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The article explores the significance of burial mounds in relation to The Dream of the Rood, emphasizing how this connection enhances the poem's interpretation. Topics include the association between mounds and supernatural gifts, the symbolic role of the cross as a surrogate for Christ, and parallels to pre-Christian Germanic beliefs. The analysis suggests that understanding these elements deepens the appreciation of the poem's themes and its ties to ancient traditions.

The article explores the archetype of the limping hero and heroine in literature, particularly through the character in Wharton's final short story. It discusses Wharton's conflicted relationship with ghost stories, reflecting her love for literature despite her fear of the supernatural. The article examines how limping characters, such as Jacob and Oedipus, symbolize suffering and transformation in their journeys toward self-knowledge.

Two common criticisms of hope in politics are that 1) it tacitly assumes an exploded metaphysical idea of historical progress and that 2) it thereby relieves humans of political responsibility and even robs them of agency altogether. The criticisms have a common source in hope's religious and particularly Christian conceptual history in the West. This article argues for a secular understanding of political hope as empowering collective agency that retains the utopian impulse expressed in religion yet which neither holds a monological account of historical change nor a supernatural agent of its effectuation. It does so by reconstructing the notions of transcendence, impossibility, the miraculous, and redemption in a secular manner in light of the thought of Ernst Bloch, Hannah Arendt, Václav Havel, and Walter Benjamin, among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I wish to challenge one of the basic assumptions permeating contemporary vampire studies concerning the exclusivity of the category of 'vampire' for the analysis of modern European lore. To do so, I deploy the concepts of the 'vampire' (a literary figure of a tragic, undead aristocrat feeding on blood) and 'horror' (a narrative evoking fear, repulsion and fascination) as heuristic devices to the study of biblical accounts. Specifically, I examine the Old Testament passages featuring the Hebrew term rephaim which denotes one of the Canaanite tribes ('Rephaites') and the inhabitants of the underworld ('revenants'). The analyses of the Scriptural sources against their Ugaritic background prove the adequateness of these heuristic devices: the texts exhibit formal features prompting the experience of awe and terror and portray the rephaim as a semi-divinized undead aristocracy. The adoption of this theoretical and methodological framework permits the further exploration of biblical vampires, while in the overarching scope, the hereby proposed vampire complex can serve as a potent tool to be deployed in a variety of other non-European sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wes Craven directed just four feature films in the final decade and a half of his life. Three of them were mainstream horror movies: Cursed (2005), My Soul to Take (2010) and Scream 4 (2011). Both Cursed and My Soul to Take were received poorly by both critics and audiences alike. While they drew heavily on themes and imagery from Craven's past films, there were also some significant differences, most notably that they both centred primarily on a male rather than female protagonist. The male characters that take centre stage are not the traditional jock-type found in many teen horror movies. This article will examine the role that masculinity and sexuality plays within these two often-neglected films, and how they connect within the wider context of other mainstream teen horror films of the late 1990s and early 2000s that also feature gay characters and/or presentations of non-traditional masculinity. It will demonstrate that the progressive attempts in Cursed and My Soul to Take to feature more prominent and complex characters of this nature are undermined by both the simplistic writing and the apparent disconnect between director and intended audience – a disconnect that had not been present less than a decade earlier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Witnessing the suffering of innocent victims can motivate observers to interpret the situation in ways that justify that suffering, such as viewing victims as more personally responsible or possessing negative traits. In a pre‐registered cross‐cultural experiment (N = 831 from India, Singapore and the USA), we tested whether belief in karma—a supernatural force that can be used to explain current misfortune as payback for past misdeeds—affects people's tendencies to blame victims for their misfortune. Participants read and evaluated descriptions of ostensibly innocent victims of misfortune, both before