Text Resources Thread

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - here's a new book by Emily Pierini of the Religious Experience Research Centre, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, entitled "Jaguars of the Dawn: Spirit Mediumship in the Brazilian Vale do Amanhecer," about mediumship in a Brazilian Spiritualist Christian order:
https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/PieriniJaguars

The other two excerpts followed very closely:
https://michaelprescott.typepad.com/mich...t-two.html
https://michaelprescott.typepad.com/mich...three.html

And here is the fourth of the three parts:
https://michaelprescott.typepad.com/mich...-four.html

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - here's an interesting article from the Church Times by Georgina Byrne about a report on spiritualism produced by a Church of England committee in 1939:
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2...nexplained

To the disappointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury, a majority (9) of the 12 committee members reached a conclusion favourable to spiritualism:
“When every possible explanation of these [spirit] communications has been given, and all doubtful evidence set aside, it is generally agreed that there remains some element as yet unexplained. We think that it is probable that the hypothesis that they proceed in some cases from discarnate spirits is a true one.”

According to Byrne, the minority of 3 "argued that the alleged communica­tions were valueless and open to fraud. They did not, explicitly, say that they were entirely false ..."

The report was disclosed only to bishops until its publication in the 1980s.

Georgina Byrne has written a book entitled "Modern Spiritual­ism and the Church of England, 1850-1939," which was published in 2010.

A website called "Punk Rock and UFOs" has an article/interview with the journalist Leslie Kean, discussing her interest in UFOs and psychical research, including physical mediumship:
https://www.punkrockandufos.com/blog/202...tagon-ufos

Jason Colavito comments on this (perhaps it would be more accurate to say ridicules it) in his weekly email bulletin, but is oddly confused about what the article says. He thinks Kean has a new interest in psychical research and is working on a book about it with Jeffrey Kripal. In fact she published a book on it three years ago, and what the article says is that she's now working on a documentary series based on the book, and also that she visited Kripal at Rice University in November and gave a presentation there.

[Laird]

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page, Sharon Rawlette has reviewed a French book by Laurent Kasprowicz the title of which she translates as "Phone Calls from the BEYOND?". Her review was published in volume 34 of the Journal of Scientific Exploration and is available for free here.

I don't know whether this will remain available, some personal experiences shared by Mark Ireland on the Skeptiko forum:

Survival-Evidence.pdf

People often don't understand the reasons why I - a person they view as grounded and practical - chose to explore and write about psychic phenomena and mediumship. They wonder about my basis for directing bereaved persons to mediums for readings, or “sittings,” as they are also called. Apparently I don’t exude the sort of vibe expected of someone interested in the “paranormal” or the metaphysical because of my sensible approach to things.

Original post: http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/tr...ost-146554