Jeffrey J. Kripal’s ten monographs—from Kālī’s Child (1995) to How to Think Impossibly (2024)—have done as much as the work of any single American scholar to put mystical, paranormal, and altered-state experiences back at the center of religious-studies inquiry. Wouter J. Hanegraaff (2008), in the most theoretically substantive review article devoted to that work, has charged that Kripal’s...
Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have proliferated globally and demonstrably enhance mental health and wellbeing. Their relationship to sati, as presented in early Buddhist Nikāya literature, remains contested. This paper offers a systematic comparison of MBIs and sati across concepts, methods, and outcomes. Using a review of MBI protocols and textual analysis of key Pāli Nikāyas, it maps...
Intentional Transformative Experiences: Theorizing Self-Cultivation in Religion and Esotericism, edited by Sarah Perez, Bastian van Rijn and Jens Schlieter. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024. Open Access eBook. viii + 330 pp. ISBN: 9783110909883.
This article explores the life of Premel Adaros (1890–1956), the founder of the Transcendent Science Society through multiple identity reinventions—as a Hindu swami, Egyptian lecturer and Oriental theatre manager—between the 1920s and 1950s. At the height of his influence, Adaros represented the quintessential American Occultist of the early twentieth century by drawing on popular mythical...
God on Psychedelics: Tripping Across the Rubble of Old-time Religion, by Don Lattin. The Apocryphile Press, 2023. Pb. 170pp. $14.00. ISBN-13: 9781958061282
This article presents an interview study of self-dissolution experiences induced by entheogenic or psychedelic drugs, with the aim of broadening our understanding of the nature and characteristics of such experiences. Respondents (N=37) were recruited at various online fora for individual interviews via private messaging. They reported a wide variety of experiences that involved some form of...
Recently there has been a surge of renewed interest in the psychedelic compound psilocybin. In particular, psilocybin is being studied in clinical settings as a potential breakthrough treatment for depression. Alongside this growing therapeutic interest, there has been a rise in the religious use of psilocybin, as evidenced by the creation of a number of psilocybin mushroom churches in the...
The Eloquent Blood: The Goddess Babalon and the Construction of Femininities in Western Esotericism, by Manon Hedenborg White. 2020. Oxford University Press, 368pp., Hb £71. ISBN-13: 9780190065027.
There has been ongoing scholarly debate concerning whether New Age spirituality may be defined by individualistic more than collectivistic values, beliefs and behaviours. Most scholars have answered in the positive and indicated how New Age beliefs and techniques emphasise the importance of the self and self-interests of the practitioner. This article contributes to debates on New Age...
With clinical psychiatrist Rick Strassman's DMT: The Spirit Molecule as a vehicle, the pineal gland has become a popularly enigmatic organ that quite literally excretes mystery. Strassman’s top selling book documented ground-breaking clinical trials with the powerful mind altering compound DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine) conducted at the University of New Mexico in the early 1990s. Inflected with...
This article calls attention to the important but neglected French Mesmerist, Spiritualist, Swedenborgian, and occultist Louis-Alphonse Cahagnet (1809-1885), while concentrating on his significance as a forgotten pioneer of modern entheogenic esotericism. Like other occultist practitioners during the period prior to modern Theosophy (notably Emma Hardinge Britten and Paschal Beverley Randolph),...
While much has been written about the life, work and influence of Aleister Crowley, relatively little attention has been directed to his drug use. This is a little surprising because, not only did he become addicted to heroin, but he incorporated psychoactive substances in his occult work, discussed their psychological effects, commented on drug-related social issues, critiqued contemporary...
When Terence McKenna and his brother Dennis performed the so-called “Experiment at La Chorrera” in Columbia in 1971, they staged what became one of the most legendary and storied trip tales in contemporary psychedelic culture. This paper diagrams the matrix of Jungian alchemy, Marshall McLuhan, and science fiction that underpinned the protocols and conceptual apparatus of the Experiment. These...
Discordianism, founded in 1957 and generally regarded as a “parody religion,” has only recently received scholarly consideration as a valid religious expression within modern Paganism (Cusack 2010). Yet ritual practice within Discordianism remains largely unexamined; Hugh Urban’s brief discussion of Discordian magical workings as a sub-category of Chaos Magic is the extent of academic...