The Trickster and the Paranormal

Wallace explains that the prophet generally “shows evidence of a radical inner change in personality soon after the vision experience: a remission of old and chronic physical complaints, a more active and purposeful way of life, greater confidence in interpersonal relations.”9 Such a person often develops charisma.

The terms magic and conjuring are defined as the influencing of the physical world via supernatural means, but they are also synonymous with legerdemain, trickery, and sleight-of-hand.2 The two definitions seem to have little in common, but there are actually deep connections between them.

Even sociologists who write on the paranormal avoid mentioning it, even though Weber explicitly cited telepathy as a property of pure charisma. Only by reading Weber directly does one discover the importance of magic, the miraculous, and supernatural phenomena. This near-universal avoidance by academe is an important clue to the nature of the paran

An enormous number of people have influenced my thinking, but three were particularly important: William Braud, Barbara Babcock, and Edmund Leach. Parapsychologist William Braud integrated an enormous range of findings with his model of lability and inertia in psi processes. Barbara Babcock is the most significant interpreter of the trickster figur

I am an enemy to all the gods. Prometheus1

Hypnosis highlights the confusing interrelationships among conjuring, liminality, and the paranormal. Hypnotism has been known for thousands of years under a variety of names (e.g., animal magnetism, mesmerism, suggestion), but it is ambiguous, and even its definition is problematical. Psychologists continue to debate whether hypnosis involves a sp

There is a pattern, and generally the phenomena either provoke or accompany some kind of destructuring—a concept discussed at length in this book. For instance, the phenomena do not flourish within stable institutions, and endless examples illustrate this. Fortunately, two theoretical perspectives are already developed that connect the supernatural

To give some additional orientation, it may help to briefly mention some people whose work I’ve drawn upon. Psychiatrist Ernest Hartmann is known for his research on mental boundaries. I found many commonalities between his concept of thin boundaries and the Greek trickster Hermes, whose personality has been admirably described by Jean Bolen, a psy

We are told that Hermes “is the god of the unexpected, of luck, of coincidences, of synchronicity.”9 Bolen elaborates: “Hermes opens up moments of discovery and synchronistic events—those ‘coincidences’ that turn out to be meaningful, unforeseen ‘accidental’ happenings that lead us somewhere we couldn’t have known we would go and that yet turn out