to undergo
dramatic change with the rise of the samurai class, beginning in the late Heian period and peaking in the mid-nineteenth
century. Ki became part of the warrior's
discipline of courage, willpower, vigor,
conserving energy, and even prolonging
breathing as a matter of life and death. Ki
was seen as twofold in nature: the unifying principle between the individual and
the universe, and the expression of
breath-power. Victory depended on ki.
These principles of the samurai have carried over into modern-day martial arts.

Mana
"Mana" is a term used in the Huna
of Hawaii. Mana has three primary
forms, each of which functions in one of
the three selves which comprise every person. Mana, the basic life force, operates
in the Low Self (Unihipili), the subconscious. It has the power to build and
maintain forms, including the physical
body. Mana-mana operates in the Middle
Self (uhane), the conscious. It is creative
willpower and manifests thought and
emotion. Mana-loa operates in the High
Self (Aumakua), the superconscious. It is
a high-voltage energy that can be harnessed for instantaneous healing and miracles. It contains the power of compasSIOn.

All forms of mana flow through the

human body in waves and layers, emanating from the solar plexus and flowing
down one leg and back up to the opposite
shoulder, with the pattern reversed on the
back, so that the flow forms a figure
eight. Mana from lower levels can be
converted to higher levels. It can be manipulated through breathing and visualization exercises. See Huna.

Universal life force

Od
Baron Karl von Reichenbach (17881869), a German chemist, metallurgist,
and expert on meteorites, used the term
"ad" (also "Odic Force," "Odyle") to
describe a subtle substance that he said
emanates from all things in the universe,
including the stars and planets; it streams
from crystals. Reichenbach said ad can
be observed by clairvoyants as luminous
radiations similar to an aurora borealis
and can be sensed as hot or cold. He also
believed it is affected by the breath and
fluctuates during the day and night, and
before and after meals.
Goethe anticipated his observations
of the luminosities of plants by about
twenty-five years, but Reichenbach was
the first to make a scientific case for the
universal life force by conducting hundreds of experiments with sensitives (but
who were not Spiritualist mediums).
In 1845 Reichenbach published his
findings in the first part of his Researches
on Magnetism, Electricity, Heat and
Light in their relations to Vital Forces. At
the time mesmerism was declining in popularity, and his work was viewed as an
attempt to revive it. He was rejected by
the scientific establishment, but endorsed
by mesmerists, magnetic healers, and
Spiritualists. See Mesmer, Franz Anton.
Reichenbach was a supporter of mesmerism, though he thought the term "animal
magnetism" was inappropriate.
The complete edition of Researches
appeared in 1850. The term "Odyle" was
created by a translator who thought it
sounded more scientific than "ad."
One of the first tasks of the Society
for Psychical Research (SPR) upon its formation in London in 1882 was to study
"Reichenbach Phenomena." The SPR's
study validated many of Reichenbach's
claims. See Society for Psychical Research
(SPR). Nevertheless, Reichenbach was
shunned by the scientific establishment.
He spent his last years in retirement and

Universal life force

disappointment at his castle in Reisenberg, Germany.

Orgone
The term "orgone" was coined by
Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957), a native of
Austria, a student of psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, and a psychoanalyst. In developing the work of Freud between 1936
and 1940, Reich hypothesized on the existence of orgone, a vital force or primordial cosmic energy, as the basis of sex and
psychosomatic neuroses. He agreed with
Reichenbach that it: permeated all things
and existed as a biological energy; was
blue in color; and could be demonstrated
visually, thermically, and electroscopically in the atmosphere with a Geiger
counter. Reich published his theory in
1942 in The Discovery of the Orgone:
The Function of the Orgasm; SexEconomic Problems of Biological Energy
and in 1948 in The Cancer Biopathy.
Reich practiced in the United States
and found himself in legal trouble when
he developed a device called the "orgone
accumulator," a metallic box covered
with organic material, which was supposed to concentrate orgone for therapeutic uses. He used the device on cancer
patients and reported positive results.
The Food and Drug Administration
tested the device and deemed it worthless.
Reich was enjoined from manufacturing,
distributing, and using the device, and
from using the term "orgone" in his writings. When he refused he was fined and
sent to jail, where he died. The orgone
accumulators were destroyed and his
books were burned.

Bioenergy
Bioenergy is an Eastern European
concept of the universal life force, which
is seen to tie all things together, and
which may be controlled and directed by

629

will. The energy also is used in Eastern

European
healing disciplines. The term
"bioenergy"
was borrowed
from Wilhelm Reich, the first to use it to describe
the life energy within the body.
Bioenergy is said to radiate from human bodies, and is associated with such
psychic
phenomena
as psychokinesis
(PK). It is not certain whether the force
originates within the body or is drawn
from outside and channeled through the
body. Bioenergy and the application of it
has been of great interest to researchers in
Czechoslovakia
and the Soviet Union,
who claim to be able to store the energy
in generators.
See Psychokinesis
(PK);
Psychorronics.
In healing the term "bioenergy" has
been applied by Czech researcher Zdenek
Rejdak to a touch method that is not related to Reich's bioenergy, but is based
on the concept of prana. It involves the
transmission of vital energy from a healer
to a patient whose own energy field is
depleted and out of balance. The transmission
is done through
the "biocurrents" in the aura and can be accomplished

at a distance.

Sources: W. Y. Evans-Wentz, ed. The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation. London: Oxford University Press, 1954; Milton Friedman. "From Poland with Prana."
New Realities 7, no. 6: 10-15; Richard
Gerber. Vibrational Medicine. Santa Fe,
NM: Bear & Co., 1988; Henry Gris and
William Dick. The New Soviet Psychic Discoveries. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1978; Enid Hoffman. Huna: A Beginner's
Guide.
Rockport,
MA: Para
Research,
1976; Dolores Krieger. The
Therapeutic Touch. New York: PrenticeHall Press, 1979; C. W. Leadbeater. The
Chakras. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1927; Solange Lemaitre. Ramakrishna and the Vitality of Hinduism.
Woodstock,
NY: The Overlook
Press,
1984; Da Liu. T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Meditation. New York: Schocken Books, 1986;
Ormond McGill. The Mysticism and Magic
of India. Cranbury, NJ: A. S. Barnes &

630

Co., 1977; Edgar D. Mitchell. Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science. Edited
by John White. New York: Paragon Books,
1974; Ajit Mookerjee and Madhu Khanna.
The Tantric Way: Art, Science, Ritual. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1977;
Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970;
Ikuko Osumi and Malcolm Ritchie. The
Shamanic Healer: The Healing World of
Ikuko Osumi and the Traditional Art of
Seiki-Jutsu. London: Century, 1987; Karl
von Reichenbach. The Odic Force: Letters
on Od and Magnetism. 1926. Secaucus,
NJ: University Books, 1968; Kisshomaru
Ueshiba. The Spirit of Aikido. Tokyo:
Kodansha
International,
1984; Vivian
Worthington. A History of Yoga. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

Upanishads
See Hinduism;

Yoga.

Urantia Book, the

A collection of 196 papers of reputed celestial origin, which give a new account
of the complex history and structure of
the universe; humankind's
origin, history,
and destiny; and the life and teachings of
Jesus. The Urantia Book is said to have
been written by many superhuman
personalities in 1934 and 1935. It is popularly assumed that the work was channeled by human beings who chose to
remain anonymous, but according to the
Urantia Foundation, which publishes the
book and aids the Urantia mission, the
technique by which the papers were communicated is unknown to any living person. A group of people who came into
possession of the papers formed the foundation in 1950, which published the book
in 1955.
The Urantia Book, 2,097 pages in
length, presents an integrated picture of
the universe that unifies science, philoso-

Universal

life force

phy, and religion in a holistic cosmological structure. It seeks to address all religions, but a major section of it is
essentially an expansion on the story of
Christianity, as seen from a different, cosmic perspective. It contradicts some parts
of the Bible, which it says have been distorted, and also presents new information. The book is written in the sexist language of the 1930s and sees the cosmos
organized and administered by the male
principle: God the Father, Paradise Sons,
Planetary Princes, and so on. In content,
however, it emphasizes the equality of the
sexes. The local universe, Nebadon, is
ruled by both Christ Michael and the
Universe Mother Spirit celebrated by a
"Proclamation of Equality."
Urantia, or Earth, is one of 10 million inhabitable planets (when completed) in the local universe of Nebadon,
which, along with other similar universes,
makes up the superuniverse of Orvonton.
The commission of beings that claims authorship of The Urantia Book comes
from all sections of the grand universe.
The authorization of the book was given
by the Ancients of Days, who are the administrators of Orvonton and reside in its
capital, Uversa. The book further states
that "Orvonton is one of seven evolutionary superuniverses of time and space
which circle the never-beginning, neverending creation of divine perfection-the
central universe of Havona. At the heart
of this eternal and central universe is the
stationary Isle of Paradise, the geographic
center of infinity and the dwelling place
of the eternal God."
The seven superuniverses, along with
the central and divine universe, are called
the "grand universe," which is part of the
"master universe," the latter of which
"embraces the uninhabited but mobilizing universes of outer space."
According to the book, God, the
Universal Father, sent out a supreme
mandate, "Be you perfect, even as I am
perfect," which was carried throughout

Urantia Book, the

the universe by messengers of Paradise,

even to "such lowly animal-origin creatures as the human races of Urantia." It is
humankind's first duty, highest ambition,
and final destiny to strive for perfection
of divinity through a search for truth and
God.
The history of Urantia began 987
billion years ago when space conditions
in a part of Orvonton were deemed favorable for materialization of worlds and
life. The planet itself was not formed until 3.5 billion years ago, along with nine
other planets; Jupiter and Saturn were
formed 4 billion years ago. All inhabitable worlds are registered and numbered,
and Urantia was given its number of 606
in the local system of Satania. Urantia obtained its present size about 1 billion
years ago, when its formal history began.
The development of Urantia generally followed the plan for inhabited planets in the universe. Once worlds are populated and a Garden of Eden developed,
a Material Son and Material Daughter arrive as "biological uplifters" to enhance
the racial quality and revelation of God.
At an appropriate time in the spiritual
and intellectual development, a Paradise
Son appears on a bestowal mission to
bring the world into a spiritual era in
which war, disease, degeneracy, and so
on eventually are eliminated.
In the case of Urantia, the first human beings, Andon and Fonta, appeared
on the planet 993,473 years ago. Adam
and Eve did not appear until 37,904
years ago. Prior to the arrival of Adam
and Eve, the planet was beset by the rebellion of Lucifer and Satan, and the deposition of the Planetary Prince, Caligastia, otherwise known to mortals as the
"devil." Adam and Eve were over eight
feet tall, had glowing bodies, which reflected their higher origins, and were able
to communicate by telepathy. They spent
117 years trying to uplift human beings,
but were constantly plagued by Lucifer,
Satan, and Caligastia. Eventually Eve fell

631

victim to a plot engineered by Caligastia

to follow a path of mixing good and evil.
The fall of Adam and Eve severely retarded the spiritual development of Urantia, causing it to become a "confused and
disordered planet."

Organization of The Urantia

Book
The Urantia Book is divided into
four sections. Part I describes the nature
of the universe. Concepts of deity range
from that of a personal Universal Father
to impersonal absolutes. The material
and gravitational center of the universe,
the Isle of Paradise, is referred to as the
nuclear source of all energy, matter, life,
and personality. An organized hierarchical universe is described, which includes
billions of inhabited planets in all stages
of physical, mental, and spiritual evolution.
Part II relates to the local galaxy or
local universe and its interrelationships,
where the ministry of Christ is the central
universe reality through which everything
else finds meaning and purpose. Personality survival is seen as dependent on the
spiritual reality status of the individual.
This, in turn, is determined by the free
will decisions of the individual toward
God, by loyalty to truth, beauty, and
goodness as these values are sincerely understood. Nevertheless, evil, sin, and
judgment are stern and sober realities in
the universe. The central challenge to
modern people is to make a wellbalanced and sane effort to achieve Godconsciousness. Growth toward perfection
is seen as the fundamental motivation of
life. This growth is evolutionary, culminating, and virtually endless.
Part III narrates the story of the origin and development of Earth, whose
universe name is "Urantia." In addition
to human biological evolution, it traces
the development of civilization, culture,
government, religion, the family, and

632

other social institutions, including a view

of planetary history, dynamics, and destiny. Papers dealing with the nature and
function of religion, the purpose and
practice of prayer and worship, and the
place of personal and institutional religion in life and society are discussed with
both historical and contemporary frames
of reference.
Part IV contains a seven-hundredpage version of the life and teachings of
Jesus which parallels the New Testament
story. This biography includes specific
dates, from his birth (August 21, 7 B.C.)
to the crucifixion (A.D. April 7, 30), resurrection (April 9, 30), and ascension
(May 18, 30). It relates engaging childhood experiences, events in Jesus' struggle to overcome family adversity as a
teenage youth, travels, and adventures,
through which he gained a thorough
knowledge of how life is lived on our
world; and vignettes of personal and public ministry.

