Playing God: Testing, Modeling, and Imitating Blood Miracles in Eighteenth-Century Europe.

In the late Middle Ages, rumors began to spread throughout Europe regarding blood miracles associated with the relics of martyrs. Centuries-old blood, pulverized or solidified and black in color, was said to return to its original bright red color, or else to liquefy or bubble under certain circumstances or on certain dates in the liturgical calendar. With the Reformation, in Protestant countries most of these relics were either destroyed or forgotten. In Catholic countries, on the contrary, blood miracles multiplied, reaching a peak between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This article reconstructs the debate that sprang up in eighteenth-century Europe over the blood of Saint Januarius and the attempts made to disprove its miraculous properties, often not in written works, but by staging highly theatrical demonstrations. It examines the way in which, with phenomena as complex as miracles, the activities of testing alleged facts, creating elucidative models, and staging imitations intertwined over the centuries, often overlapping and becoming confused.

Psychicones: Visual Traces of the Soul in Late Nineteenth-Century Fluidic Photography.

The article discusses attempts to visualise the soul on photographic plates at the end of the nineteenth century, as conducted by the French physician Hippolyte Baraduc in Paris. Although Baraduc refers to earlier experiments on fluidic photography in his book on The Human Soul (1896) and is usually mentioned as a precursor to parapsychological thought photography of the twentieth century, his work is presented as a genuine attempt at photographic soul-catching. Rather than producing mimetic representations of thoughts and imaginations, Baraduc claims to present the vital radiation of the psyche itself and therefore calls the images he produces psychicones. The article first discusses the difference between this method of soul photography and other kinds of occult media technologies of the time, emphasising the significance of its non-mimetic, abstract character: since the soul itself was considered an abstract entity, abstract traces seemed all the more convincing to the contemporary audience. Secondly, the article shows how the technological agency of photography allowed Baraduc's psychicones to be tied into related discourses in medicine and psychology. Insofar as the photographic plates displayed actual visual traces, Baraduc and his followers no longer considered hallucinations illusionary and pathological but emphasised the physical reality and normality of imagination. Yet, the greatest influence of soul photography was not on science but on art. As the third part of the paper argues, the abstract shapes on Baraduc's plates provided inspiration for contemporary avant-garde aesthetics, for example, Kandinsky's abstract paintings and the random streams of consciousness in surrealistic literature.

Cirugías fingidas en los Andes. A propósito de un pequeño corpus documental / Shammed surgeries in the Andes: concerning a small documental corpus

Si bien los pueblos andinos contemporáneos muestran un marcado rechazo a las intervenciones quirúrgicas por diversas razones de índole cultural, encontramos en los relatos coloniales de los siglos XVI y XVII descripciones que aluden a la expresión formal de cirugías simbólicas, bajo trance, que persiguen la extracción corporal de los objetos y sustancias que materializan la enfermedad. El artículo analiza varias de estas intervenciones fingidas comparándolas con las actuales estrategias terapéuticas de corte chamánico que realizan los curanderos andinos (AU)

Even when contemporary Andean peoples show a strong rejection to surgical interventions due to cultural reasons, in 16th- and 17th-century colonial sources we find acounts that describe the formal expression of symbolic surgical interventions (carried out while in trance) that aim to extract from the body those objects and substances that materialize the ailment. This article analyzes some of these mock interventions and compares them with current shamanic therapeutical strategies carried out by Andean healers (AU)

A tale of two congresses: the psychological study of psychical, occult, and religious phenomena, 1900-1909.

In so far as researchers viewed psychical, occult, and religious phenomena as both objectively verifiable and resistant to extant scientific explanations, their study posed thorny issues for experimental psychologists. Controversies over the study of psychical and occult phenomena at the Fourth Congress of International Psychology (Paris, 1900) and religious phenomena at the Sixth (Geneva, 1909) raise the question of why the latter was accepted as a legitimate object of study, whereas the former was not. Comparison of the Congresses suggests that those interested in the study of religion were willing to forego the quest for objective evidence and focus on experience, whereas those most invested in psychical research were not. The shift in focus did not overcome many of the methodological difficulties. Sub-specialization formalized distinctions between psychical, religious, and pathological phenomena; obscured similarities; and undercut the nascent comparative study of unusual experiences that had emerged at the early Congresses.

