Talking With the Spirits: Ethnographies From Between the Worlds
Edited by Jack Hunter & David Luke
Talking With the Spirits is a cross-cultural survey of contemporary spirit mediumship. The diverse contributions to this volume cover a wide-range of ethnographic contexts, from Spiritualist séances in the United Kingdom to self-mortification rituals in Singapore and Taiwan, from psychedelic spirit incorporation in the Amazonian rainforest, to psychic readings in online social spaces, and more. By taking a broad perspective the book highlights both the variety of culturally specific manifestations of spirit communication, and key cross-cultural features suggestive of underlying core-processes and experiences. Rather than attempting to reduce or dismiss such experiences, the authors featured in this collection take the experiences of their informants seriously and explore their effects at personal, social and cultural levels.
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1. Believing Impossible Things: Scepticism and Ethnographic Enquiry • Fiona Bowie 2. An Agnostic Social Scientific Perspective on Spirit Medium Experience in Great Britain • Hannah Gilbert 3. Spirits in the City: Examples from Montreal • Deirdre Meintel 4. Mediumship and Folk Models of Mind and Matter • Jack Hunter 5. Cyber Psychics: Psychic Readings in Online Social Spaces • Tamlyn Ryan 6. Spirit Possession in East Africa • Barbara Stöckigt 7. Developing the Dead in Cuba: An Ethnographic Account of the Emergence of Spirits and Selves in Havana • Diana Espirito Santo 8. Mediumship in Brazil: The Holy War against Spirits and African Gods • Bettina E. Schmidt 9. Psychedelic Possession: The Growing Incorporation of Incorporation into Ayahuasca Use • David Luke 10. Anomalous Mental and Physical Phenomena of Brazilian Mediums: A Review of the Scientific Literature • Everton de Oliveira Maraldi, Wellington Zangari, Fatima Regina Machado, Stanley Krippner 11. Spirit Mediums in Hong Kong and the United States • Charles F. Emmons 12. Vessels for the Gods: Tang-ki Spirit Mediumship in Singapore and Taiwan • Fabian Graham |
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Reader Comments
‘This is a volume of great originality, full of rich primary ethnographic data, presented in twelve original articles by as many scholars of different backgrounds and with varying perspectives. They deal with mediums and other spirtists in locations as diverse as England, Cuba, Brazil, Taiwan, Quebec, Cyberspace, and more. Sharing much and differing widely, acting often in competitive situations, mediums may find themselves challenged by others like them or by people who start from different premises, whether medical or religious: is a Cuban child suffering from epilepsy or from a spirit seeking its development as a medium? Do Afro-Brazilian houses serve spirits, or demons to be exorcised by Evangelical Christians? Readers will be able to raise questions of their own and may find some surprising answers. The volume is supplemented by excellent bibliographies.’
- Erika Bourguignon, PhD, Professor emerita, Department of Anthropology, The Ohio State University
‘What happens when a largely tabooed method (comparativism) hones in on a completely tabooed subject (spirits)? This. Astonishing possibilities, insights, and new directions follow in the wake of these essays, which demonstrate again and again both careful ethnographic description and a most remarkable open-mindedness with respect to the phenomena themselves. What some are calling the "ontological turn" in the humanities just got a bit sharper.’
- Jeffrey J. Kripal, PhD, author of Authors of The Impossible: The Paranormal and The Sacred.
‘Talking with the Spirits is a unique collection of essays respectfully and in great depth examining - using a myriad of investigative approaches and perspectives - the variety of mediumistic phenomena that occur all over the world. It will serve as an important resource for researchers as well as anyone interested in the diversity of mediumistic experiences, traditions, and practices.’
- Julie Beischel, PhD, Director of Research, The Windbridge Institute for Applied Research in Human Potential.
‘Talking with the Spirits is a unique anthology of papers that presents a wide range of “ethnographies of the ostensibly paranormal,” especially mediumship. Editors Hunter and Luke have done us a great service in reminding the anthropology of consciousness of its roots in the cross-cultural study of the paranormal. The volume is also a significant contribution to interdisciplinary transpersonal studies.’
