I’m pleased and proud to announce the latest book release from Daily Grail Publishing today: Talking With the Spirits: Ethnographies From Between the Worlds (Amazon US and Amazon UK), a scholarly anthology of essays, edited by Jack Hunter and David Luke, on the phenomenon of spirit mediumship in various cultures around the world – from good old-fashioned British Spiritualism through to more shamanic manifestations in other corners of the world:
Talking With the Spirits 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.
Here’s the chapter and author listing:
- Believing Impossible Things: Scepticism and Ethnographic Enquiry • Fiona Bowie
- An Agnostic Social Scientific Perspective on Spirit Medium Experience in Great Britain • Hannah Gilbert
- Spirits in the City: Examples from Montreal • Deirdre Meintel
- Mediumship and Folk Models of Mind and Matter • Jack Hunter
- Cyber Psychics: Psychic Readings in Online Social Spaces • Tamlyn Ryan
- Spirit Possession in East Africa • Barbara Stöckigt
- Developing the Dead in Cuba: An Ethnographic Account of the Emergence of Spirits and Selves in Havana • Diana Espirito Santo
- Mediumship in Brazil: The Holy War against Spirits and African Gods • Bettina Schmidt
- Psychedelic Possession: The Growing Incorporation of Incorporation into Ayahuasca Use • David Luke
- Anomalous Mental and Physical Phenomena of Brazilian Mediums: A Review of the Scientific Literature • Everton Maraldi, Wellington Zangari, Fatima Regina Machado, Stanley Krippner
- Spirit Mediums in Hong Kong and the United States • Charles Emmons
- Vessels for the Gods: Tang-ki Spirit Mediumship in Singapore and Taiwan • Fabian Graham
A must-have for the bookshelf of any person interested in mediumship – you can grab a copy of Talking With the Spirits from Amazon US or Amazon UK.
