Preternature Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural
March 1, 2023
A. Chatterjee
abstract:This article examines a much-underrated aspect in the Holmesian canon: dreams and the potential for dream-rehearsals by virtue of the brain's "dream drugstore" faculty. Frequently described as "dreamy-eyed" or the "dreamer" of Baker Street, Holmes possesses powers of visiting scenes of crime "in spirit," exhibiting powers of oneirogenesis. This unorthodox criminological strategy marks...
Preternature Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural
January 18, 2023
Carole M. Cusack
1 citation
In Developing Magical Consciousness: A Theoretical and Practical Guide for the Expansion of Perception, Susan Greenwood aims to bridge the gulf between Indigenous worldviews and the scientific worldview of the West to offer “an alternative mythological framework for developing Western magical perception” (1) and to exemplify how to develop magical perception. She argues that such perception is...
Preternature Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural
August 24, 2022
Stephen Gordon
abstract:Sleep paralysis, as it is known today, was one of the most remarked-upon maladies in premodern medicine. The feeling of being choked during sleep was usually seen by physicians as being caused by an abundance of melancholic humors. Others interpreted the experience as a supernatural attack. However, the distinctions between medical and "superstitious" remedies against nightmares were...
Preternature Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural
July 1, 2021
Daniel Siepmann
1 citation
ABSTRACT From 1981 to 1991, the band Psychic TV served as the audio-visual propaganda unit of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY), an international network of occultists designed by Genesis P-Orridge to resemble a subversive, militant youth movement. This essay investigates how P-Orridge, Psychic TV, and TOPY embarked on a calculated campaign of “occult research” to test whether chaos magick...
Preternature Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural
March 1, 2018
Mirjam Mencej
ABSTRACT The article discusses the experience of being “carried by witches” narrated to me repeatedly during my field research in rural eastern Slovenia in 2000–2001. The experience, which was ascribed to the agency of witches who “enchanted” their victims and led them astray, typically occurred in the forest at night and implied disorientation, sometimes (but not necessarily) the vision of...
Preternature Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural
November 1, 2015
Alison M. Butler
Cultural and intellectual historians have recently displayed a revitalized interest in the nineteenth-century fascination with occultism, spiritualism, and mesmerism as crucial components in understanding the period.
Preternature Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural
September 1, 2014
Morgan Shipley
4 citations
ABSTRACT In 1957, Aldous Huxley published The Doors of Perception, a work that would galvanize debates regarding the sacredness and profaneness of mystical consciousness. In connecting psychedelically inspired, unmediated perception with mystical, and perennial, modes of understanding, Huxley, critics like R. C. Zaehner declared, elided the conditions that make mystical consciousness possible,...