The Urantia Book and

Christianity
The Christ who appeared on Urantia
in the human form of Jesus of Nazareth
was Michael of Nebadon, creator, organizer, and now sovereign of the local universe of Nebadon. There are many Michael Sons, all of whom voluntarily go
out from Paradise to oversee portions of
the cosmos. Through bestowal incarnations, the Sons mature in their roles as
sovereigns as part of their education and
training. Michael had seven bestowals on
seven different worlds, beginning about 1
billion years ago. His seventh and last bestowal was on Urantia.
Unlike in his previous six bestowals,
Michael chose to incarnate on Urantia in
the form of mortal flesh and beginning as
an infant. Generations of lineages were
studied before Joseph and Mary were
chosen as parents. The birth of Jesus was
not virgin. From an early age, he had a

Urantia Book, the

sense of his origin and mission. His socalled "missing years" were spent primarily as the head of a large and poor family
following the death of his father. In his
twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth years, he
undertook a tour of the Mediterranean
world, and spent time in Alexandria,
where he visited the great library and
learned about the world's religions.
Following his crucifixion Jesus was
resurrected neither in flesh nor as a spirit,
but in the likeness of resurrected ascendant beings of the local Satania system.
His corpse remained behind in the tomb
and was decayed to dust in a natural but
accelerated process by celestial hosts. After a number of appearances to the faithful, Jesus ascended, returning to his status
as Michael, now having earned his universe sovereignty as a Paradise Creator
Son.
The Urantia Book applauds Christianity for being "one of the greatest powers for good on earth," but laments its
descent into politics and commerce. It has
become a religion about Jesus rather than
the religion of Jesus (the Gospel of the
Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood
of man). Christianity is handicapped because it has become identified with the
local system, industrial life, and moral
standards of Western civilization: "thus
has Christianity unwittingly seemed to
sponsor a society which staggers under
the guilt of tolerating science without idealism, politics without principles, wealth
without work, pleasure without restraint,

Urantia Book, the

knowledge without character, power

without conscience, and industry without
morality." Furthermore, it is suffering a
slow death from "formalism, overorganization, intellectualism, and other nonspiritual trends," especially the mechanistic,
materialistic orientation of science. The
book urges Christianity to turn away
from its material concerns and return to
"learn anew from Jesus of Nazareth the
greatest truths mortal man can ever
hear-the living gospel of the fatherhood
of God and the brotherhood of man."
Since its publication The Urantia
Book has attracted tens of thousands of
followers, some of whom are academics, intellectuals, and professionals. The
Urantia Brotherhood was formed in 1955
as a religious organization concerned
with the spiritual regeneration of humankind; in 1989 it changed its name to the
Fifth Epochal Fellowship. The Fellowship
works to help members master the teaching of The Urantia Book, and to form
study groups which in turn can be chartered as Societies. All outreach activity,
including sale of the book, is done largely
by word-of-mouth.
Sources: Jon Klimo. Channeling: Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources. Los Angeles: Jeremy P.
Tarcher, 1987; The Urantia Book. Chicago: Urantia Foundation, 1955; The
Urantia Foundation; The Fifth Epochal Fellowship, 529 Wrightwood Ave., Chicago,
IL 60614.

633

v
Vision quest
Ritual common to tribes throughout
North America, with the exception of the
southwestern United States, for acquiring
a guardian spirit or soliciting supernatural guidance. It is most important east of
the Rockies and in some parts of western
North America. The vision quest provides the average person, not just the
medicine man, with access to the spiritual
realms for help.
The vision quest, or "crying for a vision," as it is sometimes called, is preceded by sweat-bath purification rites.
The individual goes into the wilderness to
a sacred place and fasts, thirsts, smokes
tobacco, prays, and meditates for a vision. The vigil may last several days and
nights. Self-mortification or mutilation,
such as cutting off a finger joint, is practiced by some Plains tribes. Some tribes
use hallucinogens; small groups in southern California traditionally ingested a
drink containing jimson weed, and medicine societies along the Missouri used
mescal. See Medicine societies. In a successful vision quest, the seeker falls into a
trance or experiences a vivid dream in
which his guardian spirit manifests, or he
receives the sought-after advice from the
spirits or Great Spirit.
Vision quests are usually sought by
males, sometimes beginning in childhood
but usually not until at least puberty.
They are a powerful force in the matura-

634

tion process, providing a focus and sense

of purpose, personal strength, and power.
In seeking a guardian spirit, the individual usually asks to receive certain
powers, such as for hunting or healing, or
for luck in warfare, love, gambling, and
so on. The guardian spirit usually appears in animal form, but may change to
human form. In bestowing powers, it also
may prescribe food taboos; teach a song,
which is used to reconnect the individual
to the spirit at any given time; and give
instructions for ornamentation and the
assembly of medicine bundles. All instructions must be followed lest the man
lose the spirit. Ideally, the spirit leaves behind a physical token of the vision, such
as a feather or claw. If the spirit that appears is undesirable, its power is refused,
and at a later time another vision quest is
undertaken.
Vision quests also are undertaken at
times of war, disease, death, and childbirth (the latter to seek instructions for
naming the child). Most Native Americans believe that the vision seeker should
abstain from sex for a period beforehand.
Some tribes, such as the Algonkians and
Salish, have vision quest rites for girls,
but the quests are not done after puberty.
Plains warriors traditionally undertook
numerous vision quests, and thus acquired many guardian spirits, each with a
different function.
Most vision quests are solitary affairs, but some are done on a collective

Vision quest

basis, such as in the Sun Dance ceremony.

See Guardian
spirit; Medicine bundle;
Shamanism; Sun Dance; Sweat.

Sources: Edward S. Curtis. "Medicine Practices of the Lakota Sioux." Excerpted from
The North American Indian, 1908. Shaman's Drum no. 16 (Mid-Spring 1989):
25-31; Michael Harner. The Way of the
Shaman. New York: Bantam, 1986; Ake
Hultkrantz. The Religions of the American
Indians. 1967. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979; Ake Hultkrantz. Native Religions of North America. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987; Lame Deer,
John (Fire), and Richard Erdoes. Lame
Deer: Seeker of Visions. New York: Washington Square Press/Pocket Books, 1972;
Ruth M. Underhill. Red Man's Religion.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1965; Carl Waldman. Atlas of the North
American Indian. New York: Facts On
File, 1985.

Visualization
See Creative

visualization.

Vivekananda, Swami
See Hinduism.

Vodoun (also Voodoo)

Syncretic religion based on ancient African rites and Catholicism. Vodoun has 50
million followers worldwide.
"Vodoun" derives from vodu, meaning spirit or deity in the Fon language of
Dahomey, now part of Nigeria. Creole
slave masters in the New World translated the word into vaudau. Creole language derives from French, with definite
African patterns of phonetics and grammar.
Eventually,
the word
became
voudou, voudoun, vodoun, voodoo, and
hoodoo; the latter two terms are now
considered pejorative.

Vodoun (also Voodoo)

Vodoun is a product of the slave

trade, principally
in the Spanish and
French colonies in the Caribbean such as
Jamaica and Saint Domingue,
now divided into Santo Domingo
and Haiti.
Whites forbade their slaves to practice
their religion on pain of torture
and
death. Any slave found possessing a fetish
was to be imprisoned, hanged, or flayed
alive. See Fetish. To save black souls, the
masters baptized the slaves as Catholics.
Like Santeria, V odoun became a syncretism, with
Catholicism
superimposed
upon secret native rites and beliefs. Tribal
deities took on the forms of Catholic
saints. Worshipers
saw the addition of
the saints as an enrichment of their faith,
not a profanity. Fetishes were replaced by
Catholic statues, candles, and holy relics.
See Santeria.

Serving the Vodoun Loa

The Vodoun
pantheon
of gods,
called loas or mysteres, is enormous, with
hundreds of deities. It accommodates
additionallocal
deities or ancestral spirits as
needs arise. V odounists acknowledge
an
original Supreme Being, called Gran Met,
who made the world, but he is too remote for personal worship. Instead, devotees "serve the loa," seeking to please
the gods and receive favors in return. Depending on the rites observed, the loas
can be kind, beneficent, wise, violent,
sexual, vindictive, generous, or mean.
The oldest
of the ancestors
is
Danbhalah-Wedo,
or the Great Serpent
(also called Danballah
or Damballah).
Prior to the days of slavery, Africans worshiped a large python, Danh-gbwe, as the
embodiment of the gods. The snake was
harmless to humans, and devotees believed that any child touched by the serpent was chosen as a priest or priestess by
the god himself. After transportation
to
the Americas, the slaves substituted
a
large boa for the python.

635

Danbhalah-Wedo does not speak,

only hisses. Langage, the sacred language
of Vodoun, which represents long-forgotten African liturgy, descended from
Danbhalah's hissing. Those possessed by
Danbhalah do not walk but slither, and
do not use their limbs.
In the Vodoun creation story, Danbhalah created all the waters of the Earth.
The movement of his seven thousand
coils formed the hills and valleys of Earth
and brought forth the stars and planets of
the heavens. Danbhalah forged metals
from heat, and sent lightning bolts to
form the sacred stones and rocks. When
Danbhalah shed his skin in the sun, releasing the waters over the land, the sun
shone in the water and created the Rainbow. Danbhalah loved the Rainbow's
beauty and made her his wife, AidaWedo.
Aida-Wedo is personified as a short
coiled snake, much more slender than
Danbhalah, which feeds upon bananas
and lives mainly in the water. Her bright
spectrum decorates Vodoun temples, especially the central support pole, which
represents the axis mundi, the axis of the
world that connects heaven, earth, and
the underworld. Aida-Wedo is only one
manifestation of the goddess Erzulie, the
deity of beauty, love, wealth, and prosperity. Called Maitresse Erzulie, she is the
moon and wife of Legba, the sun. As the
moon Erzulie is pure and virginal. Contact with her fiery husband burned her
skin, so she is depicted as a beautiful,
dark-skinned Ethiopian. Her legend compares with the biblical story of the Queen
of Sheba and King Solomon. There are
many different Erzulies, encompassing
not only the virtues of love and good will
but also the vices of jealousy, discord,
and vengeance.
Although Danbhalah represents the
ancestral knowledge of Vodoun, no communion of god and worshiper can take
place without the offices of Legba, called
"Papa" or Legba Ati-Bon ("Legba of the

636

Good Wood"). He is the Orient, the East,

the sun, and the place the sun rises. He
governs gates, fences, entryways, and the
New Year; no other deity may join a
Vodoun ceremony unless Legba has been
asked to open the "door." No loa may
act without Legba's permission. Depicted
both as a man sprinkling water and as a.n
old man walking with a stick or crutch,
Legba personifies the ritual waters and
the consolidation of Vodoun mysteries;
as such he is related to Danbhalah-Wedo.
Through syncretization Legba has become identified with St. Peter, the gatekeeper of heaven and the man to whom
Christ gave the keys to the Kingdom.
Others see Legba as Christ, a mulatto
man born of the sun and the moon.
Legba also guards crossroads, and as
Maitre Carrefour ("master of the four
roads," or "crossroads") is the patron of
sorcery.
A separate classification of loas are
the Guedes, the various spirits of death
and graveyards, sexual debauchery, and
buffoonery, which are worshiped by various cults. The Guedes also govern the
preservation and renewal of life and protect the children. Depictions of the
Guedes, usually referred to as Guede Nibbho or Nimbo, Baron Samedi, or Baron
Cimetiere ("cemetery"), show the loa in a
dark tailcoat and tall hat like an undertaker. His symbols are coffins and phalluses. Those possessed by Baron Samedi
tell lewd jokes, wear dark glasses, and
smoke cigarettes or cigars. They eat voraciously and drink copious amounts of
alcohol.

Rites and Ceremonies

Each tribe originally had its own customs, rituals, and loas, but many have
blended over time. Differentiations exist
in music, drums, ceremonies, and even
the manifestations of the gods, although
the main ones appear in each rite.

Vodoun (also Voodoo)

The two main rites of Vodoun worship are Rada and Petro (also Pethro),
both characterized by drumming, dancing, chanting, and ecstatic trance. Rada
rites follow more traditional African patterns and emphasize the gentler, more
positive attributes of the loas. Devotees
wear all-white clothing for the ceremonies. Animals sacrificed-Danbhalah
exhorted his followers to partake of sacred
blood-include
chickens, goats, and
bulls.
Petro rites have their origins in
Arawak and Carib ceremonies that existed in Haiti during the slavery days. The
name "Petro" allegedly comes from Don
Juan Felipe Pedro, a Spanish Vodoun
priest and former slave who contributed a
more violent style of dance. The Caribfrom which the word "cannibal" derives-worshiped
their gods more violently, emphasizing death and vengeance.
Petro ceremonial clothing is red, and the
loas are predominantly more menacing,
deadly, and ill-tempered; many of their
names simply have the appellation GeRouge ("red eyes"), after a Rada name to
signify the Petro form. Pigs are sacrificed
to them.
Guinee, or Ian Guinee or Ginen,
symbolizes the homeland of the Africans
in diaspora. The sacred city of Guinee is
He, the Mecca of Vodoun. An actual He
exists in southern Nigeria, but the He of
Vodoun is a legendary place where the
revelations of the loas descended unto the
first faithful. Vodoun devotees refer to
themselves as sons or daughters of
Guinee: ti guinin. Vodounists believe everything in life- administrative, religious,
social, political, agricultural, artisticcomes from He, but most especially the
art of divination. Since Africa is east of
the New World, He represents the celestial position of the sun. All spiritual
strength comes from He; when the sacred
drums need divine refreshment, they are
"sent to He" in a very solemn ceremony
signifying death, burial, and resurrection.

