In dealing with ecstasy in antiquity, scholars usually refer to Euripides' "Bacchanals"' as one of the most reliable sources with regard to this phenomenon. This drama can also be supplemented by vase paintings, which to a great extent deal with motives from the circle of Dionysos. We can observe that the ecstatic experience, as depicted by Euripides contains such psychological phenomena as...
The purpose of this essay is to shed some light on the phenomenon of religious ecstasy as met within Islamic mysticism and there particularly during its classical period. In this case, the expression "classical Sufism" refers to the period of Sufi history from about 850 A.D. until circa 1100 A.D. In the Sufi vocabulary there is even a rather differentiated terminology concerning these ecstatic...
The focus of this article is on the individual's specific experience of his personality being possessed, either partially or completely, momentarily or for an extended period of time, by evil spirits. It must be seen as necessary to supplement the narrow medical model for interpreting states of possession. The clinically interested psychologist of religion, in particular, needs consider aspects...
This paper describes a short study of the séances and trance-performances of three Tibetan spirit-mediums (dpa' bo) from a refugee-community in Nepal. The field-work on which this study is based was carried out in a Tibetan refugee-village in Nepal during 1970 and 1971. For each dpa' bo: dBang phyug, Sri gcod, and Nyi ma don grub, a summary of personal thoughts and beliefs concerning possession...
Scholars have always been interested in distinctive phenomena in culture and religion. Thus the accounts and achievements of yogis and mystics received attention at an early stage. There is a similar tendency with shamans, different kinds of sorcerers and with the "group-hysterical" phenomena that have appeared from time to time. There is, on the other hand, no major collection of research...
As is well known large parts of native North America with the Prairies and Plains in the middle of the continent as the centre of diffusion have constituted, since the end of the last century, the scene of a nativistic Indian movement, the so-called peyote cult. The peyote cult—or, as it should have been called, the peyote religion — is named after its central cultic action, the consumption (by...
Abstract What are the global neuronal signatures of altered states of consciousness (ASC)? Recently, increases in neural signal diversity, compared to those found in wakeful rest, have been reported during psychedelic states. Neural signal diversity has previously been identified as a robust signature of the state of consciousness, showing lower scores during sleep or anaesthesia compared to...
The article studies the complex and rather equivocal discourse set around the altered states of consciousness and so-called “emerging scientific paradigm” which claims to return to human existence a certain supreme transcendental meaning that could help rebuilding a universal symbolic space, and thus return a man himself to the sacred reality. The psychedelic trend unites concepts and...
A. Irving Hallowell contributed to virtually all areas of psychological anthropology as it exists today. His range was immense: from mental health to perception and cognition, from projective techniques to behavioral evolution, from the concept of the self to acculturation. A striking feature of Hallowell’s work is that, notwithstanding the breadth of his interests in the area of overlap...