Joseph P Laycock
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 1609908 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Joseph P Laycock |
| NOMBRES | Joseph P |
| APELLIDO | Laycock |
| FIRMA | LAYCOCK J P |
| AFILIACIONES | Texas State University |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 28 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 14 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 28 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2010 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2022 |
| ÍNDICE H | 2 |
New Religious Movements
New Religious Movements: The Basics is a concise and engaging introduction to the field of New Religious Movements (NRMs). Western culture is currently going through a wave of fascination with “cults”, with numerous documentaries and television series dedicated to describing these groups. Meanwhile, scholars have been wrestling with the intricacies of this loaded category for decades. Introducing the reader to some of the key issues and debates i…
Religion, Culture, and the Monstrous
Religion, Culture, and the Monstrous: Of Gods and Monsters explores the intersection of the emerging field of “monster theory” within religious studies. With case studies from ancient Mesopotamia to contemporary valleys of the Himalayas to ghost tours in Savannah, Georgia, the volume examines the variegated nature of the monstrous as well as the cultural functions of monsters in shaping how we see the world and ourselves. In this, the authors con…
A ‘proper’ black mass
This article considers the rhetorical paradoxes surrounding The Satanic Temple (TST) and its interpretation of ‘black mass’ rituals. TST’s conservative critics have framed the movement as part of an ancient tradition of Satanism while also claiming that its members are not Satanists at all but merely ‘trolls’ seeking to upset Christians. Catholic critics vehemently opposed TST’s attempt to give a public performance of the black mass, but also acc…
Speak of the Devil
Since it was founded in 2013, The Satanic Temple has spread across the United States and throughout the world. Unlike other forms of Satanism, The Satanic Temple is highly politically active. It has invoked religious freedom to campaign for easier access to abortion, exemption from laws that allow administering corporal punishment to students, and implementing Satanic after-school clubs in elementary schools. While this group remains highly contr…
Religious Aspects of Pseudoarchaeology
While pseudoarchaeology often presents claims in a scientific register, it favors fantastic or romantic theories of the past over the findings of professionalized archaeology. As archaeologists have attempted to interpret pseudoarchaeology, it has been implied that it often resembles religion more than science, both in terms of its epistemology and the types of worldviews it is deployed to legitimate. This article synthesizes the work of the auth…
Our Non-Christian Nation
In this book, law professor and humorist Jay Wexler argues that the Supreme Court has moved toward a looser understanding of the separation of church and state, now cemented with the appointments of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh; and that, in response, religious minorities have increasingly come forward demanding their place alongside the Christian majority in the public square through such activities as requesting to give prayer invocations b…
Hitler’s Monsters
As Eric Kurlander points out in the opening pages of this book, the image of Nazis engaged in forbidden occult research has become almost a cliché in popular culture, appearing everywhere from the Indiana Jones franchise to such films as Hellboy (2004) and Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). But with the rare exception of scholars such as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, historians have tended to downplay Nazi interest in the occult, ceding this …
Marian Apparitions as New Religious Movements
Marian apparitions, as diverse, global, and dynamic phenomena, offer opportunities for multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural analysis. We are pleased in this special issue to offer seven essays highlighting the increasing internationalization of Marian devotional movements. Our contributors, using both local case studies and a global, comparative view to explore instances of apparitions in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, collectively …
The American Academy of Religion Exploratory Session on Marian Apparitions and Theoretical Problems in Religious Studies (2015)
Tracking the Tulpa
Since the 1970s, tulpas have been a feature of Western paranormal lore. In contemporary paranormal discourse, a tulpa is a being that begins in the imagination but acquires a tangible reality and sentience. Tulpas are created either through a deliberate act of individual will or unintentionally from the thoughts of numerous people. The tulpa was first described by Alexandra David-Néel (1868–1969) in Magic and Mystery in Tibet (1929) and is still …
The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures
Book Review| May 01 2015 The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures. Edited by Olu Jenzen and Sally R. Munt. Ashgate Publishing, 2013. 471 pages. £90.00 cloth; $119.96 Kindle. Joseph Laycock Joseph Laycock Texas State University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nova Religio (2015) 18 (4): 110–112. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2015.18.4.110 View…
Time Is a Flat Circle”
This article uses the television series True Detective as a case study to examine an ongoing media cycle in which moral panics are inspired by popular culture and vice versa. In an interview about True Detective, writer Nic Pizzolatto hinted that a murderous cult portrayed in the show was based on media reports of an actual satanic cult. This detail resulted in a wave of sensationalistic online articles that sought to channel True Detective's pop…
Religion, Law, and Society