and after thinking about karma. When thinking about karma, participants rated victims as possessing more negative traits, and (in the USA) being less similar to participants themselves, compared to their baseline judgements. Belief in karma also indirectly predicted negative evaluations, due to karma believers' greater perception that victims were personally responsible for their situation. These results are consistent with previously established patterns of victim derogation and show how karma can shape social judgements in a manner that bolsters the perception of a just world where bad things are believed to happen to bad people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This article explores the relationship between romantic love and polyamory. Our central question is whether traditional norms of monogamy can be excised from romantic love so as to harmonize with polyamory's ethical dimensions (as we construe them). How one answers this question bears on another: whether ‘polyamory’ should principally be understood in terms of romantic love or instead some alternative conception(s). Our efforts to address these questions begin by briefly motivating our favored approach to romantic love, a ‘narratival’ one inspired by 1930s cultural theorist Denis de Rougemont, wherein such love is exclusive, supernatural or promising transcendence, painful, impeded, and, ultimately, fatal. We maintain that, even once exclusivity is removed as an official component, tensions with polyamory's ethical dimensions remain: romantic love's other elements rationalize acting and feeling in ways that privilege a singular beloved above others. A tempting solution is to further revise romantic love. However, we are skeptical that this leaves space for distinctively romantic love. Our tentative proposal, then, is that polyamory's ethical dimensions favor rejecting romantic love as ultimately desirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the critical perspectives of scholars during the Han Dynasty on customs and beliefs related to ghosts and deities. Focusing on Wang Chong as an example, it explores the naturalistic explanations of life and death, the concept of ghosts and deities, and the associated customs of funerals, sacrifices, and taboos. Wang Chong's criticisms focused on the core ideologies that underpinned funeral practices, sacrifices, and taboos and attempted to undermine the essence of these traditional customs. By reinterpreting funeral practices, sacrifices, and taboos from a ritualistic perspective that emphasized the social function rather than their supernatural implications, Wang Chong aimed to reconcile local tradition with rationality and promote a more profound understanding of the world. His approach, though complex and at times seemingly contradictory, holds an important position among the intellectual critiques of customs and beliefs during the Han Dynasty, and it sheds light on the challenges faced by ancient Chinese scholars in navigating the intersections between rationality, morality, and religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In everyday life, one encounters many experiences of affliction that, for whatever reason, nature (ours or others') cannot resolve. Yet, when nature's finite resources are exhausted and hope seems in vain, humans often experience extra-ordinary moments of renewal and resolution—breakthroughs, remissions, insights, and conversions. We experience these moments in our natural existence; yet, we feel they cannot originate, cannot be attributed to nature alone. Rather, these experiences, called "graces" in Christianity, are attributed to a divine power acting in us. How do we come to describe these experiences in this way? Is it possible to formulate a general theory of these experiences as "graces"? Is there an "experience" of grace in general, a "state of grace", which serves as ground and unifying experience for the "graces" we receive? Working from the Catholic theological point of view, this paper examines such experiences of affliction and renewal, as well as the basic Catholic framework schematizing them as found in the Bible and Catholic religious writings. In doing so, this paper highlights the theme of impossibility (absolutely or in context) underlying each experience, and broadly categorizes them as happening within three regions of human life: the external, ethical sphere, the interior self-relationship, and the vertical relationship to the Divine. In dialogue with theologians and phenomenological thinkers, general formulations of the experiences are placed within their respective spheres, and certain problems in the identification or interpretation of these experiences are identified. The paper then explores how the experience of a "New Creation" can serve not only as a label for the totality of these experiences, but also as a totalizing and overarching ground-experience of "grace" and an interpretive