Thinking with the saint: the miracle of Saint Januarius of Naples and science in early modern Europe.

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the way in which early modem science questioned and indirectly influenced (while being in its turn influenced by) the conceptualization of the liquefaction of the blood of Saint Januarius, a phenomenon that has been taking place at regular intervals in Naples since the late Middle Ages. In the seventeenth century, a debate arose that divided Europe between supporters of a theory of divine intervention and believers in the occult properties of the blood. These two theoretical options reflected two different perspectives on the relationship between the natural and the supernatural. While in the seventeenth century, the emphasis was placed on the predictable periodicity of the miraculous event of liquefaction as a manifestation of God in his role as a divine regulator, in the eighteenth century the event came to be described as capricious and unpredictable, in an attempt to differentiate miracles from the workings of nature, which were deemed to be normative. The miracle of the blood of Saint Januarius thus provides a window through which we can catch a glimpse of how the natural order was perceived in early modern Europe at a time when the Continent was culturally fragmented into north and south, Protestantism and Catholicism, learned and ignorant.

Genealogía hipnótica del mito del zombi: The Magic Island (1929) / Hipnotic Genealogy of the Myth of the Zombie: The Magic Island (1929)

Este es el primero de una serie de artículos en los que se pretende estudiar la historia y la significación psicológica del “mito del zombi” a través del análisis de sus elementos alegóricos y simbólicos partiendo de una conceptualización de “mito” extraída de las nociones de la psicología analítica de Jung y de la historia de las religiones de Eliade. Aquí profundizaremos en la genealogía simbólica que antecede y se inserta en la concepción del zombi en The Magic Island de Seabrook (primer texto donde aparece el zombi como muerto viviente) a través del análisis comparativo con el sonámbulo de la literatura y cinematografía del “lado oscuro del magnetismo animal y la hipnosis” y su relación con el autómata (AU)

This is the first of series of articles that aims to study the history and psychological significance of the “myth of the zombie” through the analysis of its allegorical and symbolic elements, based on a myth’s conceptualization extracted from the notions of Jung’s analytical psychology and Eliade’s history of religions. Here, we’ll look deeply into the symbolic genealogy that comes before and it’s inserted in zombie conception in Seabrook’s The magic island (first text where zombie appears as living dead) through a comparative analysis with the somnambulist in literature and filmography of “the dark side of animal magnetism and hypnosis” and its connection with the automaton (AU)

'Trick', 'manipulation' and 'farce': Albert Moll's critique of occultism.

In July 1925, the psychiatrist Albert Moll appeared before the district court in Berlin-Schöneberg charged with having defamed the medium Maria Vollhardt (alias Rudloff) in his 1924 book Der Spiritismus [Spiritism]. Supported by some of Berlin's most prominent occultists, the plaintiff--the medium's husband--argued that Moll's use of terms such as 'trick', 'manipulation' and 'farce' in reference to Vollhardt's phenomena had been libellous. In the three-part trial that followed, however, Moll's putative affront to the medium--of which he was eventually acquitted--was overshadowed, on the one hand, by a debate over the scientific status of parapsychology, and on the other, by the question of who--parapsychologists, occultists, psychiatrists or jurists--was entitled to claim epistemic authority over the occult. This paper will use the Rudloff-Moll trial as a means of examining Moll's critique of occultism, not only as it stood in the mid-1920s, but also as it had developed since the 1880s. It will also provide insight into the views of Germany's occultists and parapsychologists, who argued that their legitimate bid for scientific credibility was hindered by Dunkelmänner [obscurantists] such as Albert Moll.