In Religion, Law, and Society, Russell Sandberg sets out to answer three questions: “1) What are the benefits of combining insights from the legal and sociological studies of religion? 2) How can such an approach inform our understanding of the place of religion in the twenty-first century? 3) What are the risks, if any, of such an approach?” (p. viii). Sandberg argues that these questions are best examined by focusing on a specific problem or th…
The Controversial History of the Crystal Skulls
In the nineteenth century, several skulls carved from rock crystal appeared in the holdings of European collectors. The provenance of the skulls was unknown and experts regarded them as pre-Columbian artifacts. In the twentieth century, two very different histories formed about these objects. Through testing and archival research, forensic experts and curators concluded that the skulls were created in the nineteenth century using European technol…
Approaching the Paranormal
This issue of Nova Religio is devoted to “the paranormal,” focusing specifically on discourses rejected by mainstream religion and traditional science. The authors explore the historic and cultural significance of such topics as hauntings, séances, alien abductions, and more generally the concept of “paranormal” as a category of religious beliefs. These articles contribute to what may be a new focal area in the study of new and emerging religions
“Our Secret in Plain Sight”
Zen meets New Thought
‘Est’ was a human potential movement founded by Werner Erhard in San Francisco. At the height of the movement in the mid-1970s, thousands of trainees in the United States and Japan participated in gruelling 60-hour seminars intended to shock the participant into a more direct experience of reality. Est and derivative seminars became popular in North American business culture and several corporations have required employees to undergo the training…
Religion Out Loud
For several decades now, the historiography of American religion has moved away from grand narratives that privilege the experience of intellectuals and the religious elite in favour of ‘lived reli
Haunted Ground
In Haunted America, Darryl Caterine offers a reflexive description of his travels across the continental United States visiting sites associated with paranormal cultures. The text is framed as a kind of picaresque describing visits to Lily Dale, a Spiritualist community in New York State, a UFOlogy convention in Roswell, New Mexico, and a convention of the American Society of Dowsers in Killington, Vermont. While his investigation of three commun…
Yoga for the New Woman and the New Man
Pierre Bernard and his wife, Blanche DeVries, were among the earliest proponents of postural yoga in America. In 1924, they created the Clarkstown Country Club, where yoga was taught to affluent and influential clientele. The network created through this endeavor not only popularized yoga in the West but also advanced the reinvention of yoga as a science of health and well-being rather than as a religious practice.This article suggests that the p…
Carnal Knowledge
There are strong similarities between the confessions taken from accused witches in early modern Europe, the testimony of Satanic ritual abuse taken by modern therapists, and accounts of alien abduction given under hypnosis. In each of these narratives, a subject describes horrible sexual transgressions performed on them at the hand of a mysterious other: the thorny penis of the Devil, the bizarre anal insertions of Satanists, and the mysterious …
We Are Spirits of Another Sort
Otherkin are individuals who identify as "not entirely human." Scholarship has framed this identity claim as religious because it is frequently supported by a framework of metaphysical beliefs. This article draws on survey data and interviews with Otherkin in order to provide a more thorough treatment of the phenomenon and to assess and qualify the movement's religious dimensions. It is argued that, in addition to having a substantively religious…
Levitating the Pentagon
On 21 October 1967 Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, and Ed Sanders of the band The Fugs, and others, organized an “exorcism” of the Pentagon in which several thousand demonstrators participated. Most historians have regarded this event as “a put on” or at best as “performance art.” This article takes seriously the nominal status of the ritual as a “sacred” or “magical” event. It argues that the organizers were utilizing innovative strategies of soc…
Paranormal Belief
Research Article| August 01 2011 Paranormal Belief: A New Frontier? Joseph Laycock Joseph Laycock Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nova Religio (2011) 15 (1): 92–97. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2011.15.1.92 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site…
God's Last, Best Gift to Mankind
En 1853, John Murray Spear tenta de construire une machine en se servant de schémas reçus par communication spirite avec Benjamin Franklin. Les historiens se sont efforcés d'accorder cet épisode, connu comme 'l'Expérience du Nouveau Moteur', avec l'œuvre antérieure de Spear abolitionniste. On ne peut comprendre convenablement le Nouveau Moteur sans prendre en considération la place de la technologie dans le projet 'dispensationnaliste' de Spear. …
We Are Spirits of Another Sort
Otherkin are individuals who identify as "not entirely human." Scholarship has framed this identity claim as religious because it is frequently supported by a framework of metaphysical beliefs. This article draws on survey data and interviews with Otherkin in order to provide a more thorough treatment of the phenomenon and to assess and qualify the movement's religious dimensions. It is argued that, in addition to having a substantively religious…
Yoga for the New Woman and the New Man