hermeneutic for graces in general. As a result, a graced moment of total personal "rebirth" or "recreation", prevenient with respect to any personal co-operation or experiences of grace as grace, is identified as a potential ground for all other graces considered. Finally, this paper considers some potential implications of this account of grace for both Catholic thought and Phenomenology more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hauntings are often misconstrued as strange and often scary supernatural experiences that blur the lines between what is real and what is not. Yet, Indigenous hauntings can not only be confronting, but they can also be comforting and support place belonging. This paper offers a Māori philosophical way of theorising hauntology and its relation to time, space, place, and belonging by privileging a whakapapa perspective. Whakapapa acknowledges not only kinship relations for people, but all things and their relationship to them, from the sky to the lands, and the spiritual connections in between. Employing a whakapapa kōrero theoretical framework, I draw on Māori constructs of time and place through Wā, Wānanga (Māori stories both told and untold), and Te Wāhi Ngaro to offer some insights from my doctoral thesis where Māori PhD students shared their everyday experiences in their institutions. With a backdrop of settler-colonial structures, norms, and daily interactions, I argue that hauntings are an everyday familiar occurrence in Te Ao Māori which play a major role in the way Māori doctoral students establish and maintain a sense of belonging in their universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Good fortune can be attributed to many sources, including other people, personal efforts, and various theistic and nontheistic supernatural forces (e.g., God, karma). Four studies (total N = 4,579) of religiously diverse samples from the United States and the United Kingdom investigated the distinct emotional reactions to recalled positive experiences attributed to natural and supernatural benefactors. We found that the hallmarks of interpersonal gratitude (e.g., thankfulness, admiration, indebtedness) were reported when believers attributed their good fortune to a personal, benevolent God. However, a distinct emotional profile arose when participants attributed good fortune to the process of karmic payback, which was associated with relatively less gratitude but with higher scores for feelings of pride and deservingness. These results were partially explained by participants' attributions of positive experiences to an external agent (e.g., God) versus a universal law or internal factors as in the case of karma. We conclude that diverse spiritual beliefs influence causal attributions for good fortune, which, in turn, predict distinct emotional responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elyonim veTachtonim is a system of quantitative and qualitative analysis of the traditions involving supernatural entities and, in this article, I showcase its implementation to the construction of the biblical inventory. I start with a review of the printed and electronic resources and recognize their advantages and limitations which informed and motivated the production of the database. Next, I summarize the theoretical and methodological fundamentals of the endeavor and then scrutinize the development process emphasizing the quantitative and qualitative specificities of the biblical inventory. Finally, I sketch out the possible applications of the database and its prospective developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Turkish Culture & Haci Bektas Veli Research Quarterly is the property of Turkish Cultur & Haci Bektas Veli Research Quarterly and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Philologia is the property of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

I argue that the adjective δαιμόνιος ('daemonic') and the substantivized adjective τὸ δαιμόνιον ('the daemonic') that occur in Aristotle's dream treatises basically mean 'divine-like,' denoting an illusory appearance of divine intervention, typically in the form of an alleged god-sent prophetic dream. Yet the appearances to which the terms refer are, in fact, neither divine nor supernatural at all, but involve merely coincidental correlations between the dream and the fulfilling event. It is shown that Aristotle's use of 'daemonic' is traditional and reflects the endoxon that prophetic dreams are closely related to the divine. The paper also examines a set of earlier readings of the daemonic in De divinatione in relation to the proposed interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the early moments in Hamlet when he offers a 'piece' (1.1.18) of himself to his readiness to consider a range of folkloric narratives, Horatio's approach to the supernatural is one marked by fragmentation. Rather than critiquing the disparate