[Criminology and superstition at the turn of the 19th century]. / Kriminologie und Aberglaube um 1900.

Criminology, which institutionalised at university level at the turn of the 19th century, was intensively engaged in the exploration of superstition. Criminologists investigated the various phenomena of superstition and the criminal behaviour resulting from it. They discovered bizarre (real or imagined) worlds of thought and mentalities, which they subjected to a rationalistic regime of interpretation in order to arrive at a better understanding of offences and crimes related to superstition. However, they sometimes also considered the use of occultist practices such as telepathy and clairvoyance to solve criminal cases. As a motive for committing homicide superstition gradually became less relevant in the course of the 19th century. Around 1900, superstition was accepted as a plausible explanation in this context only if a psychopathic form of superstition was involved. In the 20th century, superstition was no longer regarded as an explanans but an explanandum.

[Alchemy, freemasonry and homeopathy]. / Alchimie, franc-maçonnerie et homéopathie.

In this article we are showing that homeopathic doctrine has really esoteric and occult origins as it was suspected by a few authors, nevertheless we saw Hahnemann also using scientific writers. As early as twenty-two years old Hahnemann was initiate in the freemasonry, very in vogue at that time. He will be life long attached to it and will keep close to distinguished freemasons. Freemasonry has conveid enlightement philosophical ideas as well as occult, alchemical and theosophical ones by successive incursion of very different orders. Among these we can find a few rosicrucians orders. At the beginning of 17th century in Germany, the first rosicrucians authors appealed to Paracelse, and the first members of their legendary fraternity manifested their contempt for the practice of transmutation into gold and must devote themselves to gratuitous medical practice (famous utopia). Freemasonry took again these philanthropic views so that Hahnemann was certainly involved to the ideas of Paracelse and his followers through the Rosicrucians which played a substantial part within freemasonry before homeopathy rose.

[Occult medicine in the 20th century: pharmacotherapy by Demeter Georgievitz-Weitzer, known as Surya (1873 - 1949)]. / Okkulte medizin im 20. Jahrhundert: Pharmakotherapie nach Demeter Georgievitz-Weitzer, genannt Surya (1873-1949).

Demeter Georgievitz-Weitzer (1873-1949), called "Surya", Sanskrit for "sun", was an important representative of medical occultism in the first half of the 20th century. He worked as a journal editor and published a 13-volume book series about occult medicine, mainly written by himself. His hypotheses were closely related to the "Lebensreform" movement around 1900. Regarding diagnostics, he relied on astrology, cheiromancy, and clairvoyance, while therapeutics were dominated by diet and spagyric remedies according to Cesare Mattei (1809-1896) and Carl-Friedrich Zimpel (1801-1879). In his later years, he developed his own healing system, initially comprising eight, later only two preparations. Surya remedies were commercially available until the end of the 20th century,

[Fresh fruit and occultism as ways to salvation: conversions in Leipzig's alternative culture at around 1900]. / Frischobst und Okkultismus als Heilswege: Konversionen im alternativkulturellen Milieu Leipzigs um 1900.

During the time of the Wilhelmine Empire, there were multiple interdependencies between adherents of the life reform movement (vegetarians, naturopathists, nudists, etc.) and new religious movements such as esoteric groups like the theosophists in the alternative cultural milieu around 1900. These networks became visible in the form of double memberships in associations. However, there were also ambiguous affiliations, migration between groups and syncretistic beliefs without institutional belonging. The similarity between patterns of argumentation for this specific lifestyle and the congruence of chosen goals, ways and goods of salvation become particularly clear in this context. These forms of "methodical lifestyle" may lead to the development of a specific ethos or habitus (Max Weber). To illustrate these processes, this article analyses the report of a Leipzig lady who ate raw fruits and vegetables only, and examines her broader social context. Thereby the analysis will employ sociological theories of conversion to explain the case of Hedwig Bresch.