Pierre Bernard and his wife, Blanche DeVries, were among the earliest proponents of postural yoga in America. In 1924, they created the Clarkstown Country Club, where yoga was taught to affluent and influential clientele. The network created through this endeavor not only popularized yoga in the West but also advanced the reinvention of yoga as a science of health and well-being rather than as a religious practice.This article suggests that the p…
Carnal Knowledge
There are strong similarities between the confessions taken from accused witches in early modern Europe, the testimony of Satanic ritual abuse taken by modern therapists, and accounts of alien abduction given under hypnosis. In each of these narratives, a subject describes horrible sexual transgressions performed on them at the hand of a mysterious other: the thorny penis of the Devil, the bizarre anal insertions of Satanists, and the mysterious …
A ‘proper’ black mass
This article considers the rhetorical paradoxes surrounding The Satanic Temple (TST) and its interpretation of ‘black mass’ rituals. TST’s conservative critics have framed the movement as part of an ancient tradition of Satanism while also claiming that its members are not Satanists at all but merely ‘trolls’ seeking to upset Christians. Catholic critics vehemently opposed TST’s attempt to give a public performance of the black mass, but also acc…
Religion Out Loud
For several decades now, the historiography of American religion has moved away from grand narratives that privilege the experience of intellectuals and the religious elite in favour of ‘lived reli
God's Last, Best Gift to Mankind
En 1853, John Murray Spear tenta de construire une machine en se servant de schémas reçus par communication spirite avec Benjamin Franklin. Les historiens se sont efforcés d'accorder cet épisode, connu comme 'l'Expérience du Nouveau Moteur', avec l'œuvre antérieure de Spear abolitionniste. On ne peut comprendre convenablement le Nouveau Moteur sans prendre en considération la place de la technologie dans le projet 'dispensationnaliste' de Spear. …
Real Vampires as an Identity Group
"Real vampires" believe that they must either consume blood or feed on "subtle" energy in order to maintain their physical, mental, and spiritual health. Recent scholarship has analyzed vampirism as a religious movement or as a cluster of "vampire religions." This article argues that vampirism should be viewed foremost as an identity around which social and religious institutions have formed. This model accounts for the mosaic of religious and cu…
Myth Sells
Many adults of the millennial generation share childhood memories of “syndication cartoons”—cartoons created to promote an existing product. Mattel’s “He-Man” was one of the most successful syndication characters of all time. However, few people know that in 1982, Mattel commissioned a document called, “The Masters of the Universe Bible.” The “Bible” drew on comparative mythology in order to create a modern mythos for Mattel’s franchise. While mo…
Reducing the Ornaments of Fable to the Standard of Truth”
had become a vampire.In
Levitating the Pentagon
On 21 October 1967 Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, and Ed Sanders of the band The Fugs, and others, organized an “exorcism” of the Pentagon in which several thousand demonstrators participated. Most historians have regarded this event as “a put on” or at best as “performance art.” This article takes seriously the nominal status of the ritual as a “sacred” or “magical” event. It argues that the organizers were utilizing innovative strategies of soc…
Paranormal Belief
Research Article| August 01 2011 Paranormal Belief: A New Frontier? Joseph Laycock Joseph Laycock Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nova Religio (2011) 15 (1): 92–97. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2011.15.1.92 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site…
Carnal Knowledge
There are strong similarities between the confessions taken from accused witches in early modern Europe, the testimony of Satanic ritual abuse taken by modern therapists, and accounts of alien abduction given under hypnosis. In each of these narratives, a subject describes horrible sexual transgressions performed on them at the hand of a mysterious other: the thorny penis of the Devil, the bizarre anal insertions of Satanists, and the mysterious …
We Are Spirits of Another Sort
Otherkin are individuals who identify as "not entirely human." Scholarship has framed this identity claim as religious because it is frequently supported by a framework of metaphysical beliefs. This article draws on survey data and interviews with Otherkin in order to provide a more thorough treatment of the phenomenon and to assess and qualify the movement's religious dimensions. It is argued that, in addition to having a substantively religious…
Haunted Ground
In Haunted America, Darryl Caterine offers a reflexive description of his travels across the continental United States visiting sites associated with paranormal cultures. The text is framed as a kind of picaresque describing visits to Lily Dale, a Spiritualist community in New York State, a UFOlogy convention in Roswell, New Mexico, and a convention of the American Society of Dowsers in Killington, Vermont. While his investigation of three commun…
Yoga for the New Woman and the New Man
Pierre Bernard and his wife, Blanche DeVries, were among the earliest proponents of postural yoga in America. In 1924, they created the Clarkstown Country Club, where yoga was taught to affluent and influential clientele. The network created through this endeavor not only popularized yoga in the West but also advanced the reinvention of yoga as a science of health and well-being rather than as a religious practice.This article suggests that the p…
Approaching the Paranormal
This issue of Nova Religio is devoted to “the paranormal,” focusing specifically on discourses rejected by mainstream religion and traditional science. The authors explore the historic and cultural significance of such topics as hauntings, séances, alien abductions, and more generally the concept of “paranormal” as a category of religious beliefs. These articles contribute to what may be a new focal area in the study of new and emerging religions