Vodoun (also Voodoo)

,I

A Vodoun temple for either rite is

called a hounfour, humfo, or oum'phor.
Within the temple, also known as the
"holy of holies," are an altar and perhaps
rooms for solitary meditation by initiates.
The altar stone, called a pe, is covered in
candles, food offerings, money, amulets,
ceremonial rattles and flags, beads,
drums, sacred stones, and other ritual
paraphernalia. The snakes symbolizing
Danbhalah once lived in the pe's hollow
interior, but no longer.
Small jars called govis also occupy
the pe, containing the souls of loa or revered ancestors (compare to Fetish).
Vodounists believe a human is made of
five components: the n'ame, the z'etoile,
the corps cadavre, the gros bon ange, and
the ti bon ange. The corps cadavre is the
mortal flesh. The n'ame is the spirit of the
flesh, given by Danbhalah and AidaWedo, that allows the body to function
while it is alive and passes as energy into
the soil after death. The z'etoile is the
person's star of destiny and resides in the
heavens.
Gros bon ange and ti bon ange refer
to a Vodounist's soul; literally translated,
they mean the "big good angel" and the
"little good angel." The gros bon ange
passes into a human being at conception
as part of the life force that all living
things share. It keeps the body alive and
at death returns to the energy reservoir to
be used again. But the ti bon ange is one's
soul, one's essence, one's aura, the source
of one's personality. The ti bon ange travels during sleep to experience dreams,
and it leaves the body under possession
by the loa. It represents the accumulation
of a person's knowledge or experience,
and is the most vulnerable to sorcery.
At death the ti bon ange hovers
about the body for seven days, where a
sorcerer may capture it and make it a
zombi astral, or zombie of the soul. H the
ti bon ange survives such risk, the priest
ritually separates the soul from the flesh,
releasing it to live in the dark waters for

637

one year and one day. Then the family

ritually raises the soul, now called an esprit, or spirit, and places it in the govi.
The spirits in the govi are clothed, fed,
and treated like divine beings, then released to live in the trees and rocks until
they are reborn. After sixteen incarnations the spirits return to DanbhalahWedo, where they become part of the
great cosmic energy.
The walls and floors of the hounfour
are covered in veves, elaborate, colored
designs symbolizing the gods. These
drawings can be permanent or created in
cornmeal, flour, powdered brick, gunpowder, or face powder just before a ceremony. They incorporate the symbols
and occult signs of the loa being worshiped: a veve for Legba shows a cross,
one for Erzulie a heart, Danbhalah a serpent, and Baron Samedi a coffin. Usually
drawn around the center post or the place
of sacrifice, the veve serves as a ritual
"magnet" for the loa's entrance, obliging
the loa to descend to earth.
Brightly colored ritual flags may
hang on the walls or from the ceiling.
There are usually pictures of the Catholic
saints. Most hounfours even display photographs of government officials, the
gods' representatives on Earth. A model
boat represents Maitresse Erzulie and the
ritual waters.
Outside the main temple is the peristyle, the roofed and sometimes partially
enclosed courtyard adjacent to the holy
of holies. Since the hounfour probably
cannot accommodate all the Vodoun participants and onlookers, most ceremonies
and treatment of the sick are held in the
open-air peristyle. A low wall encircles
the area, allowing those who are not
dressed properly or are merely curious to
watch less conspicuously. The peristyle's
floor is ahvays hard-packed earth without paving or tile.
Holding up the peristyle is the
poteau-mitan, or center post. The poteaumitan symbolizes the center of Vodoun,

638

from the sky to hell, and is the cosmic

axis of all Vodoun magic. Usually made
of wood and set in a circular masonry
base called the socle, the post bears colorful decorations and designs representing the Serpent Danbhalah and his wife
Aida-Wedo, the Rainbow. The poteaumitan also symbolizes Legba Ati-Bon
("Legba of the Good Wood"), the way of
all Vodoun knowledge and communion
with the gods. Geometrically, the placement of the center post forms perfect
squares, circles, crosses, and triangles
with the socle and the roof of the peristyle, adding to its magical powers. All
Vodoun temples have a poteau-mitan, or
center, even if the post exists only symbolically.
Outside the peristyle the trees surrounding the courtyard serve as sacred reposoirs, or sanctuaries, for the gods.
Vodoun devotees believe all things serve
the loa and by definition are expressions
and extensions of God, especially the
trees. They are revered as divinities themselves and receive offerings of food,
drink, and money. Like cathedrals, they
are places to be in the presence of the
holy spirit; banana trees are particularly
revered.

Calling the Loas

True communion comes through
possession, or "the hand of divine grace."
When summoned, the gods may enter a
govi or "mount a horse" -assume a person's mind and body. The possessed loses
all consciousness, totally becoming the
possessing loa with all his or her desires
and eccentricities. Young women possessed by the older spirits seem frail and
decrepit, while the infirm possessed by
young, virile gods dance and cavort with
no thought to their disabilities. Even facial expressions change to resemble the
god or goddess. The priest ot priestess,
called houngan and mambo respectively,
acts as intermediary to summon the loa

Vodoun (also Voodoo)

I
I
,

and helps them depart when their business is finished. The houngan and mambo
serve as healers, diviners, psychologists,
musicians, and spiritual leaders.
The most important symbol of the
houngan's or mambo's office is the asson,
a large ritual rattle made from the calabash, a type of squash with a bulbous end
and a long handle. Symbolically, the asson represents the joining of the two most
active magic principles: the circle at the
round end and the wand at the handle.
The handle also symbolizes the poteaumitan, or vertical post. Inside the dried
calabash are sacred stones and snake vertebrae, considered the bones of African
ancestors. Eight different stones in eight
colors are used to symbolize eight ancestor gods; eight signifies eternity. Chains
of colored beads, symbolizing the rainbow of Aida-Wedo, or more snake bones
encircle the round end of the calabash.
When the vertebrae rattle, making the asson "speak," the spirits come down to
the faithful through Danbhalah, the oldest of the ancestors.
Other important members of the
worship service include la place or commandant la place, the master of ceremonies, who orchestrates the flag-waving
ceremonies, the choral singing and chanting, and the drum-beating. La place carries a ritual sword made of the finest iron
and sometimes decorated with geometric
designs and symbols. The sword's name
is ku-bha-sah, which means "cutting
away all that is material." Brandishing
his sword from east to west during the
ceremonies, la place cuts away the material world, leaving the faithful open for
the divine presences. La place's sword
also symbolizes the loa Ogou, god of iron
and weaponry.
The chorus or canzo, composed of
fully initiated Vodoun members called
hounsihs or hounsis, performs under the
direction of the hounguenicon or hounguenikon, usually a woman and the
second-most powerful member after the

Vodoun (also Voodoo)

houngan or mambo. By sending the

chants to the loas in the astral plane, the
hounguenicon calls the mysteres and demands their presence on earth.
Novices not yet completely in the
loas' power are called hounsih bossales.
The initiate who obtains the sacrificial
animals is the hounsih ventailleur, and
the sacrificial cook is the hounsih cuisin/ere. The hounguenicon
quartiermaitre oversees distribution of sacrificial
food not reserved for the loas.
Two of the most important Vodoun
celebrations in Haiti occur July 16 at Sant
d'Eau near Ville Bonheur and July 25 in
Plaine du Nord. Sant d'Eau is a waterfall,
long sacred to Danbhallah and AidaWedo. On July 16, 1843, a man named
Fortune was looking for a lost horse,
looked up at the palm trees overhead,
and reputedly saw a flash of light, which
he knew was the Virgin Mary, or Vyej
Mirak, the Virgin of Miracles or Our
Lady of Mount Carmel. She appeared
again in 1881, and local Catholic authorities erected a chapel and shrine in her
honor, hoping to usurp the Vodoun worship. But the Vodounists believed the appearance of the Virgin was' a visit by Erzulie Freda. The site became holy to both
religions, with offerings of food left as
frequently as candles. See Marian apparitions.
The festival for St. Jacques Majeur,
or St. James the Greater, takes place nine
days later. Depicted as a warrior on
horseback, St. James has become the
Catholic version of Ogou Fer, or the god
of armor and warfare. For days before
the official feast day, Vodoun worshipers
travel to Plaine du Nord to wallow in a
large mud pond formed by road and
building construction begun as early as
1909. In keeping with Ogou's fiery nature, the worshipers bathe frenziedly in
the mud, submerging themselves and
their children to gain Ogou's favors. Offerings of food and money pour into the
mud, and small boys dive for coins. Sac-

639

rificing a bull to Ogou climaxes the celebration; as the houngan slices its throat
with a machete, the animal's life force becomes part of the loa. Participants collect
the bull's blood in a calabash and drink it
all around, taking for themselves part of
Ogou's divine energy.

Vodoun and Black Magic

Vodoun worshipers may not all
practice black magic, but darker aspects
of Vodoun do exist. A houngan more involved in sorcery than healing is known
as a bokor or boko, or "one who serves
the loa with both hands." The greatest
fear of the bokor is not a death curse but
zombification. See Zombie.

640

Sources: Rod Davis. "Children of Yoruba."

Southern Magazine (February 1987); Wade
Davis, The Serpent and the Rainbow. New

York: Warner Books, 1985; Melita Denning and Osborne Phillips. Voudou Fire:
The Living Reality of Mystical Religion. St.

Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publishing, 1979;

Carole Devillers. "Of Spirits and Saints:
Haiti's Voodoo Pilgrimages." National Geographic (March 1985); Peter Haining. The
Anatomy of Witchcraft. New York: Taplinger, 1972; Douglas Hill and Pat Williams. The Supernatural. London: Aldus
Books, 1965; Mike McLaughlin. "A
Voudou Village in the US." The Seattle
Times/Seattle Post-Intelligencer
(April 5,
1987); Milo Rigaud. Secrets of Voodoo.
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1969.

Vodoun

(also Voodoo)

w
Walk-in
See Montgomery, Ruth.

Watseka possession (also the

"Watseka Wonder")
The possession of Mary Lurancy Vennum
by Mary Roff ranks as one of the most
remarkable examples of spirit control for
the victim's benefit instead of harm. It
also is considered the best case on record
of apparent possession as reincarnation.
In 1864 Mary Roff was a young girl
of eighteen in Watseka, Illinois. Since the
age of six months, she had suffered fits of
depression of increasing violence, and
headaches that she attempted to alleviate
by bleeding herself. In July 1864 she cut
herself with a knife and fainted. Upon regaining consciousness she experienced a
raving mania and extrasensory ability,
which included clairvoyance and eyeless
vision. This state lasted for five days, and
then Roff died.
Thirteen years later, in 1877, Mary
Lurancy Venn urn, a neighbor but nearstranger to the Roffs, and who had been
three months old when Roff died, appeared to go insane. For months she suffered fits of trances in which she claimed
to see heaven, angels, and the spirits of
the dead; occasionally she passed into ecstatic trances in which she claimed to be
in heaven herself. The consulting physi-

I
,

Walk-in

cian, Dr. E. W. Stevens, diagnosed spirit

obsession. Under hypnosis Vennum said
she was tormented and controlled by evil
spirits.
Stevens suggested that one of the
spirits might be able to help Vennum
control the others, and she answered
that "Mary Roff" was willing. Raft's father, present at the session, agreed, and
so Roff took possession of Vennum's
body on February 1, 1878. Roff claimed
she was doing so in order to help Vennum heal. Roff remained in control for
sixteen weeks, and Vennum behaved only
as Roff. She moved back to the Roff
home, recognized Roff's old friends, and
generally lived as Roff had thirteen years
before. She also exhibited clairvoyant
powers, had out-of-body experiences,
and traveled in astral planes. She said she
often saw the dead children of Stevens in
heaven, and described going with them in
spirit visits to the Stevens household.
On May 21 Roff tearfully told her
friends and family that Vennum was
coming back. She said good-bye, and
within minutes fell into a trance and became Vennum again. Vennum was completely healed, both mentally and physically, apparently having been made safe
from evil spirit invasion by Roft's long
inhabitation.
In 1882 Vennum married a farmer
and eventually moved to Rawlins County, Kansas. Roff continued to watch over
Vennum, taking control from time to

641

time by causing Vennum to go into a

trance; during childbirth she protected
Vennum from pain. Vennum made numerous references to information she obtained clairvoyantly from Roff, but never
fully developed a mediumship due to her
family's disapproval and fear. Roff did
not manifest independently from Vennum's body, and did not appear to anyone else in Watseka. Vennum died in the
late 1940s. See Possession; Reincarnation.
Sources: John Curt Ducasse. A Critical Examination of the Belief in a Life After
Death. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas,
1961; Frederic W. H. Myers. Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death.
Vols. 1 and 2. 1903. New ed. New York:
Longmans, Green & Co., 1954; David St.
Clair. Watseka, America's Most Extraordinary Case of Possession and Exorcism.
Chicago: Playboy Press, 1977.

Watts, Alan (1915-1973)

Author of books on the philosophy and
psychology of religion; teacher, lecturer,
and counterculture leader, especially of
the San Francisco renaissance in the
1960s. Though he never formally embraced Zen, he became identified with
Zen, which was much in vogue with the
intellectuals of the 1950s and 1960s.
Alan Watts was born January 6,
1915, in Chislehurst, Kent, England. At
age twelve he read the Fu Manchu novels
of Sax Rohmer and became curious about
Eastern thought and customs. He wrote
his first book, The Spirit of Zen: A Way
of Life, Work, and Art in the Far East, at
age twenty. Two years later he published
The Legacy of Asia and Western Man: A
Study of the Middle Way. Twenty-three
other books followed, one every three or
four years for the rest of his life, except
during the 1950s, when six years separated The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951)
and The Way of Zen (1957).

