Term
|
Definition
| as “Psychic Force” by Serjeant Cox to English physicist William Crookes. Crookes never retracted from his conviction that “there exists a Force exercised by intelligence differing from the ordinary intelligence common to mortals”. Powers of the mind. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| coined around 1900, this term is used to discuss events or entities outside of normal occurrence. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| extra sensory perception. The ability to sense things that are noramally considered outside one’s senses. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| coined in 1942 by Robert Thouless. Was meant to code or point to what was thought to be the unitary nature of the disparate telepathic, precognitive, and the occult |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| a particular structure of human consciousness that corresponds to a palpable presence, energy, or power encountered in the environment; a mystery at once terrifying and fascinating, a zone “set apart” from the ordinary world |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| a method of understanding the history of religions whereby the religious past (folklore) is read anew in the critical but sympathetic light of psychical research. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| : Jung developed notion with Wolfgang Pauli, a quantum physicist. Some events happen but have no causes. They are organized around meanings or metaphors, but no causal network. They are a coincidence between an event and a state of mind |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| literary term meaning it is impossible to tell whether the story happened or not |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| learning as “remembrance” of things one knew in a previous existence in the divine realm, particularly of a mathematical or philosophical nature |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| literally, the “Third Thing”. Psychical research tradition was born as a “third thing” between science and religion and the cultural wars |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Myers believed that love was a kind of exalted but unspecialized telepathy. This is evidenced by the “pathos” part of telepathy, wherein it is passion and emotions which differentiate telepathy from telaesthesia, which merely brought one direct knowledge of facts. Eros meant not sexual or biological feelings, but a potentially mystical and hermeneutical experience. Plato himself defined it as ‘a desire for the eternal possession’ of the object of love. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Most apparitions appear near times of crisis, often involving the dying or recently dead (usually less than twelve hours before or after the death, but as much as 24-48 hours) |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| hallucinations or visions Coinciding with future events or apparently unknowable present realities |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| when one’s mental state transcends not only space, but also time. Coined by Myers in 1882. Deep emotion at a distance, knowing things you shouldn’t know |
|
|
Term
| *subliminal* vs. superliminal |
|
Definition
| Myers believed that in the Human as Two. The sense of self one carried around most of the time as one’s social and personal identities is the supraliminal, often mistaken by the person as their complete and total self. However, the human also has a subliminal self that normally manifests itself only in altered forms of consciousness such as dreams or creative acts of genius or under traumatic conditions that temporarily break down the supraliminal. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| term coined by Myer in 1885. The supernormal are phenomena beyond what usually happens. These do not contravene or override natural laws, but act according to higher, more evolutionary-advanced laws |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| the imaginal is the imagination temporarily empowered by an influx or inflow of spiritual energies; the imagination thus becomes an organ of knowing that can know things and see things that are otherwise impossible to know or see |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| an American writer who read every newspaper and magazine he could find in French and English at the New York public library back to 1800 and kept notes on strange stories. He noticed that these events were worldwide and consistent, that they had a pattern. He concluded that ‘all life is a stage’, that everything that exists is one thing, taking on different forms |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| we pretend that supernatural, strange events don’t happen, we ignore the trends. While an event might be reported as an aside in a newspaper one day, it is ‘damned’ to never be thought of or considered again afterwards |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
A Fortian idea that we don’t think, we are thought. We are thought by the culture of the times we’re living in. If born in another time or place, we’d think something entirely different thoughts. The three dominants are the three things which shape our thoughts the most (Religion/belief/priests; Science/explanation/scientists;
Intermediatism/expression/wizards and witches) |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| later called later UFOs, flying saucers. Charles Fort felt that these were not innocent, but something we should be concerned about. We are like the Native Americans, understanding little of the European’s motives and technology. We are like a colony/farm for these super-constructions, their property. Religion has been one of their colonization techniques, trying to convince us they are deities |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Another Fortian idea. Paranormal powers innate in everyone, but in some more than others. These powers are wild right now, we need to nurture and train them. They are expressions of a guided evolution |
|
|
Term
| Super-embryonic Development |
|
Definition
| Fort rejected the theory of evolution in favor of "Super-embryonic development," which maintains that evolution is a guided process, not random. Things will have certain features in the present in order to fulfill functions they will have in the future. Darwinism, according to Fort, fails to account for "the influence of the future upon the present" |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| was coined in 1931 by Fort to describe the strange disappearances and appearances of anomalies, which he suggested may be connected. The term and concept has been adopted and adapted into many science fiction books and media. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| the rejection of other worlds based on the categories of one's own |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| the acceptance of other worlds based on the categories of one's own |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| the potential acceptance of all worlds as cultural approximations of the sacred, which overflows and transcends them all |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| the explanation of religious phenomena through the identification and analysis of non-religious causal mechanisms |
|
|
Term
| *psychological and neuroscientific reductionism |
|
Definition
religious phenomena are products of natural psychological and neurological processes; religion meets certain psychological needs and appears to be “wired” into the cognitive structures of the brain; for many, these are the “edgiest” and most “critical” of all forms of reductionism
example theses: children who have visions of the Blessed Virgin invariably come from broken homes, are often abused, and see the Virgin as a hallucinatory form of their own idealized mother-figures; these vision are then picked up by Church authorities and reinterpreted as authentic visions of the Virgin; or, near-death experiences are likely hallucinatory products of the brain as it begins to die from lack of oxygen |
|
|
Term
| *sociological reductionism |
|
Definition
religious phenomena are products of social processes and projections of a particular society's codes and needs; religion binds a society together, religion creates meaning, a "sacred canopy" under which human beings can live; religious concerns are finally really social concerns; these forms of reductionism do not generally seek to criticize openly religion, but they do constantly point out “uncomfortable” demographic facts
example theses: highly educated, economically successful Americans tend to belong to more "liberal" denominations, and many belong to no institution at all; poorly educated, economically unsuccessful Americans tend to belong to more "conservative" denominations; or, the constant concern for “purity” in ancient Judaism around the “container” and “boundaries” of the human body worked as a mechanism to ensure the “container” and “boundaries” of the social body |
|
|
Term
| *socio-economic reductionism |
|
Definition
religious phenomena are products of class and economic status; religion tends to act as a conservative force, that is, it tends to preserve social and economic lines or divisions within a particular society; these lines of reductionism tend to be “edgier” and more “critical” than those of sociological reductionism
example theses: the Hindu doctrine of karma and the social practice of caste effectively place blame for poverty and social injustice on the victims themselves and so remove concern and any effective action from the socio-economic realm; or, the Evangelical emphasis on being “born again” and “salvation” in an afterlife worked against the black churches and their struggle for racial equality and social justice to the extent that it located their true concern entirely outside of society and “this world; or, suicide rates among gay men are significantly higher in the Bible Belt |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| dealing with an irreconcilable division between faith and reason |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| the idea that it is entirely possible to employ rational reductionist methods and acknowledge the possible revealed truths of the religious traditions |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| employing both-and terms to discuss topics within comparative religion |
|
|
