Hermes means “he of the stone heap.” In Greece, mounds of stones served as landmarks and property boundaries. Somewhat paradoxically, Hermes is also a boundary-crosser. The themes of boundaries and boundary-crossing arise again and again in interpretations of Hermes, and tricksters generally.

Religions decree occult dabbling a sin; CSICOP marginalizes it by ridicule. Both enforce the taboo, but in slightly different ways.

Several theorists have commented on UFOs in relation to cultural stress and transformation. Carl Jung discussed “transformations of the collective psyche” on the very first page of the “Introductory” section of Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (1958). Carl Raschke, a religious scholar at the University of Denver wrote an

book Wondrous Events: Foundations of Religious Belief (1994) noted that many dramatic paranormal manifestations involve small groups of people. Some of these phenomena are spontaneous, often occurring to the dismay of those present, but other groups seek to induce paranormal occurrences. In either situation, typically small numbers of people are

In times of great cultural change, trickster and anti-structural manifestations are particularly apparent, and the supernatural is an important part of them. In 1956 University of Pennsylvania anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace published his classic paper “Revitalization Movements.” It is one of the most illuminating works on cultural

Turner noted that “man is both a structural and an anti-structural entity, who grows through anti-structure and conserves through structure.”

In short, the paranormal and supernatural are ambiguous and marginal in virtually all ways: socially, intellectually, academically, religiously, scientifically, and conceptually. They don’t fit in the rational world.

Psi Tech is a for-profit corporation started in 1989 by government-trained remote viewers to provide services to science and industry (particularly Fortune 500 companies). The Chairman was Major General Albert N. Stubblebine III, former head of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, and while in the army he had been a strong supporter of

Even vocal de-bunker Ray Hyman has admitted that he once believed himself to be gifted in reading palms, though he eventually rejected the notion.19 Yet Hyman has come to devote much of his professional career to attacking the paranormal, which, in its way, attests to its influence over him.20 A number of con artists have commented in their