Lo oculto y las terapéuticas espiritistas del espíritu y del cuerpo en Francia (1850-1914): de la creencia al saber y vuelta / No disponible

En el período estudiado el espiritismo se desarrolla en Francia con un gran vigor. En su seno surge, desde el primer momento, una "medicina espiritista", heredada del precedente magnetismo animal, que se pone en práctica a través del sujeto/objeto de las experiencias espiritistas: el/la médium. Una característica de esta medicina es la sistemática apropiación de los descubrimientos realizados por las ciencias socialmente reconocidas, especialmente la medicina académica y la física, a menudo en franco conflicto con estas mismas ciencias. Se señalan las correspondencias entre el discurso espiritista y el espiritualista en sus dos versiones principales en ese momento (la religión y los trabajos de las Societies for Psychical Research anglosajonas) y se muestran los conflictos entre la doctrina espiritista y los desarrollos contemporáneos de la psicología experimental, la neurología y el psicoanálisis

In the period examined spiritualism developed in France with great vigour. From the very start, a "spiritualist medicine" arose -heir to its precedent, mesmerism, which eas put into practice through the subject/object of spiritualistic experiences: the medium. A characteristic of this medicine is the systematic appropriation of the discoveries made by the socially recognised sciences, particularly academic medicine and physics, although often in direct conflict with these same sciences. The relationship between the spiritualistic discourse and the spiritualist in their two principal versions at the time (religion and the works of the Anglo-Saxon Societies for Psychical Research) are noted, and conflicts between spiritualist doctrine and the contemporary developments of experimental psychology, clinical neurology and psychoanalysis are shown

Sobre los inicios del espiritismo en España: la epidemia psíquica de las mesas giratorias de 1853 en la prensa médica / No disponible

Este trabajo estudia, a través de la prensa médica española, el episodio de las mesas giratorias y parlantes que tuvo lugar entre abril y julio de 1853. Se analizan sucesivamente su recepción por los médicos, las experimentaciones que llevaron a cabo y las explicaciones que le dieron. Asimismo, se consideran las repercusiones que originó esta epidemia psíquica: la atracción de la atención hacia la actividad metnal inconsciente, el fomento que supuso para el magnetismo animal y el impulso que dio a la aparición del espiritismo

This paper studies the table-turning and table-tapping episode that took place between April and July of 1853 through the Spanish medical press. It is successively analyzed its reception by the doctors, the experiments they carried out and explanations they gave to that event. Besides, it is considered the repercussions originated by this psychological epidemic: the focusing of the attention towards the unconscious mental activity, the support that it was to the animal magnetism and the impulse that it gave to the appearance of the spiritualism

La psiquiatría y el fenómeno de las "apariciones" a finales del siglo XIX / No disponible

A finales del sigo XIX el auge de las sociedades y de las revistas ocultistas en Alemania era más que notable. Por eso llama la atención el silencio de la psiquiatría ante los casos de apariciones de fantasmas que a menudo se hacían públicos. Tomando como referencia dos de estos csos se intenta comprender los motivos de tal silencio. La tesis del artículo es que una disciplina que buscaba legitimarse científicamente decidió no "contaminarse" con asuntos que la ciencia y la medicina consideraban dudosos. Sólo a partir de la Primera Guerra Mundial tales fenómenos empezaron a ser objeto de interés en la medida en que podían considerarse casos patológicos ejemplares

At the end of the 19th century, the flourishing of occulist societies and periodicals in Germany was more than noteworthy. For this reason, the silence of psychiatry in the face of cases of apparitions of ghots which were often made public is striking. By taking as a reference two of these cases, an attempt is made to understand the reasons for such silence. The thesis of the article is that a discipline that was seeking to legitimate itself scientifically decided not to "contaminate itself" with matters that science and medicine considered doubful. It was only from the time of the First Worls War that such phenomena began to be a subject of interest, insofar as they could be considered exemplary pathological cases