pieces of Horatio and his philosophy, I explore how his spiritual discernment intersects with the early modern discourse on belief as dispositional and open to revision. In tracing Horatio's different pieces, which I argue can never be collected into an integrated whole, I interrogate the notion of belief itself as one marked by extremes. Of course, these extremes have captured our critical attention, from Hamlet's staging of The Murder of Gonzago to the intense passions that almost all the other figures in the play express when confronted with the inexplicable or the uncanny. Instead, I argue that Horatio offers us a way to read discernment on the early modern stage as a viable method, in which one's belief relies not only on 'your philosophy' (1.4.166) or religious doctrine, but combines an array of 'pieces' for encountering the potentially demonic figure of the Ghost of Hamlet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic (2020), the Doyle family home of High Place is a living, breathing structure. The home indelibly retains memories of dead women within its walls that it uses to communicate with the novel's protagonist, Noemí Taboada. Moreno-Garcia uses this supernatural home to address legacies of violence against women and minorities by staging the colonizer-colonized relationship for Noemí in areas of the home that are typically viewed as feminine or private, intimate spaces. She furthers this discussion by reshaping a typically European genre for a new audience while critically examining a contentious period of Mexico's history. Through an intersection of spatial theory, postcolonial theory, and ecocriticism, this essay analyzes the way Moreno-Garcia constructs a haunting domestic space to confront patriarchal and colonizing legacies that are often suppressed in cultural and literary memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of natura took on a transcendental meaning in medieval times. Essentially, human beings did not belong to a natural order, but rather a supernatural one. Hence, the important thing was not the search for an orientation toward nature above all, but the subsequent adaptation to the supernatural. Mortals experienced freedom in the realm of nature, but natura did not guarantee them the measure of morality. Human nature thus received its ultimate identification beyond its natural being; that is, on the transcendental plane. Judeo-Christianity assigned the main role of creation to humanity and the more it participated in the divine likeness, the less it differed from the Creator, thus taking the path to redemption. This article will address the relationship between medieval conceptions of nature and the belief that human beings were the only species created "in the image and likeness of God." Having discussed this link, it will examine from a philosophical perspective how this belief has resulted in what I have called "theonarcissism" before indicating possible ways to overcome this problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Realism lingered quite long in Turkish literature. From the 1900s onwards, realism and naturalism were prominent movements. If the often-despised detective novels are put aside, there was hardly any room for the extraordinary in fiction. During the socialist realism era, realism almost became the sole movement and was strong until the 1950s. Despite the appearance of the first modern literature from that time on, it kept its prominent position until the 1970s. What realism skillfully pushed outside the literature were the supernatural, the magic, the extraordinary, the mythical, and the fairy-tale-inspired narration. However, these elements made a comeback in the 1980s and quickly spread in the 2000s. Today, almost all fiction comprises these elements, and this time not in the form of the despised "B-literature," but in a very mainstream way. Today, the fantastic, detective novels, historical/biographical fiction and science fiction of all sorts are living their golden age. Often fused with myths, fairy-tales, epics, and such, this new type of fiction is like a scene where the supernatural has made its glorious comeback. In this paper, I will show the different ways and forms of this comeback in two novels: The Stories of Efrasiyab by İhsan Oktay Anar and The Red Haired Woman by Orhan Pamuk. Analyzing these novels based on their approach to the supernatural, I will try to show how myths and reality mix, what type of novel universe they create, and what this new reality stands for in the postmodern times we live in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on haunting depiction of the "valley of ashes" in The Great Gatsby as an example of the supernatural elements and dark Romanticism in F. Scott Fitzgerald's work. Topics include Gothic undercurrents in Fitzgerald's writing, the Romantic reaction against Enlightenment values; and the use of occult themes to challenge materialism.