- Charles D. Laughlin, PhD, author of Communing With the Gods: Consciousness, Culture and the Dreaming Brain
‘This is an important collection of essays, which makes a significant contribution to a growing body of research and literature challenging existing scientific paradigms by reiterating the universality of spirit mediumship in human experience. The individual contributions offer fascinating insights into knowledge traditions that have accepted the challenge of exploring the range of phenomena mediumship gives access to. More importantly for the academy, this book highlights the extent to which one particular knowledge tradition, namely western scientific materialism, together with the particular disciplines influenced by that attitude, has substantially failed in this task. Fiona Bowie's opening contribution is a careful but blunt articulation of why this failure matters, and why it needs to be addressed. When the scientific community ceases to explore in favour of policing a historically-conditioned political boundary between acceptable and unacceptable knowledge, it risks finding itself in the service of those who prefer to cramp intellectual endeavour rather than face a possible diminution in their authoritative status, or other personal fears. A good scientist accepts that knowledge, especially her or his own, is provisional; by contrast, a poor scientist is content to remain a theologian of the old religion. The contributors to this book are good scientists.’
- David Gordon Wilson, PhD, author of Redefining Shamanisms: Spiritualist Mediums and Other Traditional Shamans as Apprenticeship Outcomes.
- Erika Bourguignon, PhD, Professor emerita, Department of Anthropology, The Ohio State University
‘What happens when a largely tabooed method (comparativism) hones in on a completely tabooed subject (spirits)? This. Astonishing possibilities, insights, and new directions follow in the wake of these essays, which demonstrate again and again both careful ethnographic description and a most remarkable open-mindedness with respect to the phenomena themselves. What some are calling the "ontological turn" in the humanities just got a bit sharper.’
- Jeffrey J. Kripal, PhD, author of Authors of The Impossible: The Paranormal and The Sacred.
‘Talking with the Spirits is a unique collection of essays respectfully and in great depth examining - using a myriad of investigative approaches and perspectives - the variety of mediumistic phenomena that occur all over the world. It will serve as an important resource for researchers as well as anyone interested in the diversity of mediumistic experiences, traditions, and practices.’
- Julie Beischel, PhD, Director of Research, The Windbridge Institute for Applied Research in Human Potential.
‘Talking with the Spirits is a unique anthology of papers that presents a wide range of “ethnographies of the ostensibly paranormal,” especially mediumship. Editors Hunter and Luke have done us a great service in reminding the anthropology of consciousness of its roots in the cross-cultural study of the paranormal. The volume is also a significant contribution to interdisciplinary transpersonal studies.’
- Charles D. Laughlin, PhD, author of Communing With the Gods: Consciousness, Culture and the Dreaming Brain
‘This is an important collection of essays, which makes a significant contribution to a growing body of research and literature challenging existing scientific paradigms by reiterating the universality of spirit mediumship in human experience. The individual contributions offer fascinating insights into knowledge traditions that have accepted the challenge of exploring the range of phenomena mediumship gives access to. More importantly for the academy, this book highlights the extent to which one particular knowledge tradition, namely western scientific materialism, together with the particular disciplines influenced by that attitude, has substantially failed in this task. Fiona Bowie's opening contribution is a careful but blunt articulation of why this failure matters, and why it needs to be addressed. When the scientific community ceases to explore in favour of policing a historically-conditioned political boundary between acceptable and unacceptable knowledge, it risks finding itself in the service of those who prefer to cramp intellectual endeavour rather than face a possible diminution in their authoritative status, or other personal fears. A good scientist accepts that knowledge, especially her or his own, is provisional; by contrast, a poor scientist is content to remain a theologian of the old religion. The contributors to this book are good scientists.’
- David Gordon Wilson, PhD, author of Redefining Shamanisms: Spiritualist Mediums and Other Traditional Shamans as Apprenticeship Outcomes.