642

With a master's degree in theology

and a doctorate in divinity, Watts was
best known as an interpreter for Westerners of East Indian and Chinese philosophies, and in particular Zen Buddhism.
However, he did not consider himself a
Zenist, or even a Buddhist, for, as he says
in The Way of Zen, "this seems ... to be
like trying to wrap up and label the sky."
He said also that, in relation to Zen, he
was not a scientifically objective academician, "for this seems to me to be like
studying birdsong in a collection of
stuffed nightingales." During the 1930s
he met British Buddhist Christmas Humphreys, who introduced him to Japanese
Buddhist scholar D. T. Suzuki.
In 1936 Watts immigrated to the
United States and in 1943 became an
American citizen. He surreptitiously studied with Zen master Sokei-an Sasaki in
Chicago. He attempted an "experiment"
of immersing himself back in Christianity, and was ordained an Anglican priest
in 1944. He served as the Episcopal chaplain at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, for six years, but became uncomfortable in his role and, in his words,
"fled the church." He later observed that
the priesthood was "an ill-fitting suit of
clothes, not only for a shaman but also
for a bohemian-that
is, one who loves
color and exuberance, keeps irregular
hours, would rather be free than rich, dislikes working for a boss, and has his own
code of sexual morals."
Watts's bohemian behavior also included extramarital sexual activities, excessive use of tobacco and alcohol, and
LSD experiments. The latter drug use he
admitted sharing with his three wives and
seven children, and associates who included Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsburg,
Jack Kerouac, and Richard Alpert (later
Ram Dass). Watts wrote about his alcoholism and other personal problems, especially in The Wisdom of Insecurity
(1951).
He earned his master's degree in the-

Watseka possession (also the "Watseka Wonder")

ology from the Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in 1948 and his doctor
of divinity from the University of Vermont in 1958. He then journeyed to California, where he took up residency in
Mill Valley and studied Chinese calligraphy. From 1951 to 1957, he was professor of philosophy at American Academy
of Asian Studies in San Francisco, and
served as dean from 1953 to 1956. From
1951 to 1953, he was a research fellow of
the Bollingen Foundation.
But he had not abandoned Buddhism
and Taoism. Rather, he wanted to, as he
said, bring to Christianity "a form of that
mystical and perennial philosophy which
has appeared in almost all times and
places." To this end, during two-year research fellowships in 1962 through 1964,
one at Harvard University in the Department of Social Relations, and a second at
the Bollingen Foundation, he traveled in
both Europe and the Far East. Watts's
ideas on the mystical experience are put
forth in Behold the Spirit: A Study in the
Necessity of Mystical Religion (1947),
which was widely praised by reviewers.
Critics called it "creeping pantheism,"
which Watts shrugged off in his preface
to the 1972 edition of the book by observing that "all doctrines of God are ultimately false and idolatrous, because
doctrines are forms of words which can
never be more than pointers to mystical
vision ... " He defined pantheism as "the
conception of God as the total energyfield of the universe, including both its
positive and negative aspects, and in
which every discernible part or process is
a sort of microcosm or hologram."
Watts is recognized for his efforts to
find a common meeting ground between
Western psychotherapy
and Eastern
schools of thought, including Buddhism,
yoga, Taoism, and Vedanta. The fruits of
his efforts were published in Psychotherapy East and West (1963), in which he
observed that the two sides have some
parallels, in that they attempt to trans-

Alan Watts

form consciousness and one's inner feelings of one's own existence, and release
the individual from conditioning that has
been imposed by social institutions. The
parallels are not exact, Watts wrote, because Eastern schools do not categorize
the mind as a clinical entity, nor separate
mind and matter, soul and body, as do
Western schools.
In his autobiography, In My Own
Way (1972), Watts said that his first
mother-in-law, Ruth Everett, was very
knowledgeable about Zen and influenced
him a great deal. Watts married Everett's
daughter, Eleanor, in 1936, after she became pregnant with the first of their two
daughters. Their baby-sitter, Dorothy De
Witt, became Watts's second wife in
1950; the two had five children. Watts
was excommunicated upon his second
marnage.
In 1963, after moving to California,
he married Mary Jane Yates. He once
commented, "I have had three wives,
seven children, and five grandchildrenand I cannot make up my mind whether

I
..

Watts, Alan (1915-1973)

643

I am confessing or boasting." In his autobiography he described himself as a

"terrible father" because of his impatience with the conventional world of
childhood that is "an itsy-bitsy, cutiepied, plastic hoax."
Watts died at age fifty-eight. On the
morning of November 16, 1973, "Jano,"
as Mary Jane Yates was called, attempted
to waken him and found him dead. A
doctor certified he had died of heart failure. His health had deteriorated for years
due to his heavy drinking and smoking,
and habits of late-night partying. However, he had also had been experimenting
with Zen breathing techniques to reach
samadhi, a state of enlightenment. Jano
believed he had left his body and had
been unable to get back into it. Watts often wrote and spoke of his concern about
"Zen breathing" throughout his writings,
such as in the final pages of The Way of
Zen.

Stories of strange incidents circulated

after his death. According to one, the
great gong of Druid Heights in San Francisco, where Watts and Jano had lived,
sounded on its own at the time of Watts's
death. While alive Watts had predicted he
would return to that site after death as a
lightning flash. On December 21, the
night of the winter solstice, a lightning
flash knocked out an underground cable
on the lane leading to Druid Heights.
At Watts's Crossing Over ceremony,
the abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center gave him the Buddhist name Yu Zen
Myo Ko, which means "Profound Mountain, Subtle Light." At the same time,
Watts was bestowed the very rare title
Dai Yu Jo Mon, which means "Great
Founder, Opener of the Great Zen Samadhi Gate." His ashes were interred in a
stupa on a hillside behind the Zen Center's Green Gulch Farm.
The degree of misunderstanding of
Watts is reflected in many of his obituaries. One such obituary simply understated that Watts was a "Zen Buddhist

644

philosopher who became a cult hero to

beat and hippie generations." As East
West Journal observed in 1983, "His
iconoclastic positions and theatrical,
show-biz streak prevented some scholars
and Zen teachers from taking him completely seriously." However, the more objective overview of Watts by George Ingles may be the best final evaluation:
"The genius of Alan Watts was in his
originality and method-in his ability to
remove all obstruction from the mind
flow and to simply allow a frolic of
words to gush forth in a seemingly magical arrangement of gaiety, wit, and humor with profound meaning and instruction ... " Gopi Krishna praised Watts as
"one of those intellectuals in whom the
evolutionary metamorphosis is almost
complete ... " Krishna said that Watts's
sexual and sensual appetites were in
keeping with the Tantric mystical tradition, though he may have lacked the selfdiscipline to moderate his behavior. See
Drugs in mystical and psychic experiences; Mysticism; Zen.
Sources: Robert Ellwood, ed. Eastern Spirituality in America: Selected Writings. New

York: Paulist Press, 1987; Monica Furlong.

Zen Effects: The Life of Alan Watts. New

York: Houghton Mifflin, 1986; Gene Kieffer, ed. Kundalini for the New Age: Selected Writings of Gopi Krishna. New
York: Bantam Books, 1988; Alan Watts.
"Letting Go: The Art of Playful Living."
East West journal 13, no. 4 (April 1983):
306; Alan Watts. In My Own Way: An Autobiography 1915-1965. New York: Pantheon Books/Random House, 1972; Alan
Watts. The Essence of Alan Watts. Millbrae, CA: Celestial Arts, 1974; Alan Watts.
Psychotherapy East and West. New York:
Vintage Books/Random House, 1961; Alan
Watts. Behold the Spirit: A Study in the
Necessity of Mystical Religion. 1947. New
York: Vintage Books/Random House,
1972; Alan Watts. The Way of Zen. New
York: Vintage Books/Random House,
1957.

Watts, Alan (1915-1973)

White Eagle Lodge

Nondenominational
Christian church
founded in 1936 by British Spiritualist
Grace Cooke, in accordance with instructions from her spirit guide, White Eagle.
The organization began as the White Eagle Brotherhood at Burstow Manor in
Surrey, England, moving in 1945 to New
Lands at Liss, Hampshire. The White Eagle Lodge has an international following,
and its publishing trust produces books,
tapes, and a magazine, Stella Polaris.
White Eagle's teachings provide the core
philosophy, which is centered on a triune
Eternal Spirit comprised of the Father,
the Mother, and the Son or the Christ.
The Father is divine energy; the Mother
the creative force and enfolding love; and
the Son the Christ-light who descended to
earth as the pure light and love, which is
in every human being as his or her salvation.
White Eagle's teachings are said to
come from the ancient wisdom handed
down through the ages by the adepts of
the Great White Brotherhood, the Brotherhood of the Cross of Light within the
Circle of Light, of which White Eagle is a
member.
The teachings include five Cosmic
Laws: Reincarnation, Karma, Opportunity, Correspondence, and Equilibrium
and Balance. In Opportunity every experience provides a chance to learn and
serve. The Law of Correspondence may
be expressed as, "As above, so below";
humankind is a microcosm of the universe, governed by the same laws. The
Law of Equilibrium and Balance is tied to
Karma, in that actions are balanced by
reactions.
The White Eagle Lodge places a
great emphasis on healing, which is done
individually or in groups in meditation,
or in laying-on-of-hands ceremonies at a
Lodge. Followers believe that the soul
must be healed first for any lasting cure
to be effected on the physical body,

White, Stewart Edward (1873-1946)

White Eagle, from the original painting

by R. Vicaji
which is the outer shell of the soul. The
Lodge preaches living in harmony with
the world of nature and with the divine
law of love, and using natural remedies,
colors, scents, and music in healing therapy. See Cooke, Grace.
Sources: Grace Cooke. Sun Men of the
Americas. New Lands, England: White Eagle Publishing Trust, 1975; Ingrid Lind.
The White Eagle Inheritance. London:
Turnstone Press, 1984; The Story of the
White Eagle Lodge. New Lands, England:
White Eagle Publishing Trust, 1986.

White, Stewart Edward

(1873-1946)
American occultist, psychical researcher,
and author, whose exploration of alternate realities with his wife, Betty, resulted
in the occult nonfiction classic, The Betty
Book, and several other works.
White was born March 12, 1873, in
Grand Rapids, Michigan. He studied at
the University of Michigan, where he
earned an undergraduate degree in phi-

645

losophy in 1895 and a master's degree in

the same subject in 1903. In 1904 he
married Elizabeth Grant.
On March 17, 1919, during a lark
with a Ouija board with friends, the
Whites had their first encounter with the
occult. After a few trials at the Ouija,
the pointer, a whiskey glass, repeatedly
spelled "Betty." Betty, who was scornful
of the Ouija and was not participating,
reluctantly took the glass. It went wild in
circles. After a few more messages, the
glass spelled, "Get a pencil, get a pencil,"
over and over again.
Betty complied. Thus began nearly a
year of automatic writing, in which the
communicating entities informed Betty
that she would undergo a transformation
of consciousness, to be brought in touch
with the superconsciousness so that she
could relay ideas and realities. The
Whites named the spirits "the Invisibles"
because of the spirits' desire to remain
anonymous.
The Invisibles said their purpose was
to prod humankind into devoting more
effort to spiritual growth on Earth. Incarnation in the flesh provides certain opportunities for spiritual advancement that
are lacking on the other side; the opportunities must be seized, for delays mean
greater hardship and struggle later on.
In February 1918 the Invisibles
switched from automatic writing to
speaking through Betty's vocal cords.
During the channeling sessions, Betty did
not fall into a trance but remained in a
dissociated state. Her waking consciousness seemed merely placed to one side,
while another part of her consciousness
seemed somewhere else, where the Invisibles showed her scenes to get their concepts and points across. For example, to
demonstrate how the spiritual self is the
core of being, the Invisibles showed Betty
people who looked like X-ray images.
Those who had neglected their spiritual
development appeared gelatinous with no
skeletons, and struck Betty as pathetic

646

creatures tragically unaware of their

sorry state.
The Invisibles underscored the need
for balance between the spiritual and the
material. The word "God" has been enfeebled, they said. "The world has grown
ashamed of the spirit." They also discussed the substance of thought, and how
the mind, using thought and attention,
magnetizes things, people, and circumstances. To grow spiritually one must
fully meet and absorb all experiences.
Truth must be more than recognized; it
must be absorbed until it is manifested in
action. Prayer and relaxation are important in establishing communion with
spirit, but one must strive to rise up to
spirit, not expect spirit to descend.
After about a year and a half of
channeling sessions, the Whites began to
organize the material into a book. The
sessions lasted from 1919 to 1936; in
1937 The Betty Book was published under Stewart's name. The Whites had
waited seventeen years to publish because, as White explained, they wanted to
make sure the material was true, did
work, and would be of general value.
In 1922 the Whites participated in a
series of eleven seances with six others,
including the medium Ruth Finley, who,
with her husband, anonymously wrote
The Unseen Guest. The seances took
place at the home of Margaret Cameron,
an automatic writer, and included another nonprofessional medium and her
husband, Mr. and Mrs. Gaines. The purpose of the seances was to see, sense, and
understand the astral body, which the Invisibles separated from the physical body
of Finley. White reported the seances in
an appendix to The Betty Book. The record was perhaps the first in psychic literature concern ins the projection of the astral body witnessed by "reliable people."
See Out-of-body experience (OBE).
White wrote a second "Betty book,"
Across the Unknown, published in 1939.
The same year, Betty died. Within a half-

White, Stewart Edward (1873-1946)

II
1
I

hour of her death, White sensed her invisible presence, an experience he would
have frequently for the rest of his life. Six
months after Betty's death, White had a
seance with Finley and her husband and
received communication from Betty, who
wished to describe the afterworld. White
published her messages in 1940 in The
Unobstructed Universe, the first full,
first-person account of life after death
since the alleged communications of British psychical researcher Frederic W. H.
Myers about twenty-five years earlier.
The three "Betty books" elicited
such a response that White went on to
write other books on the occult. He
served as president of the San Francisco
chapter of the American Society for Psychical Research. He also was a member
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of the
Royal Geographical Society. He died September 18, 1946, in Hillsborough, California. White's other books include The
Road I Know (1942), Anchors to Windward (1943), The Stars Are Still There
(1946), and two published posthumously,
With Folded Wings (1947) and The Job
of Living (1948). See Channeling; compare to Roberts, Jane.
Sources: Arthur Ford as told to Jerome Ellison. The Life Beyond Death. New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1971; "Excursions
into the World of Other Consciousness."
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 31, no. 12 (December 1937):
373-79; Leslie A. Shepard, ed. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. 2d
ed. Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1984;
Stewart Edward White. Across the Unknown. Columbus, OH: Ariel Press, 1987;
Stewart Edward White. The Betty Book:
Excursions into the World of OtherConsciousness. New York: Berkley Medallion Books, 1969.