This article examines how Han Taiwanese myths and urban legends have been associated with the environment and native fauna in the best-selling popular non-fiction publication Monstrous Taiwan and the hit horror film The Tag-Along. This article also looks at how these works can be considered within the framework of settler colonial studies in East Asia. Both works are interested in intervening in popular culture and genre cinema while reframing the horror or supernatural genre as particularly Taiwanese, drawing on urban legends and traditional folk tales. However, the creators of these works persistently characterise Han Taiwanese legends as interchangeable with the native fauna of Taiwan. This move positions Han Taiwanese as inheritors of the natural environment of Taiwan while minimising or, in some cases, tokenising the presence of indigenous Taiwanese people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interrogates Tshivenḓa death-related names against the communication acts they encapsulate among Vhavenḓa society in the Vhembe District. Anthroponym scholars agree that personal naming moves from just identification to becoming a communication act. Like other African groups, the sampled society's world view sees death as not occurring without the malevolence of supernatural forces through either a witch, dissatisfaction from ancestors, a neighbour, or a disaffected family member. This can be prevented through communication that serves as a warning, reprimand, praise, etc. Among the Vhavenḓa, this is achieved through a death-related personal naming process, which gives them the freedom to communicate controversies without confrontation. This study further demonstrates that this society sees personal names as useful towards creating different messages that communicate with those deemed culpable. Diviners are consulted about the cause of any death, irrespective of the circumstances and age of the deceased in the quest for closure among the surviving family members. Names in this category have different messages directed to suspected perpetrators, whether known or unknown. The article strives to add new knowledge to anthroponym studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to examine how physics students position themselves compared to other student groups on various attitudes and opinions relevant to the tradition of "scientific skepticism". Previous research has shown physics students identifying and having mindsets in line with the epistemic ideas from this philosophical tradition, promoting disbelief in epistemically unfounded ideas, and skeptical inquiry as a tool for evaluating claims. In this, we employ quantitative constructs testing conspiracy beliefs and supernatural beliefs along with established psychological constructs for social dominance orientation, and the conspiracy mentality questionnaire that have previously been shown to have interconnectedness. After showing several direct comparisons between different student groups, the paper also examines other elements that can influence "scientific skepticism", like education level, education type, and gender via multivariate regression analysis. The results suggest physics students tend to position themselves to the end of the spectrum on several constructs connected to scientific skepticism, both compared to students from the humanities and social sciences, and students from other STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, and the regression analysis finds being a physics student contributes a statistically significant contribution along the tested dimensions. The paper discusses possible reasons for this and what this tells us about physics students and physics education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do people make supernatural attributions (SA) for events? This article focused on five possible predictors: stressfulness, unusual events, religiousness, seeing a supernatural explanation as meaningful, and seeing supernatural entities as powerful. We also predicted that people would be more likely to adopt supernatural explanations seen as highly accessible, motivating, and plausible. We focused primarily on SA in general and secondarily on specific entities. We tested preregistered hypotheses using survey data in two samples of undergraduates: one reporting life‐changing events (N = 594) and another reporting on an event with a supernatural air, or supernaturally perceived events (N = 475). Results supported all proposed predictors except for stressfulness. Path analyses revealed that, in both samples, predictors were linked with seeing supernatural explanations as accessible, plausible, and motivating; these ratings, in turn, had positive associations with SA. These results begin to integrate previous theory and research on individual predictors of SA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the 1800s to the 1950s, "spirit lions" and "spirit leopards" were blamed for countless deaths across Africa that were in fact caused by a combination of genuine carnivore attacks and murders instigated by witch doctors and secret societies. The widespread belief in supernatural spirit animals was viewed by the colonial authorities as rendering populations more vulnerable to further attacks by actual lions and leopards, as villagers were often reluctant to take concrete steps to eliminate the dangerous animals. Nearly a thousand people were attacked by lions in southern Tanzania between 1990 and 2006, involving 32 spatially discrete outbreaks that had been categorized by local communities as having been caused either by spirit lions or by real lions. Our interviews revealed that at least 40% of adults in three of the worst-hit districts believed in spirit lions and that this belief generally delayed their communities' response. Consequently, outbreaks that were attributed to spirit lions persisted far longer than those attributed to real lions and included nearly twice as many victims. Belief in spirit lions declined with level of primary-school education, and male respondents were less likely to express a belief in spirit lions when interviewed by an American woman than by a Tanzanian man. