Technology can already bring back the appearance of the dead, but as machine learning and quantum computing push the boundaries of the possible, will Web 3.0 create Heaven 2.0?
Tag: Conference
Paranormal Review 92
The Other Side I walk over the bridge pictured on the front of this issue almost every day and when, early in the morning, the ground mist rises on the other side, it obliterates the real world beyond and turns this simple wooden footbridge into something magical, like Bifröst bridging the worlds to Asgard. The…
Leicester Through the Looking Glass
The 43rd Annual International Conference of the Society for Psychical Research, Leicester, 2019 Eyes closed, I held the folded piece of paper to my forehead. Nothing. A dried sheet of bleached wood pulp at room temperature. Then close to my ear, as if it might speak to me. Now, I began to get something: it…
Victorian Ghost Hunters in the 21st Century
Conflict, Continuity and the End of Psychical Research Since its founding in 1882, the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) has been the leader and model for the investigation of what we now call the ‘paranormal’, as both a profession and the expression of a subculture. Despite that considerable history and reputation, the SPR has now…
Paranormal Review 87
Guy Lyon Playfair: His Life and Work It is always satisfying to do a retrospective of a great psychical researcher’s life and work, and Guy Lyon Playfair’s contributions to the field were many and of lasting importance, but it is a satisfaction tempered by sadness and an awareness of loss. Although I corresponded with Playfair,…
Paranormal Review 86
From C.D. Broad to the Palace of Versailles We were all saddened recently by the news of Guy Lyon Playfair’s death. The world of psychical research has surely lost one of its brighter lights. The Psi Society column this issue carries a brief obituary and it is hoped that a future issue of the magazine…
The Society for Psychical Research at Horsley Towers
The Society for Psychical Research’s 41st International Annual Conference Of course Horsley Towers is haunted. Dating from 1558, but rebuilt in a neo-Gothic style in the nineteenth century, the building has connections with Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace, mathematician and only daughter of Romantic poet Lord Byron, Sir T.O.M. Sopwith, the man responsible for…
Lucid in Leeds
The SPR’s 40th International Annual Conference at the University of Leeds, 2016 The intense white light suddenly changed to blue, orange, yellow, then back to white. ‘Are you sure this is just white light?’ I asked. ‘Yes, just white light,’ replied a calm voice with the hint of an Austrian accent. When the change came…
Contemporary Esotericism Conference
Call for Papers: International Conference: Contemporary Esotericism Department of History of Religions, Stockholm University, Sweden. August 27-29, 2012 Keynote speakers: – Wouter J. Hanegraaff (Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, University of Amsterdam) – Christopher Partridge (Religious Studies, Lancaster University) – Kocku von Stuckrad (Study of Religion, Groningen University) Conference organizers: –…
Edges of Freemasonry Conference
Call for Papers: *EDGES OF FREEMASONRY — WESTERN ESOTERICISM AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT* 7–8 September, 2012, University of Tampere, Finland — www.edges.fi The School of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Tampere is organizing an international conference on Freemasonry, Western Esotericism and the development of the Enlightenment ideas. The conference is organized in association…
Vampire Conference Paper Accepted
‘Vampires: Myths of the Past and the Future’ – An interdisciplinary conference organised by Simon Bacon, The London Consortium in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory, Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London From the conference description: Myths of vampires and the undead are as old as civilisation itself,…
Reinventing the Renaissance Occult
Review of ‘Reinventing the Renaissance Occult in Modern and Postmodern Culture’ now available at http://jwmt.org/v2n20/reinventing.html Five hundred years ago the occult – what we think of as ‘the occult’ – was taught in university and practised by many of the foremost personalities of the age. Still it was persecuted. Dangerous. Between the Church and the…
Renaissance Occult – Conference Update
Prof. Sarah Annes Brown has posted a summary of my talk ‘Dealing with the Devil: The Faustian Pact in Magical Culture’: Leo Ruickbie gave a very engaging account of the Faustian pact in magical culture, moving from the responses of Faust’s near contemporaries, to an account of an eighteenth-century man apparently saved at the last…
Reinventing the Renaissance Occult
The aim of the day was to explore the different ways in which modern culture has returned to Renaissance esotericism. Some have been drawn to the intriguing remoteness of such teachings from our own more scientific and sceptical age. Others, by contrast, have sought to discover unexpected points of contact between the mysteries of the…