Year of Publication: 2014
Publisher: Daily Grail Publishing, Brisbane.
ISBN: 978-0987422446
Binding: Paperback.
Pages: 366.
Talking With the Spirits: Ethnographies from Between the Worlds is a cross-cultural survey of contemporary spirit mediumship. The diverse contributions to this volume cover a wide-range of ethnographic contexts, from Spiritualist séances in the United Kingdom to self-mortification rituals in Singapore and Taiwan, from psychedelic spirit incorporation in the Amazonian rainforest, to psychic readings in online social spaces, and more. By taking a broad perspective the book highlights both the variety of culturally specific manifestations of spirit communication, and key cross-cultural features suggestive of underlying core-processes and experiences. Rather than attempting to reduce or dismiss such experiences, the authors featured in this collection take the experiences of their informants seriously and explore their effects at personal, social and cultural levels.
Contributors: Fiona Bowie, Hannah Gilbert, Deirdre Meintel, Jack Hunter, Tamlyn Ryan, Barbara Stöckigt, Diana Espirito Santo, David Luke, Everton de Oliveira Maraldi, Wellington Zangari, Fatima Regina Machado, Stanley Krippner, Charles F. Emmons, Fabian Graham.
Year of Publication: 2012
Publisher: Paranthropology, Bristol.
ISBN: 978-1471653797
Binding: Hardback.
Pages:272
Paranthropology: Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal is a wide ranging anthology of articles celebrating the second anniversary of the journal Paranthropology.
Contributors: Robert Van de Castle, Jack Hunter, Lee Wilson, Mark A. Schroll, Charles D. Laughlin, Fiona Bowie, Fabian Graham, James McClenon, Serena Roney-Dougal, David E. Young, David Luke, Michael Winkelman.
Year of Publication: 2015
Publisher: Psychoid Books, Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant.
ISBN: 978-1326360108
Binding: Paperback.
Pages: 440.
Strange Dimensions: A Paranthropology Anthology is a collection of essays celebrating the fourth anniversary of the Paranthropology journal. It is from the paranormal's multifaceted nature that the title of this book takes its meaning. Throughout its pages we encounter, time and again, talk of a wide variety of dimensions, levels and layers, from social, cultural, psychological and physiological dimensions, to spiritual, mythic, narrative, symbolic and experiential dimensions, and onwards to other worlds, planes of existence and realms of consciousness. The paranormal is, by its very nature, multidimensional.
Contributors: Joseph P. Laycock, Daryl V. Caterine, Tanya M. Luhrmann, Emma Ford, John A. Napora, Loriliai Biernacki, John W. Morehead, David J. Hufford, Angela Voss, Michael Hirsch, Jammie Price, Meghan McDonald, Mahogany Berry-Artis, Jack Hunter, Andrew B. Newberg, James Riley, William Rownlandson, Steven Mizrach, Rafael G. Locke, David Luke, Bernardo Kastrup.
Year of Publication: 2016
Publisher: Aporetic Press, Paphos.
ISBN: 978-9963221424
Binding: Paperback/E-Book.
Pages: 172.
Damned Facts: Fortean Essays on Religion, Folklore and the Paranormal is a collection of essays adopting a variety of 'Fortean' approaches to the study of religion, folklore and the paranormal. Over the course of four ground-breaking books published between 1919-1932, Charles Fort gathered thousands of accounts of weird events and experiences that seemed to upset the established models of mainstream science and religion. In order to explore these events Fort developed the philosophy of Intermediatism, whereby all phenomena (from the most mundane to the most extraordinary), are understood to partake of a quasi-existence, neither real nor unreal. It is from this indeterminate vantage point that the chapters in this book begin their investigations.
Contributors: Jeffrey J. Kripal, Jack Hunter, Amba J. Sepie, Timothy Grieve-Carlson, Wellington Zangari, Fatima Regina Machado, Everton de Oliveira Maraldi, Leonardo Breno Martins, David Clarke, Robin Jarrell, David V. Barrett, Eden S. French, Christopher Laursen, James Harris, Roberta Harris Short.
Year of Publication: 2012 (Out of Print - New edition available, see above).
Publisher: David & Charles, Newton Abbott.
ASIN: B00B03HSDI
Binding: E-Book.