Witchcraft
Magical art and, in the West, both a system of magic and an organized religion.
As a magical art, witchcraft usually is re-

garded with fear and uncertainty, though

it provides a social function by enabling
the redress of wrongs and grievances, and
hope for the end of illness and problems.
As a religion Witchcraft often is called
"Wicca," an Old English term for
"witch," in order to counter the negative
stereotypes of Witches as ugly, evil, and
Devil-worshipers.
The magical art of witchcraft exists
universally. It is a type of sorcery, involving the mechanistic casting of spells and
divination. In virtually all cultures, witchcraft is usually considered to be malevolent, though some distinctions exist between "white" and "black" witchcraft. In
the lore of the Pennsylvania Dutch, for
example, witches, also called hexenmeisters and brauchers, are consulted for
cures and luck as often as for curses. But
in most societies, even those where the
local sorcerer is a respected individual,
perhaps even a religious official, witches
and witchcraft are feared as evil. Witches
are believed to possess supernormal powers of invisibility, shape-shifting, flying,
the ability to kill at a distance, clairvoyance, and astral projection, all of which
they use solely to harm others.
Fear of witchcraft has a long history
in the West. Witches were renowned in
ancient Greece and Rome, especially for
their evil eye. Under Roman law "white"
witchcraft or sorcery was tolerated, but
"black" witchcraft, which resulted in
harm or death, was punishable as a civil
cnme.
As Christianity spread, witchcraft increasingly was associated with Devilworship; it was practiced by pagans, and
all pagan deities were demonized. The Inquisition began in the eleventh century to
execute competitors to Christianity as
heretics, who eventually included those
who were alleged to practice witchcraft
and worship the Devil. In the midfifteenth century, sorcery, and therefore
witchcraft, became a heresy itself by papal decree. Demonologists issued writings

I
Witchcraft

647

describing the abominations of witches:

how they worshiped the Devil in obscene
rites, ate babies, destroyed crops and
herds, raised tempests and hailstorms,
and killed their neighbors. Witches invariably were women, for, according to
the prevailing ecclesiastical wisdom,
women were weak and susceptible to evil
corruption.
Over about 250 years, an estimated
150,000 to 200,000 people were executed for witchcraft. Some were burned
alive at the stake; others were strangled
first and then burned; others were hung.
Most of the executions took place in Europe, especially in Germany. In England,
which escaped the Inquisition, witchcraft
was prosecuted largely as a civil crime
rather than as heresy. In America the
worst case was the Salem witch trials in
1692 and 1693, in which 141 people
were falsely arrested on the basis of accusations by hysterical children; nineteen
were hung and one was pressed to death.
Victims of the Inquisition included
village wise women and men who had reputed magical, healing, or clairvoyant
powers; virtually any person accused of
witchcraft; and political figures (a charge
of witchcraft was one way to get rid of
political enemies). Victims often were tortured into making lurid confessions;
those who did not confess often died
from the torture.
The persecution of witches largely
ended by the 1730s, though cases in Germany continued to be tried for several
more decades. The advance of science
and industry and the growth of urban
centers contributed to a decline in belief
in witchcraft and magic. Witchcraft remained active in rural areas, where folk
magic artists still were called upon to
cure cows, bless crops, ensure love and
the like. It retained, however, its associations with evil and the Devil.
In 1951 witchcraft ceased to be a
crime in Britain, and in effect came out of
the closet, led by Gerald B. Gardner, a

648

British civil servant who spent part of his

career in Malaysia. Gardner said that in
1939 he had been initiated into a coven
of Witches practicing in the New Forest.
It is difficult to say whether Gardner intended to create a new religion, or
whether it grew spontaneously from public interest in his writings.
Gardner's coven claimed to be descended from a long line of hereditary
Witches, who practiced both a magical
craft and a Pagan religion, commonly
called "the Craft of the Wise" and "the
Old Religion." Other covens scattered
about England have claimed the same,
and due to their secrecy it is difficult to
determine the validity of such claims.
There is no evidence that paganism survived as an organized religion of witchcraft through the Middle Ages and beyond, though isolated groups may have
existed.
Gardner formed his own coven in
1953. He borrowed ritual material from
occult adept Aleister Crowley and added
it to the rituals he learned from his first
coven. He also apparently added elements of Eastern magic learned during his
tenure in Malaysia. With the help of initiate Doreen Valiente, who threw out
most of the Crowley material, he fashioned a "book of shadows" of Craft rituals and laws, the secret handbook for
initiates.
His public books on the Craft,
Witchcraft Today (1954) and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959), attracted a large
audience and helped to spark a movement of Witchcraft as religion on both
sides of the Atlantic and in Australia. The
greatest growth occurred in the 1960s
and 1970s. The introduction of Witchcraft to America was spearheaded by
Raymond and Rosemary Buckland of
England (since divorced), who were initiated by Gardner prior to moving to the
United States. Most converts to the Craft
have been women who feel disenfranchised by Christianity or Judaism and are

Witchcraft

I
1

i
1

1
A

attracted by the appeal of Goddess worship.

The religion of Witchcraft is highly
autonomous. Several dominant traditions, the rough equivalent of denominations, have developed. Gardnerian,
named after Gardner, is the largest, followed by Alexandrian, after Alexander
Sanders, an Englishman who modeled his
tradition on Gardner's. The Dianic tradition mixes religion with feminist politics.
There are still hereditary and traditional
Witches who claim family lineages of
Witches.
In the early years, one joined the
Craft only by affiliating with established
traditions. A person was initiated only
by an initiated Witch, then advanced
through three degrees in the coven hierarchy, which qualified one to "hive off"
and form a coven. Today the Craft is
more open; anyone can self-initiate, form
a coven, and even establish a new tradition. Most Witches, however, probably
practice as "solitaries."
All who join the Craft become either
a priest or priestess. Most covens are run
by a high priestess and high priest (the
woman holds the superior rank). Most
covens are a mix of men and women, but
some are all-female or all-male.
Central to most traditions is worship
of Goddess and her consort, the Horned
God, who are called by the names of various deities. The emphasis on Goddess
appears to be post-Gardner, though Valiente says Goddess was always part of
the Craft.
Coven meetings and rituals traditionally require nudity (called "skyclad").
This practice may have been emphasized
by Gardner because of his own interest
and participation in nudist colonies.
Some Witches prefer to work and worship robed.
Witches have great reverence for nature and all life forms, and generally believe in some form of reincarnation. The
supreme law of the Craft is called the

Witchcraft

Wiccan Rede: "An' [If] it harm none, do

what ye will," an approximation of the
Golden Rule. Witches do not worship the
Devil and do not perform blood sacrifice
rites.
The content and context of rituals is
similar to those of neo-Paganism. See
Neo-Paganism. In addition to what has
been handed down and what is created
anew, ritual material has been adapted
from Western occult societies such as
Freemasonry, the Rosicrucians, and the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
Most initiated Witches undertake
magical training. In his book of shadows,
Gardner listed eight ways to raise magical
power (singly or in combinations): (1)
meditation or concentration; (2) chants,
spells, and invocations; (3) trance and astral projection; (4) incense, wine, and
drugs; (5) dancing; (6) blood control by
binding parts of the body with cords; (7)
scourging (not enough to draw blood);
and (8) ritual sex.
The Wiccan Rede is taken seriously
by most Witches, who abjure casting
spells to harm others. Magic is to be used
to help and to heal; harmful magic rebounds on its perpetrator. There is great
debate, however, as to how literally the
Rede should be taken. Some Witches believe it is acceptable to cast "binding
spells." For example, instead of cursing
an enemy, one would bind him, that is,
prevent him from doing harm. Other
Witches disagree and say binding spells
break the Rede. Still other Witches believe in the judicious use of curses, such
as against a mass murderer.
Only a small portion of Witches
practice their religion openly, due to the
danger of harassment from a public that
still associates Witchcraft with the Devil.
Witchcraft the religion is confused with
witchcraft the sorcery and folk magic,
and with Satanism, Vodoun, and Santeria. Vodoun and Santeria also have no
connection with Satanism. Some Witches
advocate finding another name for their

649

religion; the term "Wicca" is the most

popular alternate. See Circle; Goddess;
Planetary consciousness.
Sources: Margot Adler. Drawing Down the
Moon. Rev. ed. Boston: Beacon Press,
1986; Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft. New
York: Facts On File, 1989; Rossell Hope
Robbins. The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft
& Demonology. 1959. New York: Bonanza Books, 1981; Jeffrey B. Russell. A
History of Witchcraft. London: Thames
and Hudson, 1980; Starhawk. The Spiral
Dance. San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1979; H. R. Trevor-Roper. The European
Witch-Craze. 1956. New York: Harper &
Row, 1969; Barbara G. Walker. The Woman's Encyclopedia

of Myths

and Secrets.

San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983.

Worrall, Ambrose (Alexander)

(1899-1972)
Gifted British-born
clairvoyant
and
healer who became famous for healing
with his American wife, Olga Ripich
Worrall. Ambrose Worrall was born on
January 18, 1899, in Barrow-in-Furness,
England, on the coast of the Irish Sea. His
father was employed for a while in the
munitions and military supplies industry,
and then ran a stationery store. Worrall
was a gifted psychic from early childhood, seeing the glowing forms of spirits
of the dead in his bedroom every night.
As a youth he discovered that he involuntarily projected himself out-of-body to
visit others at night. A customer of the
stationery store once complained to his
father that she could see him in her room
every night when she turned off the light.
Worrall worked in an English munitions plant during World War 1. He began to see impending deaths clairvoyantly: a small, thin skeleton floated over
someone's head, accompanied by a number that indicated the length of the remaining lifespan. The omen applied either to the person or someone known to
him or her. Worrall predicted the death

650

of his sister, Edith, which came to him as

an impression that he blurted out to his
mother. He eventually suppressed these
death visions and they ceased.
Worrall had no early urge to heal
with his hands, yet he did find himself
compelled to do so on various occasions,
as though directed by some mysterious
force. When his sister, Barbara, injured
her neck, Worrall felt an invisible mass
about eight inches in diameter emerge
from his solar plexus and protrude about
ten inches. A force then literally dragged
him to his sister and caused him to place
his hands on her neck for about five seconds. The injury was healed instantly.
Later, when he began to heal with his
wife, Olga, he experienced this solar
plexus extrusion again.
After the war Worrall met John E.
Cockerill, a Methodist lay preacher who
encouraged him to develop his psychic
gifts. Worrall joined a group of men and
women pursuing psychic studies. He had
little success at seances, however, because
he tried too hard to achieve results.
In 1922 he emigrated to the United
States because of the poor economic conditions in England. He found a sponsoring family in Cleveland, Ohio. He made a
pact with friends in England to attempt
transatlantic out-of-body contact, and
felt he succeeded on at least one occasion.
In Cleveland Worrall went to work
for the Glenn L. Martin Company, which
later became the Martin Company, a division of Martin Marietta Corporation.
Friends began to ask him for "psychic
treatments," but Worrall protested that
he had no gift for healing. Nonetheless,
he followed his impulses to touch and
make hand passes, and was astonished to
hear that those he treated were cured or
experienced significant improvement.
Worrall met Olga Ripich at a Christmas party in 1927. He felt they had
known each other before on some other
plane. They were married the following
June. See Worrall, Olga.