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are several proposals regarding the origin of the universe and the inhabited earth, the most prominent being Biblical creationism and naturalistic evolutionism. Biblical creationism proposes that the reality around us was created supernaturally by a personal and transcendent Being, who first shaped an earth that was disordered and then filled it with all kinds of life; At the end of the process, he created the human being to represent him visibly in the government or administration of other things. On the other hand, naturalistic evolutionism proposes that the reality that surrounds us is the product of a process in which, without any type of supernatural intervention, natural laws, acting on matter over time and at random, gave rise in a way gradually to the universe, to the inhabited earth and to organisms. Which of the two fits more with the evidence and the reality that surrounds us? Although it is true that trying to explain the origin of both have limitations, the reality is that Biblical creationism is not only more consistent with the evidence, but also with social reality. Furthermore, it is easier to explain how the creationist model harmonizes with the apparent difficulties or contradictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiencing the ghosts of the departed is a common, cross-cultural experience of grief; such interactions are part of so-called externalized continuing bonds and represent an ongoing relationship with the departed. This paper characterizes people's reported supernatural experiences with the spirits of their deceased dogs and analyzes them in the context of bereavement, externalized continuing bonds, and disenfranchised grief. Using a thematic analysis, 544 candid online comments from social media where people shared their supernatural experiences were studied. These comments fell into two major themes with six subthemes: physical experiences (hearing, seeing, and touching the ghost of a dog) and interpreted experiences (seeing signs in nature, receiving visits from the deceased dog in dreams, and attributing feelings and phenomena to the spirit of the dog). How people described the feelings associated with these supernatural visits were also studied; three themes were found: Positive Feelings, Mixed to Sad Feelings, and Messages. The vast majority of reported feelings (74.6%) were positive, bringing people comfort, reassurance, and a sense of protection. While psychology largely characterizes externalized continuing bonds – particularly seeing ghosts – as negative and even maladaptive, this is in conflict with the findings. These supernatural experiences may serve a different role for grieving dog guardians. Given that disenfranchised grief is common due to the lack of cultural support for people mourning their dogs, and grief over companion animals is often complicated by guilt, these supernatural experiences may serve as an important source of comfort and a way for the bereaved to engage with loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against recent naturalist critiques of Kant and interpretations of Hegel, it can be shown that Hegel's accounts of consciousness and mind (Geist) commit him to a distinctly supernatural, post-Kantian idealist concept of subjectivity. While Kant describes this subjectivity as independent, unconditioned and self-positing, he relies on the notion of an interplay of two distinct realms — labelled the 'natural'-phenomenal and the 'supernatural'-noumenal — to justify it. While Fichte accepts Kant's description of the structure of supernatural subjectivity, he rejects the two-realms-doctrine by arguing that Kant's prioritization of the realms' difference renders their unity unintelligible. Instead, Fichte maintains that all of reality is posited by a subjectivity that posits itself and then posits the objective world, thereby rendering the natural dependent on the supernatural. While Hegel agrees with Kant and Fichte on the supernatural properties of subjectivity, he rejects Fichte's prioritization of supernatural subjectivity over natural objectivity and argues that both the supernatural and the natural are aspects of supernatural Geist. Although Hegel ultimately contrasts subjective Geist with objective nature, grounding both in the notion of the metaphysical idea, his idealist commitment to the supernatural subjectivity of consciousness and Geist renders his accounts of mind and cognition incompatible with recent naturalist interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A careful reading of 2 Corinthians 12:1–10 reveals that the passage shares several motifs with the Book of Job: (1) a supernatural adversary, (2) physical suffering, (3) an otherworldly place, (4) social adversity, (5) affluence, and (6) boasting. In light of an audience-critical perspective, this article proposes that the language and imagery in 2 Corinthians 12:1–10 contain a number of