Pages:125
Why People Believe in Spirits, Gods and Magic explores why and how people come to believe in the supernatural from the perspsective of social anthropology, the anthropology of religion and the anthropology of the paranormal. The book examines topics such as Shamanism and Spirit Possession, Witchcraft and Magic, Ghosts, Spirits, Gods and Demons, Ethnography and the Paranormal and the connections between Anthropology and Parapsychology.
Forthcoming Publications:
(2020). Mattering the Invisible: Bodies, Technologies and the Spectral. Co-edited with Diana Espirito Santo. Oxford: Berghahn.
Publishing:
Editor: Mark A. Schroll
Year of Publication: 2016
Publisher: Psychoid Books, Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant
ISBN: 9781326401191
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 600
The image on the cover of this book represents the idea that brain state alterations at sacred sites allow us to re-experience memories that are woven into the morphogenetic fields of that place, an idea that originates with Paul Devereux’s empirical enquiry into dreams at sacred sites in Wales and England. This books examines how this investigation provides us with a new way of understanding consciousness, and a new direction toward a reconciliation of the divorce between matter and spirit. We explore the work of David Lukoff, and Stanislav and Christina Grof, the connections between the varieties of transformative experience in dream studies, ecopsychology, transpesonal psychology, and the anthropology of consciousness, as well as the overlap between David Bohm’s interpretation of quantum theory and Rupert Sheldrake’s hypothesis of formative causation.
Mark A. Schroll, PhD, is best known for his papers on ecopsychology, transpersonal psychology, and the anthropology of consciousness. He is the author of over 35 academic articles in various edited books, journals and magazines. He is the founder of the International Association for Transpersonal Ecosophy.
Editor: Mark A. Schroll
Year of Publication: 2018
Publisher: Psychoid Books, Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant
ISBN: 9780244089849
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 354
“Ecology, Cosmos, and Consciousness is a pioneering work that attempts to shift current paradigms. Its editor and lead author, Mark A. Schroll, incisively identifies the problems humanity faces as a result of philosophies, sciences, and religious movements that ignore the importance of an earth-based focus of humanistic and transpersonal inquiry...The result is a transpersonal, post-modern, systems-oriented approach to cultural theory that is both provocative and well-argued, both visionary and practical, both scholarly and whimsical.”
--Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Saybrook University, Oakland, California.
Mark A. Schroll, PhD, is best known for his papers on ecopsychology, transpersonal psychology, and the anthropology of consciousness. He is the author of over 35 academic articles in various edited books, journals and magazines. He is the founder of the International Association for Transpersonal Ecosophy.
Year of Publication: 2018
Publisher: August Night Books
ISBN: 978-1786770554
Binding: Paperback/E-Book.
Pages: 262
Engaging the Anomalous is a collection of essays written by Jack Hunter between 2010-17. Together, the essays push toward the development of a non-reductive, participatory and experiential anthropology of the paranormal. Over the course of the book, Hunter surveys:
• Trends in anthropology's engagement with the paranormal
• The anthropology and neuroscience of spirit possession
• The history of Spiritualism and the phenomena of physical mediumship
• The overlaps between mediumistic practices and other mind-body phenomena
Hunter also poses serious questions about consciousness, experience, spirits, mediumship, psi, the nature of reality, and how best to investigate and understand them. In addition, the book features a selection of illuminating interviews with the author, as well as an original Foreword by leading parapsychologist and trickster theorist George P. Hansen. Engaging the Anomalous is a bold contribution to Anomalistic literature.
"Throughout history, across all cultures, and at all educational levels, people have reported experiences labeled strange, bizarre, paranormal, or supernatural. Anthropologist Jack Hunter inspects these weird but common experiences in a collected set of crisp essays and interviews. Are such experiences really real, despite their challenges to today's scientific worldview? Or should we take human experiences more seriously and use them as clues to help expand our sense of reality? These are among the endlessly fascinating questions explored in an engaging way in Engaging the Anomalous."
-- Dean Radin, Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and author of Real Magic (2018).
