Pub Date : 2020-09-19DOI: 10.5325/preternature.9.2.0299
Pugliese
abstract:Most haunted houses in literature are inhabited or visited by supernatural entities, often ghosts. At times, they are haunted not by the ghosts of previous inhabitants but by the “residual energies” such people have left behind. Most presences and energies that haunt a house are malevolent, but they originate in human beings—meaning that other human beings, whether the new inhabitants or paranormal investigators, are usually able to understand their objectives, if not necessarily foil their plans. But what if the house itself is haunting its inhabitants; what if the house itself is a malevolent sentient entity?
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Pub Date : 2020-09-19DOI: 10.5325/preternature.9.2.0243
A. Masquelier
abstract:In this article, I explore the possession of schoolgirls by spirits based on ethnographic research conducted in the district of Dogondoutchi, Niger. Besides pointing to the struggles girls face in a country where women’s education remains controversial, possession brings attention to a past Muslim religious authorities have tried to silence. When trees were cut to make space for schools, their spiritual occupants were uprooted. Far from vanishing, however, the displaced spirits now haunt the very venues whose emergence contributed to their displacement. I consider how the irruption of spirits in schools highlights the fraught relation between Islam and animism, suggesting how Islam and animism exist in and through each other. Weber wrote how modern times were about the disenchantment of the world, yet he knew gods and spirits do not completely disappear. It is this predicament and the conundrums it gives rise to that the attacks on Nigerien schoolgirls exemplify.
{"title":"A Disenchanted Landscape? Jinn, Schoolgirls, and the Demonization of the Past in Niger","authors":"A. Masquelier","doi":"10.5325/preternature.9.2.0243","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/preternature.9.2.0243","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:In this article, I explore the possession of schoolgirls by spirits based on ethnographic research conducted in the district of Dogondoutchi, Niger. Besides pointing to the struggles girls face in a country where women’s education remains controversial, possession brings attention to a past Muslim religious authorities have tried to silence. When trees were cut to make space for schools, their spiritual occupants were uprooted. Far from vanishing, however, the displaced spirits now haunt the very venues whose emergence contributed to their displacement. I consider how the irruption of spirits in schools highlights the fraught relation between Islam and animism, suggesting how Islam and animism exist in and through each other. Weber wrote how modern times were about the disenchantment of the world, yet he knew gods and spirits do not completely disappear. It is this predicament and the conundrums it gives rise to that the attacks on Nigerien schoolgirls exemplify.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"12 1","pages":"243 - 266"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82964861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-19DOI: 10.5325/preternature.9.2.0139
Zawacki
abstract:The Middle English Gast of Gy is intimately concerned with the hermeneutic process. Irruptions of the preternatural are destabilizing events that threaten Church authority and so demand an interpretive response. The clerics in the poem serve as first-contact exegetes. They fulfill a vital, sacral function as interpreters of texts and phenomena, and as mediators between the mundane and the otherworldly. Hermes, a liminal god with dominion over both ghosts and the act of speech, is here deployed as a lens through which to view these separate duties and bring them together under a coherent conceptual heading. Gy then serves as an effective case study in how Church control is established over a disruptive paranormal event, how clerics in the field work at the discernment of spirits, and how orthodox understandings of the supernatural are formulated and propagated through dialogue and writing.