allusions that could direct its audience to juxtapose Paul with Job—a well-known righteous figure who demonstrated physical vulnerability but received public vindication from YHWH. According to this reading, the Joban allusion in the Corinthian passage functions as a rhetorical device that defends Paul's apostolic authority against the super-apostles' charge that his vulnerability evinces his lack of authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accounts of revelation and contemporary views of these are based on beliefs and historical citations. These accounts shall not be limited to the understanding and interpreting of historical and other events within writings but must present the possibility of an objective analysis of the nature of revelation as a phenomenon, an object of our sensory and mental conscious experiences. This paper approaches the act or phenomenon of revelation regardless of the revealer and its nature. Can we abstract the revealer and the revealed from revelation and have an ontological account of revelation solely focusing on the occurrence itself? The central part of the discussion is based on the object/property pair as ontological categories through which the means are analyzed. A comparative method is used where Scripture, musical writings, and mathematical/physical formulae (as potential means of revelation) are scrutinized. As a result, without any need to determine the revealer, revelation can be based on and described through pure properties (not tropes) in human experience, intellect, and understanding. The possibility of revelation beyond Scripture and Jesus Christ—following a type of liberal and general theory of revelation—presents itself in arts and sciences. The "true" of a musical work, when found and experienced during musical performances and scientific truths represented by the formulae, which describe the world and a meta domain, can be derived from the chains of signs and symbols as it is through Scripture. Human cognitive faculties present a universal natural limit to our direct experiencing of the transcendent, of the supernatural. A new dualist conception of logos as a metaphysical category marks the domain bridging the non-transcendent with the transcendent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the figures concerning experiences of and beliefs in possible contacts with the dead amongst Icelandic people that have come to light from three national surveys that were undertaken in 1974, 2006–2007, and 2023, focusing in particular on the most recent figures. It starts by reviewing the earliest evidence of such beliefs in Iceland (expressed in both Old Icelandic literature and Icelandic folk legends), which evidently laid down the foundations for modern-day beliefs. After listing the main findings of the surveys and noting the changes in belief that appear to have taken place over the last 50 years, the article offers some brief conclusions relating to what seems to have caused not only some obvious gender and age differences in belief and experience, but also differences in figures between urban and rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the multifaceted cultural history of ghost trains in Victorian fiction by situating three little-known ghost stories in the publishing and social history of the second half of the nineteenth century. The figure of the ghost train offers a route into the entangled history of publishing and railways by contextualising the anxieties presented in railway ghost stories with the real-world experiences of passengers. Taking ideas of mobility as a focal point, this paper brings together discussions of virtual travel and the supernatural to demonstrate some of the impact railways had on reading and writing about train travel. More so than tales of other haunted transport technologies, it is the ghost train's unnatural capacity for movement that disturbs both passengers and readers. By both enhancing and warping reality, railways are ripe source material for Victorian ghost stories to entertain and demand questions of spatio-temporal experience from their reading passengers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the representation of mental disorders in Anglo-Saxon hagiographies, analyzing perceptions, symptoms, cultural contexts, and narrative purposes. Anglo-Saxon views on the mind and soul, influenced by both vernacular and classical traditions, shape understandings of madness. Old English terminology for madness reflects diverse cultural INFLUENCES, ranging from naturalistic-organic to supernatural etiologies. Analysis of the hagiographies show that there was a tendency to depict demon possession as madness, which could partly be attributed to the Anglo-Saxon way of perceiving the soul and mind, partly to the narrative purpose, and partly to the influential sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ghost raises fundamental questions of reality, identity and epistemology. The ghost is the shadow image of otherness that threatens our notions of life, humanity and permanence by intimating that if death is permanent and the afterlife eternal, then perhaps it is our present tangible reality that is the simulacrum. The ghost interrogates the quotidian, not vice versa. The fetishization, aesthesizing and ritualizing of death in the Gothic aims consistently to defer the final definitive ending of death and the state of non-existence. As a memento mori, ghosts remind us that our ruminations of death are not morbid, but life-affirming. This article will explore the depiction of the