This article presents an overview of the fields of transpersonal anthropology, the anthropology of consciousness and, the most recent development in this lineage, paranthropology. After outlining the contributions of these fields to the development of a new approach to the investigation of so-called non-ordinary realities Hunter highlights the need for ethnographers to participate in the...
The title for this paper draws on Santo Daime ritual activity being referred to as a „Work‟ (Trabalho in Portuguese). Santo Daime is a new religious movement that continues to expand globally (Dawson 2013). In the 21 st century it emerged in Ireland within a transforming and increasingly varied religious landscape. In 2007 a leader of a Santo Daime group in Ireland was charged with unlawful...
While much recent scholarship on Tantra has tended to distance it from the world of pragmatic ritual healing, mediumship and spirit-possession, and treat it primarily as an elevated mode of pursuit of enlightened consciousness, Frederick Smith’s recent book The Self Possessed is the most comprehensive presentation so far of the reverse position, that all of these modes of interaction with the...