Other:
Authors: Steven Jones and Jack Hunter
Year of Publication: 2018
Publisher: Psychoid Books
ISBN: 9780244971991
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 134
One School One Planet Vol. 1. The challenge of tackling anthropogenic climate change is going to require a total transformation of our social, cultural and economic systems. We all need to think differently about the world and our position within it. Education will have to play a major role in initiating this cultural transformation. The One School One Planet project is just one approach to bringing about this necessary shift in consciousness by introducing the emerging generation to permaculture principles and encouraging a re-evaluation of our role in the global ecosystem. This book chronicles the first year of the One School One Planet project, from our initial theoretical and planning work, through to classroom teaching sessions at Llanfyllin High School. We have documented all of this in the hope that it might enable others to replicate our project with different schools and communities across the world. It is intended to be inspirational and encouraging of innovation. It does not contain all of the answers, but may point the way towards a more ecologically tuned in way of living in the world.
Theses & Dissertations
BA (hons) - (2009). Talking With Spirits: An Experiential Exploration of Contemporary Trance and Physical Mediumship (University of Bristol).
MLitt - (2012). Talking With the Spirits: Personhood, Performance and Altered Consciousness in a Contemporary Spiritualist Home-Circle (University of Bristol)
PGCert (2015). Ordinary Theology in the Classroom: Experience and Belief in Secondary Religious Education (University of Chester).
PhD - (2017). A Study of Spirit Mediumship in the UK: Towards a Non-Reductive Anthropology of the Paranormal (University of Bristol).
Authors: Steven Jones, Jack Hunter and Angharad Rees
Year of Publication: 2019
Publisher: One School One Planet
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 98
One of the main outputs of the One School One Planet project is this cross-curricular textbook - Small and Slow Solutions - that draws on the principles of Permaculture to promote ecoliteracy, climate awareness and to foster a new attitude toward our responsibilities as global citizens. Today's school age generation are being handed the biggest challenge of all, that of 'saving the planet.' You could say that this is a gift from the generation who knew but failed to act meaningfully. Had we listened to the advice given at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the problem of climate change would most likely already have been solved. Yet here we are, in 2019, still contemplating the biggest shift in human society and behaviour since development began. There is no magic bullet, no single solution. No government or corporation can solve this. It is going to take the collective action of all of us. The real leaders of the future will come from today's school age populations, what can we do to accelerate this process?
Year of Publication: 2019
Publisher: August Night Books
ISBN: 978-1786771094
Binding: Paperback/E-Book.
Pages: 330
We are at a critical moment in the history of humankind’s relationship with the Earth, and all the species that co-inhabit with us. This is a time of climate change, species loss and ecological collapse on a scale that has never been seen before. New ways of thinking will be required if we hope to overcome these global problems and develop a more harmonious relationship between the human and non-human worlds. In the spirit of creative exploration this book suggests that approaches emerging from the study of (and engagement with) the super-natural may ultimately help us to re-connect with the natural, and in so doing develop innovative approaches to confronting the eco-crisis.
Greening the Paranormal explores parallels between anomalistics (the study of the paranormal in all its guises, incorporating parapsychology, paranthropology, cryptozoology, religious studies, and so on), and ecology (the study of living systems), not just for the sake of exploring interesting intersections (of which there are many), but for the essential task of contributing towards a much broader – necessary – change of perspective concerning our relationship to the living planet. The chapters collected in this book demonstrate that we have much to learn from exploring the ecology of extraordinary experience.
This book does everything one can hope for. It begins with a shocking shared road encounter with what looks like, well, the Green Man of European folklore. It then travels through any number of well worn paranormal paths, each time, like the initial astonished encounter, spotting new (and yet very old) things and struggling mightily with the empirical highly strange aspects of the phenomena. The essayists do not flinch. They do not look away. They walk ahead, right into the dark green forest of religion, mythology, and folklore. What they bring back could signal major shifts in our intellectual, social, political, and moral landscapes with respect to a natural world that is really a super natural world, that is really us.
–Jeffrey J. Kripal, PhD., author of Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions
Authors: Steven Jones and Jack Hunter
Year of Publication: 2019
Publisher: Psychoid Books
ISBN: 9780244460662
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 150
One School One Planet Vol. 2 is a collection of articles and essays written over the course of the second and third years of the One School One Planet project in Llanfyllin, Powys. The project sought to develop a mainstream permaculture curriculum for schools, while also helping Llanfyllin to prepare as a community for the realities of climate change. The book also features a range of interviews with ecological educators in different educational contexts.
