Mediums and Magical Things

Mediums and Magical Things
Author: Laurel Kendall
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2021-05-25
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0520298667

Statues, paintings, and masks—like the bodies of shamans and spirit mediums—give material form and presence to otherwise invisible entities, and sometimes these objects are understood to be enlivened, agentive on their own terms. This book explores how magical images are expected to work with the shamans and spirit mediums who tend and use them in contemporary South Korea, Vietnam, Myanmar, Bali, and elsewhere in Asia. It considers how such things are fabricated, marketed, cared for, disposed of, and sometimes transformed into art-market commodities and museum artifacts.

Mediums and Magical Things

Mediums and Magical Things
Author: Laurel Kendall
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2021-05-25
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0520298675

Statues, paintings, and masks—like the bodies of shamans and spirit mediums—give material form and presence to otherwise invisible entities, and sometimes these objects are understood to be enlivened, agentive on their own terms. This book explores how magical images are expected to work with the shamans and spirit mediums who tend and use them in contemporary South Korea, Vietnam, Myanmar, Bali, and elsewhere in Asia. It considers how such things are fabricated, marketed, cared for, disposed of, and sometimes transformed into art-market commodities and museum artifacts.

The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp Etna

The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp Etna
Author: Mira Ptacin
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2019-10-29
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1631493825

A young writer travels to Maine to tell the unusual story of America’s longest-running camp devoted to mysticism and the world beyond. They believed they would live forever. So begins Mira Ptacin’s haunting account of the women of Camp Etna—an otherworldly community in the woods of Maine that has, since 1876, played host to generations of Spiritualists and mediums dedicated to preserving the links between the mortal realm and the afterlife. Beginning her narrative in 1848 with two sisters who claimed they could speak to the dead, Ptacin reveals how Spiritualism first blossomed into a national practice during the Civil War, yet continues—even thrives—to this very day. Immersing herself in this community and its practices—from ghost hunting to releasing trapped spirits to water witching— Ptacin sheds new light on our ongoing struggle with faith, uncertainty, and mortality. Blending memoir, ethnography, and investigative reportage, The In-Betweens offers a vital portrait of Camp Etna and its enduring hold on a modern culture that remains as starved for a deeper sense of connection and otherworldliness as ever.

Small Mediums at Large

Small Mediums at Large
Author: Terry Iacuzzo
Publisher: Perigee Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2005-10-04
Genre: Psychics
ISBN: 9780399532023

This is the story of the ordinary and extraordinary Sicilian family out of which sprang one of the country's most prominent psychics, Terry Iacuzzo, who has such a high-powered client list that it will remain a secret till her dying day.

Opusculum de Sectis apud Sinenses et Tunkinenses

Opusculum de Sectis apud Sinenses et Tunkinenses
Author: Father Adriano di St. Thecla
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2018-05-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1501719076

This 1750 text, written by a Catholic missionary in Tonkin, is the earliest known systematic first-hand account of Vietnamese religious practice, including chapters on Confucianism, Buddhism, the worship of spirits, magicians, fortune tellers and diviners, and Christianity in the region. It was recently discovered in a Paris archive and will be of interest to a broad array of scholars. Includes a facsimile of the original manuscript.

The Quirky Medium

The Quirky Medium
Author: Alison Wynne-Ryder
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2019-07-04
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1907203583

Scared of ghosts, Alison is a most unlikely medium. But her huge natural gifts for sensing the presence of spirits and angels have taken her on an extraordinary life journey, helping thousands of others with her channelling and healing abilities. Her down-to-earth English humour has also brought her fame as hostess of the TV programme Rescue Mediums.

Puppet and Spirit: Ritual, Religion, and Performing Objects

Puppet and Spirit: Ritual, Religion, and Performing Objects
Author: Claudia Orenstein
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2023-07-31
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1000910717

This anthology of essays aims to explore the many types of relationships that exist between puppets, broadly speaking, and the immaterial world. The allure of the puppet goes beyond its material presence as, historically and throughout the globe, many uses of puppets and related objects have expressed and capitalized on their posited connections to other realms or ability to serve as vessels or conduits for immaterial presence. The flip side of the puppet’s troubling uncanniness is precisely the possibilities it represents for connecting to discarnate realities. Where do we see such connections? How do we describe, analyze, and theorize these relationships? The first of two volumes, this book focuses on these questions in relation to long-established, traditional practices using puppets, devotional objects, and related items with sacred aspects to them or that perform ritual roles. Looking at performance traditions and artifacts from China, Indonesia, Korea, Mali, Brazil, Iran, Germany, and elsewhere, the essays from scholars and practitioners provide a range of useful models and critical vocabularies for addressing the ritual and spiritual aspects of puppet performance, further expanding the growing understanding and appreciation of puppetry generally. This book, along with its companion volume, offers, for the first time, robust coverage of this subject from a diversity of voices, examples, and perspectives.

School for Psychics

School for Psychics
Author: K.C. Archer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2018-04-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1501159356

An entrancing new series starring a funny, impulsive, and sometimes self-congratulatory young woman who discovers she has psychic abilities—and then must decide whether she will use her skills for good or…not. Teddy Cannon isn’t your typical twenty-something woman. Yes she’s resourceful, bright, and scrappy. But she can also read people with uncanny precision. What she doesn’t realize: she’s actually psychic. When a series of bad decisions leads Teddy to a run-in with the police, a mysterious stranger intervenes. He invites her to apply to the School for Psychics, a facility hidden off the coast of San Francisco where students are trained like Delta Force operatives: it’s competitive, cutthroat, and highly secretive. They’ll learn telepathy, telekinesis, investigative skills, and SWAT tactics. And if students survive their training, they go on to serve at the highest levels of government, using their skills to protect America, and the world. In class, Teddy befriends Lucas, a rebel without a cause who can start and manipulate fire; Jillian, a hipster who can mediate communication between animals and humans; and Molly, a hacker who can apprehend the emotional state of another individual. But just as Teddy feels like she’s found where she might belong, strange things begin to happen: break-ins, missing students, and more. It leads Teddy to accept a dangerous mission that will ultimately cause her to question everything—her teachers, her friends, her family, and even herself. Set in a world very much like our own, School for Psychics is the first book in a stay-up-all night series.