afterlife in The Others (Amenábar 2001) in which the living are simulations of the dead and vice versa. Unlike the typical horror movie, the predominant discourse of The Others is a postmodern interrogation of belief, truth and doctrine. The haunted house is an in-between land of purgatory, a death space of self-loss and separation that plays out in the conflict between religion and the supernatural. The questions with which the films ends – 'What does all this mean? Where are we?' – is not just a geographical question, but an ontological one. The interrogation of Biblical narratives causes the audience to evaluate the reliability of the discourse of established religion and its doctrine of the afterlife. By defying audience expectations of the generic conventions of the ghost story, the movie relies on the viewer's faith that what we see on-screen is real, when this cinematic reality is as deceptive as seeing dead people artificially propped up to appear alive. Suspended between being and nothingness, both absent and present, the ghost is a metaphor for the simulacrum of film. The cinematic thus serves as the Other by which the real can be defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary vampire story is an apt place to explore immortality, the afterlife and other dimensions in general. Additionally, there are numerous parallels between the vampire story and the Christian story. The vampire's 'maker', for example, can be compared to God, also known as 'maker', and a vampire's immortality offers a relevant parallel to the Christian idea of immortality in the afterlife. The CW network series The Vampire Diaries (2009–17) houses various narratives offering such comparisons, especially with regards to alternative dimensions ('worlds') that can potentially be construed as commentary on the afterlife. Interestingly, though, I believe that the most compelling narrative in this regard involves the witch Bonnie Bennett and not an actual vampire. Also interestingly, Bonnie often seems to hold more power than the vampires, even though she is not necessarily immortal (she is, however, considered a supernatural being). She perpetually saves her friends throughout the series, regularly willing to sacrifice her life for theirs and actually dies in Season 4 in effort to bring Jeremy Gilbert back to life. She embodies the New Testament verse in the book of John that states, '[g]reater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends'. Despite that she is dead, she lives in a concurrent dimension, and only Jeremy is aware of her and can hear her. She is with him in the present. I posit that the storyline pertaining to Bonnie's character and her death in Seasons 4 and 5 in particular offers a possible and even compelling read on the biblical description of heaven and the afterlife – and God on the whole – per Judeo-Christian scripture and scriptural interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Obnovljeni zivot is the property of University of Zagreb, Society of Jesus and Faculty of Philosophy & Religious Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The question of the origin of humans has been fiercely contested for a long period. One perspective is the creation model, which asserts that the Universe and all its components emerged through the deliberate actions of God, driven by design and purpose. Conversely, the evolution model posits that the Universe's formation occurred solely through mechanistic processes, devoid of any supernatural intervention. Narrowing the scope to humanity, the evolution model contends for the gradual evolution of the human species through a process of descent with modification from an ancestor shared with apes, while the creation model proposes the direct creation of humankind by God in his image. Certainly, the implications either model has on human dignity are very important for human existence. Whether God created humankind directly or through evolution from an ape-like ancestor has a bearing on human dignity. It raises, for example, the question as to whose image humanity bears: God’s or apes’? The way one answers this question will definitely affect his or her human-divine and human-human relationships. A literary research approach was used to gather data from books, articles, and dissertations. The data were critically examined to consider the arguments for either side of the debate. It was found out that both biblical and scientific data may allow for variations within a particular species (microevolution) but not the production of one species from another (macroevolution). The findings suggest that the creation model must be accepted with its attendant implications for human dignity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of eHumanista is the property of Professor Antonio Cortijo-Ocana and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In films, the Magic Negro is a stock character whose supernatural gifts promote the success of a White protagonist. A character with parallel traits found in a number of mystery series is the Magic Indian, who has supernatural connections and abilities unavailable to others. In his Walt Longmire mysteries, Craig Johnson develops a strong supernatural thread with the agency of Native American characters who can be considered Magic Indians. While Johnson's Magic Indians share similarities with Magic Negroes, they exhibit key differences in the way their spirituality is presented that make them more realistic characters serving an educational function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]