“Our Secret in Plain Sight”
Zen meets New Thought
‘Est’ was a human potential movement founded by Werner Erhard in San Francisco. At the height of the movement in the mid-1970s, thousands of trainees in the United States and Japan participated in gruelling 60-hour seminars intended to shock the participant into a more direct experience of reality. Est and derivative seminars became popular in North American business culture and several corporations have required employees to undergo the training…
Religion Out Loud
For several decades now, the historiography of American religion has moved away from grand narratives that privilege the experience of intellectuals and the religious elite in favour of ‘lived reli
Tracking the Tulpa
Since the 1970s, tulpas have been a feature of Western paranormal lore. In contemporary paranormal discourse, a tulpa is a being that begins in the imagination but acquires a tangible reality and sentience. Tulpas are created either through a deliberate act of individual will or unintentionally from the thoughts of numerous people. The tulpa was first described by Alexandra David-Néel (1868–1969) in Magic and Mystery in Tibet (1929) and is still …
The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures
Book Review| May 01 2015 The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures. Edited by Olu Jenzen and Sally R. Munt. Ashgate Publishing, 2013. 471 pages. £90.00 cloth; $119.96 Kindle. Joseph Laycock Joseph Laycock Texas State University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nova Religio (2015) 18 (4): 110–112. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2015.18.4.110 View…
Time Is a Flat Circle”
This article uses the television series True Detective as a case study to examine an ongoing media cycle in which moral panics are inspired by popular culture and vice versa. In an interview about True Detective, writer Nic Pizzolatto hinted that a murderous cult portrayed in the show was based on media reports of an actual satanic cult. This detail resulted in a wave of sensationalistic online articles that sought to channel True Detective's pop…
Religion, Law, and Society
In Religion, Law, and Society, Russell Sandberg sets out to answer three questions: “1) What are the benefits of combining insights from the legal and sociological studies of religion? 2) How can such an approach inform our understanding of the place of religion in the twenty-first century? 3) What are the risks, if any, of such an approach?” (p. viii). Sandberg argues that these questions are best examined by focusing on a specific problem or th…
The Controversial History of the Crystal Skulls
In the nineteenth century, several skulls carved from rock crystal appeared in the holdings of European collectors. The provenance of the skulls was unknown and experts regarded them as pre-Columbian artifacts. In the twentieth century, two very different histories formed about these objects. Through testing and archival research, forensic experts and curators concluded that the skulls were created in the nineteenth century using European technol…
Marian Apparitions as New Religious Movements
Marian apparitions, as diverse, global, and dynamic phenomena, offer opportunities for multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural analysis. We are pleased in this special issue to offer seven essays highlighting the increasing internationalization of Marian devotional movements. Our contributors, using both local case studies and a global, comparative view to explore instances of apparitions in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, collectively …
The American Academy of Religion Exploratory Session on Marian Apparitions and Theoretical Problems in Religious Studies (2015)
Hitler’s Monsters
As Eric Kurlander points out in the opening pages of this book, the image of Nazis engaged in forbidden occult research has become almost a cliché in popular culture, appearing everywhere from the Indiana Jones franchise to such films as Hellboy (2004) and Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). But with the rare exception of scholars such as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, historians have tended to downplay Nazi interest in the occult, ceding this …
Religious Aspects of Pseudoarchaeology
While pseudoarchaeology often presents claims in a scientific register, it favors fantastic or romantic theories of the past over the findings of professionalized archaeology. As archaeologists have attempted to interpret pseudoarchaeology, it has been implied that it often resembles religion more than science, both in terms of its epistemology and the types of worldviews it is deployed to legitimate. This article synthesizes the work of the auth…
Our Non-Christian Nation
In this book, law professor and humorist Jay Wexler argues that the Supreme Court has moved toward a looser understanding of the separation of church and state, now cemented with the appointments of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh; and that, in response, religious minorities have increasingly come forward demanding their place alongside the Christian majority in the public square through such activities as requesting to give prayer invocations b…
Speak of the Devil
Since it was founded in 2013, The Satanic Temple has spread across the United States and throughout the world. Unlike other forms of Satanism, The Satanic Temple is highly politically active. It has invoked religious freedom to campaign for easier access to abortion, exemption from laws that allow administering corporal punishment to students, and implementing Satanic after-school clubs in elementary schools. While this group remains highly contr…
Philosophy (17 obras) · Sociology (16 obras) · Art (15 obras) · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices (15 obras) · History (11 obras) · Law (10 obras) · Political science (10 obras) · Literature (9 obras) · Aesthetics (8 obras) · Epistemology (7 obras)