中古英语Gast of Gy与解释学过程密切相关。超自然的入侵是威胁教会权威的不稳定事件，因此需要解释性的回应。诗中的神职人员是第一次接触的注释者。作为文本和现象的诠释者，作为世俗和超凡脱俗之间的调解者，他们履行着至关重要的神圣职能。赫尔墨斯，一个对鬼魂和言语行为都有统治权的界限之神，在这里被用作一个镜头，通过它来观察这些分开的职责，并将它们放在一个连贯的概念标题下。然后，它作为一个有效的案例研究，教会如何控制一个破坏性的超自然事件，神职人员如何在野外工作，辨别灵魂，以及如何通过对话和写作来制定和传播超自然的正统理解。
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Pub Date : 2020-09-19DOI: 10.5325/preternature.9.2.0169
Daniel Attrell
abstract:This article explores how the planet Saturn was conceptualized in the premodern cosmology that influenced the Florentine Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), particularly in the Latin translations of Arabic astrological works from which he drew inspiration in the production of his medical guide and mirror for princes, the De vita libri tres (1489). It puts special attention on the secret role of the astro-magical treatise Picatrix in Ficino’s intellectual development and on some of the astrological correspondences or significations between Saturn and the concepts over which that planet was believed to hold dominion (e.g., melancholy, scholarship, and others). The article traces out some of the changes in the perceptions of Saturn, from his ambivalent role as a chthonic Roman divinity and the ruler of an agricultural golden age to a largely malefic force of nature in Late Antiquity up to Abū Maʿšar, and returning again to an ambivalent role as a volitional spiritual entity and a ruler of duality and extremes in the minds of astrologers from al-Qurṭubī (d. 964) to Ficino, who were also influenced by pseudo-Aristotelian, Aristotelian, Hermetic, and other pagan sources in constructing their knowledge of astral magic.
本文探讨了土星在影响佛罗伦萨文艺复兴时期哲学家马西利奥·菲西诺(1433-1499)的前现代宇宙学中是如何被概念化的，特别是在阿拉伯占星术作品的拉丁翻译中，他从这些作品中获得灵感，为王子制作了医疗指南和镜子，De vita libri tres(1489)。它特别关注了天文魔法论文Picatrix在菲西诺智力发展中的秘密作用，以及土星与被认为拥有统治地位的概念(例如，忧郁，学术等)之间的一些占星对应或意义。文章追溯了土星的一些观念的变化,从他的矛盾作为神秘的罗马神性和农业黄金时代的统治者,很大程度上有害的自然之力马在古代晚期Abūʿšar,并再次返回一个矛盾的角色作为意志的精神实体和尺子的二元性和极端思想的占星家al-Qurṭ乌兰巴托īFicino (d . 964),也受到pseudo-Aristotelian,亚里士多德,密封,以及其他异教的来源来构建他们的星界魔法知识。
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Pub Date : 2020-09-19DOI: 10.5325/preternature.9.2.0209
A. Diver
abstract:This article argues that Jane Eyre was both “witch” and witch-trialed. Her ability to perform “witchcraft” (within the framework of Victorian folklore) enabled her to endure and ultimately triumph over a litany of ordeals often associated with the witch-trials, namely, unjust accusations, societal and familial exclusion, poverty, abandonment, and physical and psychological abuse. She overcomes all obstacles with the help of heartfelt incantations (some spoken aloud, others silently willed), control of the elements (fire, water, storms, and moonlight feature prominently), innate occult abilities (extra-sensory perception and supernaturally sharp prescience), and the summoning of folklore and “familiars” (human, animal, spectral) to assist her along the way.
{"title":"Jane Eyre and Social Justice: How to Survive a (Victorian) “Witch” Trial","authors":"A. Diver","doi":"10.5325/preternature.9.2.0209","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/preternature.9.2.0209","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article argues that Jane Eyre was both “witch” and witch-trialed. Her ability to perform “witchcraft” (within the framework of Victorian folklore) enabled her to endure and ultimately triumph over a litany of ordeals often associated with the witch-trials, namely, unjust accusations, societal and familial exclusion, poverty, abandonment, and physical and psychological abuse. She overcomes all obstacles with the help of heartfelt incantations (some spoken aloud, others silently willed), control of the elements (fire, water, storms, and moonlight feature prominently), innate occult abilities (extra-sensory perception and supernaturally sharp prescience), and the summoning of folklore and “familiars” (human, animal, spectral) to assist her along the way.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"5 1","pages":"209 - 242"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81645023","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-19DOI: 10.5325/preternature.9.2.0267
Timothy Worrad
abstract:Between 1912 and 1978, the Smaragdum Thalasses Temple of the Order of the Stella Matutina (an offshoot of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) operated in Havelock North, New Zealand. Located beneath the heritage listed Whare Ra, or “House of the Sun,” this occult secret society studied and performed ceremonial magic for the purpose of spiritual enlightenment. This article explores the uncharacteristic longevity of the group, focusing on its timely arrival as an expression of the spiritual “third way,” its roots in a cultural movement called the Havelock Work, its unique temple space, and the supernatural contacts of its founders, Robert and Harriet Felkin. Analysis of primary source material drawn from private collections and independent publications sheds light on the little-known history of occultism in New Zealand.
