Religion

On the evening of February 22nd, in the inviting ambiance of the Common Room at the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR), an event unfurled that beckoned the searching and the sincere alike: "What is the Point of Life? Theosis in Yoruba...

For our fourth episode, we welcome the acclaimed novelist and scholar Victoria Nelson. Nelson is the academic doyen of what is today labeled Occulture Studies. Her first monograph on the supernatural in popular culture, The Secret Life of Puppets (2001)...

For our third episode, we welcome the #1 New York Times best-selling author Whitley Strieber. Whitley discusses his boyhood as a Roman Catholic, the erotic dimensions of alien contact, his lifelong meditative practice, evolving views of the afterlife, and...

For episode five of the pod, we are honored to welcome Jeffrey J. Kripal, J. Newton Rayzor Chair of Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. In this career-spanning chat, we discuss Kripal’s Catholic upbringing, psychoanalysis, and the...

The "Psychedelic Intersections: Cross-cultural Manifestations of the Sacred" conference, held at Harvard Divinity School on February 17, 2024, provided an unprecedented forum for the exploration of psychedelic spirituality across diverse cultural and...

As part of the Psychedelics and the Future of Religion series, the Center for the Study of World Religions presented an interview with author Mike Jay about his two most recent books, Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind, and Mescaline: A...

Professor Charles Stang, CSWR Director, delivered a lecture entitled, “The Call of the Ancient: Psychedelic Pasts and Futures ” at the "Archives of the Impossible" Conference at Rice University on May 13, 2023. What is at stake in our knowing whether and...

Professor Charles Stang, CSWR Director delivered a lecture entitled, “Apopha sis and Angelology: Henry Corbin’s Neoplatonism” at the 2023 Eranos conference in Switzerland. “This is not merely a minor chapter in the history of ideas, but rather a case...

A discussion with Jocelyne Cesari, HDS T. J. Dermot Dunphy Visiting Professor of Religion, Violence, and Peacebuilding, on her recent publication, We God's People: Christianity, Islam and Hinduism in the World of Nations. David F. Holland (HDS) and...