Witchcraft

In healing Worrall always felt a

power build within him and flow from
his hands. In his younger years, he clairvoyantly saw a pea-sized ball of light that
would direct him where to place his
hands; that eventually was replaced by
intuitive impressions. He never knew
what he was going to do with a patient.
He simply relaxed and waited for the impulses to direct him. Sometimes both he
and the patient experienced a tingling
sensation.
Worrall believed the healing power
was drawn from the universal life force.
He termed it "paraelectricity" and said it
has electrical properties. See Universal
life force.
He spent his professional career as
an engineer for Martin. In December
1928 he was transferred to Baltimore,
Maryland, where the Worralls lived for
the rest of their lives. He and Olga did
occasional healings until 1929, then devoted themselves to a healing ministry.
Worrall, however, retained his full-time
job and did healing in his spare time. He
retired in 1965 and then worked with
Olga full time until his sudden death on
February 2, 1972.
Like Olga, Worrall was continuously
aware of various spirit presences, many
of whom were connected with their patients and manifested to give helpful information. Once a spirit of a patient's
dead grandmother told him "they" were
directing healing energy to the grandson
through Worrall, the channel. The Worralls believed that spirits were instrumental in the healing process.
One spirit that manifested to them
over the years was an enlightened being
who appeared as a seven-foot-tall Native
American. He gave his name as "XYZ"
and said that was all they needed to
know about him. XYZ directed Olga to
find a new home in Baltimore, where they
established a healing room in one of the
bedrooms. After his death Ambrose Worrall began communicating with Olga. He

Worrall,

Olga (1906-1985)

told her that XYZ had assisted him in the

crossing over. He also told her that he
would work with her from the other side,
adding to her healing power, and that
many doctors, surgeons, and healers on
Earth were similarly aided by helping
spirits. See Healing, faith and psychic;
Prayer.
Sources: Edwina Cerutti. Olga Worrall:
Mystic with the Healing Hands. New York:

Harper & Row, 1975; Ronald S. Miller.

"Mystic with the Healing Hands: An Interview with Olga Worrall." Science of Mind
56, no. 4 (April 1983): 8-12+; Ambrose
A. Worrall with Olga N. Worrall. The Gift
of Healing: A Personal Story of Spiritual
Therapy. New York: Harper & Row,

1965.

Worrall, Olga (1906-1985)

Gifted American clairvoyant and healer
who became internationally
famous
along with her British-born husband,
Ambrose Worrall. She was born Olga
Nathalie Ripich in 1906 in Cleveland,
Ohio, to a Hungarian mother and Russian father. Her father, a theologian in
the Russian Orthodox church, had been
sent to the United States to organize
church activities. Worrall was one of seventeen children.
By the age of three, Olga demonstrated psychic abilities that unsettled her
parents. Every night she saw glowing
people in her bedroom-spirits
of the
dead. Some of those she described were
people whom the parents knew back in
the old country, but did not know were
dead. Death notices always arrived after
the visions.
By age five Worrall could see her
own aura by looking in the mirror, and
could see the auras of others. By age
eleven she was making precognitive predictions, including the death of her infant
brother, which earned her a whipping.
After her brother's death, she suppressed
clairvoyant vision of auras until later in
adulthood.

651

Worrall's healing ability also manifested early. As a young child, she responded to other people's distress by impulsively placing her hands on them. Her
mother discovered that she could banish
headaches, and used her frequently for
that purpose. As a child Worrall cured
her mother of a floating kidney, thus
avoiding surgery, and saved the life of a
neighbor who miscarried.
In 1925 Worrall went to see a psychic who described her future husband
and predicted Worrall would work as a
clairvoyant. She met Ambrose Worrall in
1927; they were mutually relieved to discover both had psychic gifts. Ambrose
visited her at night out-of-body, and she
in turn learned to do the same to him.
They were married on June 7, 1928.
In December 1928 Ambrose's company transferred him to Baltimore, Maryland, where they lived the rest of their
lives. Their only children, twin boys, were
born on June 10, 1929, but became ill
and died two months later in August.
Some time later the Worralls were visited
one night by the spirit of Ambrose's dead
sister, Edith, who carried the infants and
communicated that they were in her care.
Prior to the twins' deaths, the Worralls had performed healings upon request, as others heard of their remarkable
abilities. Their grief prompted them to
devote themselves to healing, especially
of children. They worked out of a healing
room they set up in their home. Ambrose
retained his full-time job, and healed in
his spare time. They refused payment.
They always insisted that their efforts be
accompanied by traditional medical help.
In 1950 Olga was invited by a Methodist minister, Albert E. Day, to establish
with him a spiritual healing clinic. They
operated the New Life Clinic for nine
years out of the Mt. Vernon Place Methodist Church in Baltimore. Later the
clinic was moved to the Mt. Washington
Methodist Church, and Worrall worked
with Rev. Robert Kirkley.

652

In 1956 Worrall's talent came to the

attention of parapsychologist]. B. Rhine.
Worrall's diagnoses frequently involved
communicating with spirits of the dead
related to the patient, and Rhine was collecting information on survival of death.
Worrall professed never to understand the true nature of the healing, but
could only describe its conditions. Like
other gifted healers, she knew the healing
came not from herself, but from a higher
power. She said gifted healers are biologically constructed to act like battery
chargers: They take in the high-voltage
energy of God and transform it into energy that can be used by living things.
The process is aided by spiritual beings.
In addition to people, Worrall healed animals, birds, and plants.
Worrall never studied medicine and
said technical knowledge would only
confuse her. She was adept at psychic diagnosis, clairvoyantly seeing afflicted
parts of the body and knowing intuitively
what to do to help them. Prayer was an
essential part of the process. Both Worralls said love and compassion, a wholehearted desire to see the patient healed,
was of paramount importance.
The Worralls had many spectacular
and instantaneous cures, including tumors that shrank to nothing under their
touch. Other healings required regular
treatment over a period of time, some up
to years. A minority of patients were not
healed.
Ambrose Worrall died suddenly on
February 2, 1972, and almost immediately began communicating with Olga
from the other side. She saw him clairvoyantly on a few occasions and heard
him clairaudiently. Ambrose confirmed
her theory that healers have a certain biological construction by saying that her
astral body (and his formerly) were perfect; healing energy flowed through them
through the spiritual attunement of the
astral body. He said he would stay near
her and work with her to give her greater

Worrall, Olga (1906-1985)

healing powers: When she placed her

hands on a patient, he would be placing
his as well. Her healings subsequent to
his death became more impressive.
Worrall believed strongly that science must support religion, and underwent numerous scientific experiments to
demonstrate that a tangible energy source
comes through healers. During her life
she was tested in the laboratory by physicians, physicists, parapsychologists, and
others, including nuclear physicist Elizabeth Rauscher and biophysicist Beverly
Rubik. Rubik observed a unique transfer
of energy in Worrall's healings. In various
tests Worrall energized water, changing
its viscosity and electrical properties;
sped the growth of rye grass through
long-distance prayer; and created wave
patterns in cloud chambers. In 1979 she
underwent experiments at the University
of California at Berkeley.
Tests showed that when Worrall was
in her "healing state," or what psychologist Lawrence LeShan refers to as the
"clairvoyant reality," her brain waves
were at the delta level, the state of deep
sleep-yet she was fully conscious and
felt at her best. The moment of healing
occurred when she and the patient tuned
in to each other's wavelength; the patient
also registered changes in brain-wave
lengths. Other changes observed in Worrall included the extension of her energy
field to eighteen feet around her, and increases in energy flowing from her hands
during healing.
Worrall died of a heart ailment on
January 9, 1985, in Baltimore, where she
had worked until just before her death at
the New Life Clinic. See Healing, faith
and psychic; Worrall, Ambrose.
Sources: Edwina Cerutti. Olga Worrall:
Mystic with the Healing Hands. New York:

Harper & Row, 1975; Ronald S. Miller.

"Mystic with the Healing Hands: An Interview with Olga Worrall." Science of Mind
56, no. 4 (April 1983): 8-12+; Ambrose
A. Worrall with Olga N. Worrall. The Gift

Worth,

Patience

of Healing: A Personal Story of Spiritual

Therapy. New York: Harper & Row,
1965; "Olga Worrall 1906-85." Parapsychology Review
16, no. 3 (May/June

1985): 9.

Worth, Patience
One of the most famous cases of automatic writing is that of Patience Worth,
an alleged discarnate being who manifested through a Ouija board in 1913 to
a St. Louis housewife, Pearl Curran. Curran, who had dropped out of school at
age fourteen, was persuaded to use the
Ouija by a friend, Emily Hutchinson.
Curran had little interest, but participated in a number of sessions for more
than a year. On July 8, 1913, the pointer
spelled out the message, "Many moons
ago I lived. Again I come. Patience Worth
my name." The announcement marked
the beginning of a long friendship and literary partnership between Curran and
the mysterious spirit.
During subsequent sessions Patience
Worth, speaking in archaic dialogue, revealed herself as an Englishwoman, born
to a poor country family in Dorsetshire in
1649. A spinster, she emigrated to the
American colonies late in life and was
killed in an Indian massacre. She declined
to say more about herself.
Hutchinson and Curran discovered
that Curran alone could contact Worth
through the Ouija, but not Hutchinson
alone. Worth began to dictate an enormous volume of 2,500 poems, plus plays,
short stories, allegories, epigrams, and six
full-length novels, all in diverse historical
settings-a total of 4 million words in
five years, filling twenty-nine bound volumes. Her works were published and enjoyed great commercial and critical success, especially her first two novels, The
Sorry Tale, a 300,000-word epic about
the life of Jesus, and Hope Trueblood, set
in Victorian England. The Sorry Tale
took over two years to dictate through

653

Other novels are Telka, The

Pot Upon the Wheel, Samuel Wheaton,
and The Merry Tale. Worth often wrote

the Ouija.

poetry on demand.
Curran used the Ouija for seven
years. After five years she discovered she
could anticipate the letters before they
were spelled out, then began reciting the
letters while the pointer circled the board
aimlessly. In 1920 she discontinued use of
the Ouija and simply recited the dictation
as it came to her in automatic speech.
The relationship began to decline in
1922, when Curran
became pregnant
with her first child at age thirty-nine, and
then suffered the deaths of her husband
and mother. By the mid-1920s, public interest in Worth began to diminish, and
Curran and Worth communicated
less
and less frequently. Curran died in 1937.
The writings of Worth have been analyzed by scholars and found to be authentic in detail of various historical periods, and well-constructed
in plot and
characterization.
Controversy remains as
to the real identity of Patience Worth.
Some experts
maintain
that
Curran,
though uneducated, was merely channeling material from the depths of her subconscious or a collective human memory.
The vocabulary
used by Worth had a

654

very high percentage-up

to 90 percent in
some stories-of
Old English,
much
higher than that found in any English
writing
after the thirteenth
century.
Therefore it is unlikely that a person of
rural southern England in the seventeenth
century would use such language.
Others
agree with
Curran
and
Worth, that Worth indeed was a discarnate spirit with a literary bent, who, centuries after her death, was at last able to
express herself creatively. See Automatisms; Ouija.

Sources: Gina Covina. The Ouija Book.

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979;

Stoker Hunt. Ouija: The Most Dangerous
Game. New York: Harper & Row, 1985;
Irving Litvag. Singer in the Shadows: The
Strange Story of Patience Worth. New
York: Macmillan, 1972; Walter Franklin
Ptince. The Case of Patience Worth. Boston: Boston Society fat Psychic Research,
1927; Jane Roberts. The Coming of Seth.
New York: Pocket Books, 1976; Ian Stevenson. Xenoglossy. Charlottesville,
VA:
The Univetsity Press of Vitginia, 1974.

Wrekin Trust
See Planetary

consciousness.

Worth, Patience

x
Xenoglossy
The ability to speak in an unlearned
foreign language. Xenoglossy is a phenomenon associated with some cases of
past-life recall, and altered states of consciousness such as trance, delirium, sleep,
and mediumship.
"Xenoglossy" was coined around
the turn of the twentieth century by
French physiologist Charles Richet, from
the New Latin term xeno ("strange, foreign") and the Greek term glossa
("tongue"). Documented cases of true xeno glossy are rare. In many instances the
"unlearned foreign language" proves to
be learned but forgotten phrases dredged
up from the subconscious, or pseudolanguages that are partly gibberish. In a
few cases, it appears to be the result of
telepathy between two people, such as a
hypnotist and a subject. Xenoglossy is
not to be confused with glossolalia, or
"speaking in tongues." See Glossolalia.
There are two types of xenoglossy:
recitative and responsive. Recitative xenoglossy, in which a person recites words
or phrases of a foreign language without
understanding their meaning and being
able to converse, is more common. Usually, such phrases were learned earlier in
life and then forgotten. See Cryptomnesia. In responsive xenoglossy the person is
able to carry on a conversation in an unlearned language.

Xenoglossy

A famous case of recitative xenoglossy in past-life recall is that of Swarnlata Mishra, a Hindu girl born in 1948
and researched by Ian Stevenson in 1961.
Between the ages of four and five, Swarnlata sang Bengali songs and performed
Bengali dances without ever having been
exposed to Bengali language or culture.
She said she had been a Bengali woman
in a previous life, and had learned the
songs and dance from a friend.
One of the earliest recorded cases
of responsive xenoglossy was reported
in 1862 by Prince Galitzin, a mesmerist
who magnetized an uneducated German
woman. The woman told of a life in
eighteenth-century France, and spoke
French fluently. In her waking state, she
knew no French.
The Jensen case, a hypnotic regression of a thirty-seven-year-old Philadelphia housewife, "T.E.," who was hypnotized by her physician husband, took
place in a series of sessions from 1955 to
1956. The personality which emerged
was "Jensen," a male peasant farmer who
spoke an early form of Swedish in a deep,
masculine voice. He was never fluent, but
spoke with some effort, sometimes repeating phrases almost automatically.
Nevertheless, he conversed in seventeenth-century colloquial Swedish. In
deep trance T.E. denied that she ever
studied any Scandinavian tongues. No
subconscious knowledge of Swedish man-

655

ifested during hypnosis while T.E. was

not in the Jensen personality. Ian Stevenson concluded that T.E.'s ability to speak
Swedish was paranormal.
Two other authentic responsive xenoglossy cases are those of Gretchen and
Sharada. Gretchen, a German-speaking
girl, manifested in 1970 during a hypnotic regression of Dolores Jay, wife of a
Methodist minister in Elkton, Virginia.
Gretchen understood simple English but
responded only in imperfect German. She
identified herself as Gretchen Gottlieb,
daughter of the mayor of Eberswalde,
Germany, who had died at about age sixteen. She apparently lived in the latter
half of the nineteenth century. Dolores
Jay had never studied German.
Sharada was a Bengali-speaking
personality who took over the life of Uttara Huddar, a Marathi-speaking Indian
woman, on and off for at least eight
years. Huddar, born in 1941, was thirtythree years old when Sharada manifested.
In 1974 Huddar was hospitalized for
a skin disease. In the hospital she followed the instructions of a visiting yogi
who taught patients how to meditate.
Huddar then began to suffer extreme
mood swings and became a different
person, who identified herself as Sharada.
Sharada could converse only in Bengali, a
language unknown to Huddar and her
family.