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Pub Date : 2020-02-18DOI: 10.5325/preternature.9.1.0001
Melissa Ridley Elmes, A. Mittman, Thea Tomaini
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Pub Date : 2020-02-18DOI: 10.5325/preternature.9.1.0053
Lesley Kordecki
abstract:In the rather strange life of Saint Margaret of Antioch in John Lydgate's fifteenth-century (ca. 1426) Middle English version, The Legend of Seynt Margarete, Margaret is swallowed by the Devil in the form of a dragon, but after she performs the sign of the cross, the creature bursts into pieces, freeing her. Although the pervasive Devil/dragon character in medieval texts may seem too reductively metaphoric for serious monster scholars today, it is useful to explore what this particular religious appearance can show us in our study of a significant creature "other," the dragon—here encompassing patriarchy's ultimate gender other, the woman. I argue that the emblematic maneuver of this text, with its apocryphal detail of the dragon eating Margaret, although ostensibly written to inspire piety, also demonstrates the correspondence of marginalized others: a loquacious Devil/dragon and an articulate woman/saint.
在约翰·利德盖特(John Lydgate) 15世纪(约1426年)的中古英语版本《塞恩特·玛格丽特传奇》(the Legend of Seynt Margarete)中，安提阿圣玛格丽特(Saint Margaret of Antioch)相当奇怪的一生中，玛格丽特被魔鬼以龙的形式吞下，但在她做了十字架的手势后，魔鬼突然分裂成碎片，她获得了自由。尽管对于今天严肃的怪物学者来说，中世纪文本中普遍存在的魔鬼/龙角色似乎过于简化了隐喻，但在我们研究一个重要的生物“他者”(龙)时，探索这种特殊的宗教形象能向我们展示什么是有用的——在这里，龙包括了父权制的最终性别他者——女性。我认为，这篇文章的象征性手法，以及它关于龙吃掉玛格丽特的虚构细节，虽然表面上是为了激发虔诚，但也表明了被边缘化的其他人的对应关系:一个健谈的魔鬼/龙和一个能言善辩的女人/圣人。
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Pub Date : 2020-02-18DOI: 10.5325/preternature.9.1.0076
Suzy Woltmann
abstract:In this article, I examine reimaginings of myth and legend that subversively address the confrontation between hero and monster by recreating the villainous monster as protagonist. These adaptations disrupt the Self/Other binary, which consequently positions us in a state of empathetic abjection with the monster. Jorge Luis Borges's "The House of Asterion" and John Gardner's Grendel take notions of the monstrous abject in the popular imagination and recreate the myth of the Minotaur and the epic of Beowulf, respectively, from the point of view of the monstrous Other. Borges and Gardner rely on mythic and folkloric profanation to (re)write abject monsters. They intertextually invoke their parent texts and explore the monster's own maternal parentage, which leads to their eventual (and Evental) demise.
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Pub Date : 2020-02-18DOI: 10.5325/preternature.9.1.0097
Laura Davidel
abstract:This essay aims to provide a conceptualization of monstrosity in the case of Anne Rice's vampire archetype, not as effaced or eroded by humanity but performed under the pressure of a so-called morality compass. Through the treatment of agency in contrast with a determinist compulsive thirst, we can understand the vampire as a social creature that needs humanity both as an antithetical point of reference for its otherness, and as a goal in order to achieve reaggregation in the mortal world. By relying on Judith Butler's model of agency presented in her theories of gender identity as performative, on Sigmund Freud's theories regarding the compulsion to repeat, and finally on Brooke Kroeger's concept of passing, I propose an analysis of Rice's vampires as creatures endowed with an agentic power that stems from the struggle of performing the compulsive monstrous acts in a way that would somehow appease their guilty consciousness. I will explore the various modes in which vampires present their agentic power, namely the alternative modes of feeding, the choice of humans to transform, or the vampires' struggle to pass for humans as acts that, although monstrous, bypass the vampires' moral compass.
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