Extrasensory perception (ESP), also known as a sixth sense, or cryptaesthesia, is a claimed paranormal ability pertaining to reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses, but sensed with the mind. The term was adopted by Duke University botanist J. B. Rhine to denote psychic abilities such as intuition, telepathy, psychometry, clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, empathy and their trans-temporal operation as precognition or retrocognition.
Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena and other paranormal claims, for example, those related to near-death experiences, synchronicity, apparitional experiences, etc. Criticized as being a pseudoscience, the majority of mainstream scientists reject it. Parapsychology has also been criticized by mainstream critics for claims by many of its practitioners that their studies are plausible despite a lack of convincing evidence after more than a century of research for the existence of any psychic phenomena.
A Book of Shadows is a book containing religious text and instructions for magical rituals found within the Neopagan religion of Wicca. Since its conception, it has made its way into many pagan practices and paths. The most famous Book of Shadows was created by the pioneering Wiccan Gerald Gardner sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s, and which he utilised first in his Bricket Wood coven and then in other covens which he founded in following decades. The Book of Shadows is also used by other Wiccan traditions, such as Alexandrian Wicca and Mohsianism, and with the rise of books teaching people how to begin following non-initiatory Wicca in the 1970s onward, the idea of the Book of Shadows was then further propagated amongst solitary practitioners unconnected to earlier, initiatory traditions.
Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson or An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man is the first volume of the All and Everything trilogy written by the Greek-Armenian mystic G. I. Gurdjieff. The All and Everything trilogy also includes Meetings with Remarkable Men and Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I Am'.
Marcello Truzzi was an American sociologist and academic who was professor of sociology at New College of Florida and later at Eastern Michigan University, founding co-chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), a founder of the Society for Scientific Exploration, and director for the Center for Scientific Anomalies Research.
Joseph Banks Rhine, usually known as J. B. Rhine, was an American botanist who founded parapsychology as a branch of psychology, founding the parapsychology lab at Duke University, the Journal of Parapsychology, the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man, and the Parapsychological Association. Rhine wrote the books Extrasensory Perception and Parapsychology: Frontier Science of the Mind.
De praestigiis daemonum, translated as On the Tricks of Demons, is a book by medical doctor Johann Weyer, also known as Wier, first published in Basel in 1563. The book argues that witchcraft does not exist and that those who claim to practice it are suffering from delusions, which should be treated as mental illnesses, rather than punished as witchcraft. It was influential in the abolishment of witchcraft trials in the Netherlands.
Robert Henry Thouless was an English psychologist and parapsychologist. He is best known as the author of Straight and Crooked Thinking, which describes flaws in reasoning and argument.
Richard Cavendish was a British historian who was considered Britain's foremost authority on the subjects of occultism, religion, the tarot, and mythology.
John Lambe was an English astrologer and quack physician who, by around 1625, served George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham as his personal advisor.
New religious movements and cults have appeared as themes or subjects in literature and popular culture. Beginning in the 1700s authors in the English-speaking world began introducing members of "cults" as antagonists. Satanists, Yakuzas, Triads, Thuggees, and sects of the Latter Day Saint movement were popular choices.
William Buehler Seabrook was an American occultist, explorer, traveler, journalist and writer, born in Westminster, Maryland. He began his career as a reporter and city editor of the Augusta Chronicle in Georgia, worked at the New York Times, and later became a partner in an advertising agency in Atlanta. He is well-known for his writing on, and engaging in, cannibalism.
The Psychology of the Psychic is a skeptical analysis of some of the most publicized cases of parapsychological research by psychologists David Marks and Richard Kammann. The first edition, published in 1980, highlights some of the best-known cases from the 1970s. The second edition, published in 2000, adds information from the intervening 20 years as well as substantially more documentation and references to the original material.
The Discoverie of Witchcraft is a book published by the English gentleman Reginald Scot in 1584, intended as an exposé of early modern witchcraft. It contains a small section intended to show how the public was fooled by charlatans, which is considered the first published material on illusionary or stage magic.
Kenneth Macfarlane Walker was a British author, philosopher and urological surgeon.
Joseph Gaither Pratt was an American psychologist who specialized in the field of parapsychology. Among his research interests were extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, mediumship and poltergeists.
Daughter of Darkness is a 1972 psychological thriller written by Jan and Robert Lowell, a husband and wife who use the joint pseudonym J. R. Lowell.
Joseph Francis Rinn (1868–1952) was an American magician and skeptic of paranormal phenomena.
Witch trials and witch related accusations were at a high during the early modern period in Britain, a time that spanned from the beginning of the 16th century to the end of the 18th century.
Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft Addressed to J. G. Lockhart, Esq. (1830) was a study of witchcraft and the supernatural by Sir Walter Scott. A lifelong student of folklore, Scott was able to draw on a wide-ranging collection of primary and secondary sources. His book found many readers throughout the 19th century, and exercised a significant influence in promoting the Victorian vogue for Gothic and ghostly fiction. Though on first publication it met with mixed reviews, it is now recognised as a pioneering work of scientific anthropology, treating of its subject in an acute and analytical way which prefigures later scholarship on the subject, as well as presenting a highly readable collection of supernatural anecdotes.