656

Sharada apparently had died at age

twenty-three during the first half of the
nineteenth century, but refused to believe
she was dead. She periodically manifested
for days or weeks at a time. Huddar and
her family learned to coexist with the visiting personality.
Xenography, the writing of unlearned languages, is even more difficult
to verify than xenoglossy. Most likely, it
is the product of cryptomnesia. Richet reported the case of Madame X, a French
medium, who wrote long sentences in
Greek while in a state of partial dissociation. He discovered that many of the
sentences came from a French-Greek dictionary. However, Gretchen and Sharada
wrote in German and Bengali, respectively. See Smith, Helene.
Sources: Rev. Carroll E. Jay. Gretchen, I
Am. New York: Wyden Books, 1977; Ian
Stevenson. Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. 2d ed. Charlottesville, VA:
University Press of Virginia, 1974; Ian Stevenson. Unlearned Language: New Studies
in Xenoglossy. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1984; Ian Stevenson.
Xenoglossy. Charlottesville, VA: University
Press of Virginia, 1974; Helen Wambach.
Reliving Past Lives. New York: Harper &
Row Perennial Library, 1978; Benjamin B.
Wolman, ed. Handbook of Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold,
1977.

Xenoglossy

y
Yantra
See Mandala.

Yeats, William Butler

See Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

Yin and yang

See Bodywork; Martial
Universal life force.

arts; Taoism;

Yoga
Various systems of spiritual discipline
and liberation from the senses. "Yoga" is
a Sanskrit term derived from the root yuj,
"to harness horses to a chariot." In yoga
one seeks to become bound to divine reality. Yoga has been developed into a philosophy, but its origins and essence are
nonintellectual, even anti-intellectual, and
entirely experiential. It is meaningful only
if practiced. In yoga the search for the
mystery of the universe is undertaken in a
search for one's own true self.

Types of Yoga
There are different types of yoga,
each of which is based on a specific
path of liberation, such as physical action, meditation, concentration, mantras,

Yantra

knowledge, sexual energy, and so on.

Some yogas are combinations of other
yogas. The goal of all of them is to liberate the spirit from matter and join with
the Absolute.
Bhakti Yoga, the path of devotion
and love, is centered on a deity, mystic,
or saint, or on a task in life. Through
bhakti one enters spiritual service.
Hatha Yoga, the purification of the
body through physical exercise, consists
of thousands of postures called asanas.
The purification of the body leads to harmony with, and growth of, mental and
spiritual processes. Hatha Yoga is the
most popular form in the West, but unfortunately is often practiced strictly for
its physical benefits.
Jnana Yoga is the path of knowledge. Wisdom gained through observation, study, and experiment is reflected
and meditated upon.
Karma Yoga is the path of selfless
service. One performs one's dharma
(duty) in everyday acts and business,
without attachment to the acts or the
fruits of the acts.
Mantra Yoga is the path of prayer
and sacred sound through the use of
mantras. The most sacred mantra is Om
or Aum. See Om.
Raja Yoga is the path of mind control through concentration, breath control, posture, meditation, and contemplation. Raja Yoga is the most metaphysical
of yogas.

657

Some yogas combine these yogas. Integral Yoga is a synthesis of yogas emphasizing the whole being, created by Sri
Aurobindo. See Aurobindo, Sri. Kundalini Yoga utilizes posture and mantra
to raise the primal kundalini force. See
Kundalini. Laya Yoga utilizes meditation,
breath control, mantras, visualizations,
and postures to cleanse the chakra system
and raise kundalini. See Chakras. Tantric
Yoga focuses on the arousal of sexual energy, which is converted to kundalini. Alchemical rites involve the transmutation
of kundalini to achieve longevity. See Alchemy. Buddhist Tantrism cultivates supernormal powers and the use of magic.

History and Development

Yoga is ancient and predates Brahminism, the early religion forced on the
Indus valley by Aryan conquerors between 1500 and 800 B.C. The oldest archaeological evidence for yoga, a faience
seal depicting a man in a lotus position,
dates to the third millennium B.C. Brahminism, the literature of which was the
Vedas, was rigid and materialistic, and
yoga existed outside of its bounds as a
freelance form of religious thought called
Sramanism. Yogis, who espoused austerity, meditation, and nonviolence, were
sometimes tolerated and even admired by
Brahmins, but often were persecuted and
driven out.
Yogis and other Sramanas produced
the early Upanishads, which replaced the
Vedas and ushered in a new era, Vedanta
("end of the Vedas"), from which modern Hinduism evolved. The Upanishads,
which evolved over a period of about one
thousand years, present such concepts as
Brahman, the Absolute; Atman, the
Higher Self; the goal to unite with Brahman; maya, the illusory nature of reality;
karma and reincarnation; Aum, the sacred sound representing Brahman and the
supreme means to salvation; and the
practice of yoga to unite with Brahman.

658

Yoga is found in Jainism, which in

turn influenced yoga, especially concerning the principle of nonviolence and the
doctrines of karma and reincarnation.
Yoga practices and teachings were introduced to Asia by Gautama Buddha (566
B.c.-486 B.C.),called "the greatest of all
yogis. " Yoga became part of the various
forms of Buddhism that developed, including the Ch'an and Zen meditative
schools of China and Japan, respectively.
The Bhagavad-Gita, said to have
been written by Vyasa between 500 B.C.
and 200 B.C., had the greatest influence
on the development of yoga; it is the
prime literature of both yoga and Hinduism. The Gita is a chapter in the Mahabharata, an epic poem. It deals with Jnana
and Bhakti Yoga, nonviolence, karma, reincarnation and dharma, and introduces
the concept of Karma Yoga, thus bringing yoga for the first time out of the
realm of the ascetic and into the daily life
of all.
Another major influence was the
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, essentially a
Raja Yoga, and the first systemization
and codification of its basic principles,
practices, and expected results. There is
disagreement as to who was the Patanjali
who compiled the Sutras, and when he
lived. He has been identified with a Sanskrit grammarian by that name who lived
c. 300 B.C., and with another Patanjali
who lived c. A.D. 400.
The Sutras are divided into four
books: principles, disciplines, miraculous
powers (siddhis), and illumination. By
observing the principles and practicing
the disciplines, the yogi attains various
states of samadhi, contemplation of Reality, the highest of which is a prelude to
nirvana, or union with the Absolute. The
process takes numerous incarnations,
with the yogi resuming in one life where
he had left off in the previous life. As part
of the process, the yogi attains miraculous powers, such as psychic abilities and
the power to fly. They are not end goals,

Yoga

but are considered obstacles to the goal

of illumination. See Siddhis.
According to Patanjali there are
eight steps in yoga for achieving liberation: (1) yama (control or restraints); (2)
niyama (disciplines); (3) asana (posture
and bodily attitude); (4) pranayama
(breath control); (5) pratyahara (liberation of the senses from exterior objects);
(6) dharana (concentration); (7) dhyana
(yogic meditation); and (8) samadhi.
Patanjali's Sutras enabled yoga to be
understood in a more intellectual and
philosophical light. Further systemization
continued through the eighteenth century.
In Asia, under the influence of Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Bon
(the early religion of Tibet), yoga evolved
into different systems, but still with the
same goal of union with the Absolute.
Buddhist yoga places more emphasis on
the illusion of everything and the negation of ego (Jnana Yoga, on the other
hand, acknowledges the existence of ego).
The realization of Voidness is the great
aim of Theravada Buddhism and Tibetan
Buddhism; for to realize it is to attain
Dharma-Kaya, the "Divine Body of
Truth," the primordial state of uncreatedness.
Tibetan yoga is practiced as a cure to
ailments. A higher form of Tibetan yoga
is the yoga of dying, as described in the
Bardo Thodal, the Book of the Dead. The
Bardo Thodal, first written down in the
eighth century but of ancient origins,
places great importance on conscious dying, so that the spirit will be able to truly
perceive the forty-nine-day after-death
period, culminating, for all but the most
enlightened, in another reincarnation.
Yoga practiced during life helps prepare
one for what to expect after death. There
is more emphasis on magic and miraculous powers in Tibetan yoga. Of particular importance are the powers of telepathy; lung-gom, a form of effortless and
rapid travel by foot; tumo, or psychic

Yoga

heat, used to keep warm; and dream recall. See David-Neel, Alexandra; Milarepa.
Yoga was exported westward first
by the Sufis, during the Moslem invasions
of India between 1200 and 1700, but
never reached Europe. That was accomplished largely through the colonialism of
Britain. Beginning in the nineteenth century, major influences on the spread of
yoga west were the Theosophical Society
and various Indian mystics, among them
Ramakrishna (1836-1886), Aurobindo
(1872-1950), Ramana Maharshi (18791950), and Yogananda (1893-1952). Yogananda was ordered to the United States
by his guru in 1922. He settled in California and remained the rest of his life,
spreading yoga teachings. His widely
read Autobiography of a Yogi (1949) is
considered a classic of yoga literature.
More recently, yoga teachings and training were spread by Swami Sivananda and
Swami Muktananda, the latter of whom
became renowned for his reputed siddhi
powers.
Yoga does have pitfalls and dangers,
as does any occult study. The serious student ideally should work under the supervision of a guru or other teacher. The
dangers of yoga are extreme introversion,
spiritual hedonism, regression (especially
with unprepared novices), and emotional
fixation on the guru. See Drugs in mystical and psychic experiences; Guru;
Mandala; Mantra; Meditation; Mystical
experiences; Zen.
Sources: Bernard Bromage. Tibetan Yoga.
1952. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire,
England: The Aquarian Press, 1979; Mircea Eliade. Yoga: Immortality and Freedom. 1958. 2d ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1969; W. Y. EvansWentz, ed. The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
3d ed. London: Oxford University Press,
1960; W. Y. Evans-Wentz. Tibetan Yoga
and Secret Doctrines. 2d ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1958; Willard
Johnson. Riding the Ox Home: A History

659

of Meditation

from Shamanism

to Science.

1982. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986; M. P.

Pandit. Sri Aurobindo and His Yoga. Wilmot, Wl: Lotus Light Publications, 1987;
Bhagwan Shree Patanjali. Aphorisms of
Yoga. 1928. Translated by Shree Purohit
Swami. Introduction by W. B. Yeats. London: Faber and Faber, 1973; Charles T.
Tart, ed. Transpersonal Psychologies. New

660

York: Harper & Row, 1975; Vivian Worthington. A History of Yoga. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

Yogic flying
See Levitation; Transcendental

Medita-

tion.

Yoga

z
Zeitoun
See Marian apparitions.

