How do culture-based beliefs and folklore around healing and psychokinesis differ between places like China, Mexico, and the Australian Outback? Why are seers and clairvoyants accepted in some cultures but shunned by others, modern culture included? How are culture-bound/religion-bound magic, witchcraft, and sorcery beliefs related to psychic abilities and experiences?
This 8-week academic course will be a high-level overview of the ideas and beliefs of psychic experiences, the human mind and spirit, and related areas (life after death, reincarnation, etc.) as those beliefs have been “seen” by anthropologists and parapsychologists around the world. We will look at the possible instances of psi phenomena best reported in studies of divination, witchcraft and sorcery beliefs and practices, various cross-cultural studies, modern beliefs in the occult and supernatural, and the application of psychic functioning in archaeology and anthropology. From the parapsychological side, we will examine the ways culture affects belief, which in turn affects the psychic experience.
- Teacher: Loyd Auerbach