trickster

Batman and Joker react differently to Dionysus, to “the bad day,” which changes their lives forever. The Joker embraces the absurd, while Batman “keep[s] pretending that life makes sense.”2 Can the Joker truly create new meaning, or is he just “a fool” who can merely destroy? By examining some of the most emblematic Joker stories, this chapter

Hypnosis blurs a variety of psychological boundaries. It calls into question who is in control—hypnotist or subject?—thereby blurring the distinction between self and other. Hypnosis challenges the division between mind and body with its startling cures of warts and skin diseases. It is sometimes used as analgesia for surgery, eliminating the need

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

When the supernatural and irrational are banished from consciousness, they are not destroyed, rather, they become exceedingly dangerous.

Whereas religions place strictures against dabbling in the supernatural, atheists and rationalists prefer to banish (i.e., repress) the ideas entirely. Yet the supernatural is found in all cultures, and it cannot be effectively eliminated with rationalistic incantations such as: “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” The paranormal

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

Any comprehensive theory of the paranormal must explain its role in cultural transitions.

The Joker is something deeper and more menacing, more primal than a mere villain. He’s an “agent of chaos,” as he calls himself in the 2008 movie The Dark Knight. He’s anarchic and volatile even from a creative standpoint. As Tom King, author of one of the longest and most celebrated runs of the twenty‐first century states on social media: “Writing

The wild‐card Joker instead suggests a way of moving through the world without gritting your teeth and clinging to categories, without trying to win. That is not a doctrinal statement of what’s right or wrong—it’s a therapeutic approach to life. Daoism tells us that we humans have forgotten that we are part of the natural world, something deeper