Zen
Sect of Buddhism that developed in China
and Japan, and perhaps the best-known
Buddhist sect in the West because of its
appealing, highly mystical nature. "Zen"
is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese term Ch'an, an abbreviation of
Ch' an-na, the Chinese approximation of
the Sanskrit term dhyana, or meditation.
The Way of Zen is the Way of Meditation.
Like Buddhism in general, Zen has
virtually no theology. It is almost entirely
philosophy, yet it is more than philosophy. It cannot be conceptualized by intellect and logic; it must be experienced.
Enlightenment is the sudden awakening
to the nature of one's own being. It is
the responsibility of the individual and
cannot be obtained through faith in a
deity or savior, through intercession or
through education. Zen stresses the development of an intuitive wisdom that
sees the oneness of all.
Buddhism began penetrating into
China in the first century A.D. Zen developed through the teachings of Bodhidharma, an Indian monk who arrived
in China sometime during the early
sixth century and disseminated teachings,

Zeitoun

based on the Mahayana sutras, that were

distinct from other Buddhist schools in
China. Little fact is know about Bodhidharma; legends that sprang up attribute
miraculous features to him. According to
legend he was the Twenty-eighth Patriarch (master) of Buddhism in a line originating with Shakyamuni Buddha, the
Enlightened One, and he went to China
with the intent of establishing Zen there
as its First Patriarch. He became known
as the pi-kuan ("wall-contemplating" or
"wall-gazing") Brahman for the nine
years he spent meditating while facing a
wall, until his legs withered away. His
fate is unknown: according to different
legends, he was either poisoned by his rivals, returned eventually to India, or went
on to Japan. He is alleged to have lived to
150 years; he died sometime prior to 534.
The term "pi-kuan" came to be regarded
as the expression for the way to enlightenment in Zen, not in the literal sense of
wall-gazing, but in the steepness and suddenness of enlightenment.
Following Bodhidharma the one
who is considered the true founder of
Zen in China was Hui-neng (637-713),
the Sixth Patriarch, who influenced the
adaptation of Buddhism to Chinese
thought. Hui-neng described Zen as "seeing into one's own Nature," a phrase that
crystallizes the essence of Zen enlightenment and is the most significant phrase
ever coined in the development of Zen,
according to Zen philosopher D. T. Su-

661

Zafus (cushions) and zabutons (mats)

laid out for meditation
zuki. Hui-neng was posthumously named
the "Zen Master of the Great Mirror."
The mirror symbolizes in Zen the enlightened mind; the absence of all thoughts is
pure mirror-activity in which the mind
clings to no object. Hui-neng realized the
mirror-nature of the mind in an experience of sudden enlightenment. He taught
that "enlightenment is your own nature.
Originally it was entirely pure. Only avail
yourselves of this mind and you will immediately become a Buddha." In other
words, the mind already possesses enlightenment; it merely must be realized.
Following Hui-neng Zen rose to
great prominence in China, achieving its
peak during the Sung Dynasty (9601279), a time when other Buddhist sects
were declining. Two dominant streams
emerged: the Lin-chi sect, which developed the use of paradoxes (called koan in
Japanese) as an intense and systematic
way to enlightenment, and the Ts'ao-tung
sect, which emphasized enlightenment
through passive, silent meditation.
In Japan Zen ideas were imported
during the Nara period (seventh and
eighth centuries), but Zen did not begin
to expand and flourish until the monk Eisai (1141-1215) founded the Rinzai
(Japanese for "Lin-chi") sect of Zen in
1191. Shortly afterward the Soto (Japanese for "Ts'ao-tung") sect was founded
by another monk, Dogen (1200-1253),
who remains the most revered of all Jap-

662

Zen meditators
anese Zen masters and is considered a bodhisattva (enlightened one who helps others attain enlightenment). The Rinzai sect
adopted the Lin-chi emphasis on koan,
while the Soto sect adopted the Ts'aotung sect emphasis on silent meditation.
In Japan little of substance was
added to the teachings of the Chinese, but
Zen nonetheless took on its own unique
Japanese character. It flourished and permeated the Japanese culture, remaining a
vital force to the present. It has especially
influenced the arts and is the basis of the
tea ceremony (Dogen imported the first
tea from China). See Martial arts; Sports,
mystical and psychic phenomena in.
Zen, other forms of Buddhism, and
Hinduism were introduced to the West in
the nineteenth century, and captured the
interest of the Trancendentalists. In 1893
Zen was represented at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893.
Zen teachers and masters were among the
Asians who began immigrating to the
West, where they taught Zen to an increasing audience. Perhaps the greatest
influence on the spread of Zen in the
West have been the writings of D. T. Suzuki (1870-1966), Japanese scholar and
philosopher; Christmas Humphreys, British journalist and founder of the Buddhist
Society; and Alan Watts (1915-1973),
British-born theologian and philosopher
who, after coming to America, became
identified with Zen but never considered
himself a Zenist. See Watts, Alan.

Zen

In Zen enlightenment-satori -can

be achieved only by turning the consciousness inward, and meditation is the
key means of doing so. The heart of Zen
meditation is zazen, which literally means
"sitting meditation," and traditionally is
done in a lotus posture with eyes open
and cast slightly downward, and hands
forming an oval meditation mudra (gesture) at the abdomen. See Lotus seat.
As an alternative one may sit in a kneeling posture on a small bench. Breathcounting is employed as one way to
empty thoughts and train the mind to
achieve samadhi, a state of one-pointed
concentration. The student must overcome various delusions that are obstacles
to samadhi and satori: fantasies, random
thoughts, and makyo, or "mysterious visions," which are dream-like fantasies, visions, and voices, feelings of bodily distortions, and so on. Makyo constitute a
form of pseudo-satori, similar to the
pseudo-nirvana described in the Buddhist
meditation tract, the Visuddhimagga. See
Meditation. Makyo indicate progress, but
must be released as they arise. Other
delusions include intense emotions,
preoccupation with personal problems,
self-doubt, and pain from remaining motionless in posture for long periods of
rime.
Dogen is considered the greatest
master of zazen, for he saw in it the
realization of the whole of the Law of
Buddha. Dogen said that zazen and enlightenment are one and the same: Enlightenment is already contained in the
exercise of meditation. He did not reject
the use of koan, but considered them of
secondary importance. The unity of all
things is the solution to all koan.
The koan are unique to Zen and are
a means of achieving a breakthrough in
consciousness. They are illogical and cannot be solved intellectually. There are
said to be 1,700 koan; perhaps the bestknown are, "What is the sound of one
hand clapping?" and "What is Mu?" The

Zen

student contemplates and meditates upon

the koan-perhaps for months-until the
answer is seen in a moment of sudden
illumination.
In a zendo (meditation hall), zazen is
interspersed with chanting, bowing, and
kinhin, a formal walking meditation. The
study of Zen is undertaken with a roshi
(literally, "old teacher"), who is not a
guru but a guide.
Sanzen is zazen with consultationthe receipt of a koan and consultation on
progress with the roshi.
Suizen is "blowing meditation," an
ancient art dating from ninth-century Japan. The instrument used is the shakuhachi, the Japanese bamboo flute. The music, which has been handed down orally
from master to pupil and is the only music ever used in Zen meditation, recreates
the healing and revitalizing qualities of
forest breezes and ocean tides.
Satori, the breakthrough of mature
Zen consciousness, is, in the words of Suzuki, the "Alpha and Omega" of Zen,
and constitutes the beginning of the Zen
experience. Satori is the opening of a
third eye, a seeing from a new point of
view, an awareness of one's own nature.
It is beyond duality, a sudden leap to the
absolute, timeless nonduality. In meditation it follows (but not always) a period
of samadhi. Satori also may come unexpectedly while going about daily activities, the result of years of preparation and
practice.
Precious little is written about the
experience of satori. Unlike Christian
mystics, who have sought to describe the
ineffable, couching it often in erotic and
highly personal terms, Zen masters simply state that they attain enlightenment.
In the Zen experience-and in the Buddhist experience in general-enlightenment is much more impassive and impersonal than in the Christian experience
of uniting with a Creator deity. The results, however, are the same for these and
all mystical paths: the opening of the

663

heart and the burning away of material

attachments and negative attributes.
Suzuki termed satori "an insight into
the Unconscious," and described eight
characteristics:
irrationality,
intuitive
insight, authoritativeness,
affirmation,
sense of the beyond, impersonal tone,
feeling of exaltation, and momentariness.
Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung interpreted satori as the "great liberation" of the unconscious, the totality of the nature of the
soul.
Once the initial satori is achieved, it
is deepened through meditation until a
state of "no-mind" evolves. No-mind,
also called "no-thought," is real seeing,
beyond the duality of subject-object, and
which has no reference to a specific state
of .consciousness. In no-mind the clarity
of satori permeates daily life and manifests in all acts.
Regardless of whether or not satori
and no-mind have been attained (processes that consume years if not entire
lifetimes), the Zen student seeks in daily
life to observe the Ten Grave Precepts
and to follow the bodhisattva ideal. The
Ten Grave Precepts are: no killing; no
stealing; no misuse of sex (that is, perversion or eXploitation); no lying; no
dealing in intoxicants (originally a reference to alcohol, but includes anything
which clouds perception); no speaking of
faults of others; no praising of yourself
while abusing others; no sparing of
Dharma assets (the teachings of the Buddha); no indulgence in anger; and no
slandering of the Three Treasures, which
are the Buddha, the Dharma, and the
Sangha (the way of life of a group of spiritual seekers). The bodhisattva ideal is expressed in the Four Vows:
Sentient beings are numberless, I
vow to free them;
Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow
to put an end to them;
The Dharma gates are boundless, I
vow to open them;

664

The Enlightened Way is unsurpassable, I vow to embody it.

See Buddhism; Mystical experiences;
Mysticism.
Sources: Robert Aitken. Taking the Path of
Zen. San Francisco: North Point Press,
1982; Heinrich Dumoulin. A History of
Zen Buddhism. London: Faber and Faber,
1963; Rick Fields. How the Swans Came to
the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism
in America. Boulder, co: Shambhala Publications, 1981; Daniel Goleman. The Meditative Mind: The Varieties of Meditative
Los Angeles: Jeremy P.
Experience.

Tarcher, 1988; Christmas Humphreys. A

Western Approach to Zen. Wheaton, IL:
The Theosophical Publishing House, 1971;
Yang Choon Kim. Oriental Thought. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1973;
D. T. Suzuki. Zen Buddhism: Selected
Writings of D. T. Suzuki. Edited by William
Barrett. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books/
Doubleday, 1956; D. T. Suzuki. The Field
of Zen. New York: Harper & Row, 1970;
Alan W. Watts. The Way of Zen. New
York: Vintage Books, 1957.

Zener cards
See ESP cards.

Zombie
A dead person supposedly brought back
to a robot-like life, through the magical
offices of a bokor, a Vodoun sorcerer, to
perform as a slave. Zombification has
been described as the African slave's ultimate nightmare, since not even death releases the slave from unending labor. A
natural explanation exists for this seemingly supernatural creature.
The word "zombie," also spelled
"zombi," probably comes from the
Congo word nzambi, which means "the
spirit of a dead person. " Yet a truly dead
person-one who has lost all bodily func-

Zen

tion, whose brain has ceased operatingcannot be returned to life. In his studies
of Haitian Vodoun and zombies, ethnobiologist Wade Davis reasoned that the
zombie was a person buried alive, who
only seemed dead through extensive drug
intoxication. Davis's investigation with
various Vodoun priests, or houngan, and
two people who claimed to be zombies,
confirmed that zombies are created by
giving the victim a powerful poison, administered topically through an open
wound or ingested in the victim's food.
The poison, usually a powder, contains
various toxic plants and animals and often human remains. ThG poison puts the
victim into a death-like state; the bokor
revives the victim with other drugs.
One of the most important ingredients of making a zombie is gland secretions from the bouga toad, bufogenin and
bufotoxin, compounds fifty to one hundred times more potent than digitalis, and
which cause death by rapid heartbeat and
eventual failure. The secretions also contain bufotenine, a hallucinogen.
Other ingredients are ground millipedes and tarantulas; the skins of poisonous white tree frogs; and four types of
puffer fish, which contain tetrodotoxin,
one of the most poisonous substances in
the world-five
hundred times more
toxic than cyanide, and 150,000 times
more potent than cocaine. The powder
also contains various plant products:
tcha-tcha seeds from the albizzia lebbeck
tree, a poisonous plant that causes pulmonary edema; consigne seeds from a
type of mahogany tree with no known
toxic properties; leaves from the pomme
cajou, or common cashew (Anacardium
occidentale), and the bresillet tree (Comocladia glabra), which are related to
poison ivy and cause severe skin irritations; maman guepes (Urera baccifera)
and mashasa (Dalechampia scandens),
which belong to the stinging nettle family
and inject a chemical similar to formic
acid into the skin; Dieffenbachia seguine,

Zombie

which contains oxalate needles that cause

the larynx to swell and make breathing
difficult and speaking impossible; and
bwa pine (Zanthoxylum matinicense),
which has sharp spines. Ground human
remains can be added for effect.
When these drugs are administered,
the victim suffers malaise, pallor, dizziness, and a tingling sensation that eventually leads to complete numbness. Next
the victim salivates profusely, then
sweats, suffering extreme weakness,
headache, and subnormal body temperatures, followed by decreased blood pressure and rapid, weak pulse. Next come
nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and gastric
pain. The pupils constrict then dilate,
then lose all corneal and pupillary reflexes. The lungs suffer severe respiratory
distress, then the lips, extremities, and finally the entire body turn blue. First the
body twitches crazily, then becomes completely paralyzed. The eyes glaze over, the
body cannot move, and the victim may
fall into a coma.
Not all survive. Those who do remain conscious and witness thei.r own funeral and burial. The bokor raises the victim from his or her tomb in a day or two,
and administers a hallucinogenic concoction of sweet potato, cane sugar, and
Datura stramonium, commonly called
the "zombie's cucumber." Beaten psychologically and sometimes physically, disoriented and desperately frightened, the
zombie answers to a new name and follows the bokor into a new "life." Tribal
Africans believe that lazy people in life
risk being made zombies after death, condemned to work for the bokor into eternity. Traditionally, zombies work the
fields, although some believe they are responsible for other work performed at
night, like bread baking. A few serve as
bookkeepers, and one story tells of a
zombie working in a shop. Zombies require little food, but cannot be given salt,
which gives them the power of speech
and taste and activates a homing instinct

665

that sends the zombies back to their

graves away from the bokor's influence.
In Vodoun sorcerers also are said to
create zombies by capturing the soul-the
ti bon ange ("little good angel") of the
deceased. The zombie astral wanders at
the command of the bokor. To guard
against such a fate, the deceased's relatives "kill" the body twice, stabbing it in
the heart or decapitating it. Without the
soul the body is empty, matter without
morality. Haitians do not fear being
harmed by a zombie as much as becoming one. See Vodoun.

666

Sources: Sharon Begley. "Zombies and

Other Mysteries." Newsweek (February
22, 1988). Daniel Cohen. Voodoo, Devils
and the New Invisible World. New York:
Dodd, Mead & Co., 1972; Wade Davis.
The Serpent and the Rainbow. New York:
Simon & SchusterfWarner Books, 1985;
Mircea Eliade, ed. in chief. The Encyclopedia of Religion. New York: Macmillan,
1987; Walter B. Gibson. Witchcraft. New
York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1973.

Zombie

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