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Hiroshi Motoyama’s Kundalini and Chakra Archive

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Hiroshi Motoyama (1925–2015) was a Japanese parapsychologist and philosopher who played a notable role in modern scientistic and religious circles in Japan, Europe, and North America. As a Shinto priest, yogic practitioner, and founder of several...

Nathan of Gaza’s Prophetic Vision

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Abraham Nathan ben Elisha Hayyim Ashkenazi (ca. 1643/4–1680), more commonly referred to as Nathan of Gaza, was a gifted kabbalist and Torah scholar who served as the central prophetic figure of Sabbateanism, the messianic movement surrounding Sabbatai...

Video: Psychedelics and the Future of Religion: Expanding Mindscapes with Erika Dyck and Christian Elcock

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As part of the Psychedelics and the Future of Religion Series CSWR Research Assistants, Jeffrey Breau and Paul Gillis-Smith engage in conversation with Erika Dyck and Christian Elcock to discuss their new book, Expanding Mindscapes. In this conversation...

Video: Jerusalem: City of the Book

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What might it look like to see Jerusalem, with its cross-hatched encounters between people of diverse faiths and cultures, as a city of the book? Merav Mack and Benjamin Balint share their forays into the city's most inaccessible reaches in the making of...

From Messiah to Mushroom: A Brief History of John Marco Allegro’s The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross

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Magic

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Few core concepts in the study of religion are as contested as “magic.” The term has served a variety of purposes and functions throughout history, often polemical ones, and is defined in diverging ways by scholars and religious actors. Magic has been...

Video: The Case Against Buddhism

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Presented as a rational, scientific, and practical religion, modern Buddhism appears to have all the answers. Even the secular forms of mindfulness promise ever-increasing practitioners that Buddhist meditation will provide the solutions to all their...

Video: Imagining Judeo-Christian America—Religion, Secularism, and the Redefinition of Democracy

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K. Healan Gaston, Harvard Divinity School Lecturer in American Religious History and Ethics, discusses her recent publication, Imagining Judeo-Christian America—Religion, Secularism, and the Redefinition of Democracy. FULL TRANSCRIPT: [MUSIC PLAYING]...

Video: Reading the Hindu and Christian Classics: Why and How Deep Learning Still Matters

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On December 14, 2020, Francis X. Clooney, S.J., HDS Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology, discussed his recent publication, Reading the Hindu and Christian Classics: Why and How Deep Learning Still Matters. Jon D. Levenson...

Video: Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

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Where do our ideas about how the economy works, and our views on economic policy, come from? Critics of contemporary economics complain that belief in free markets, among economists as well as many ordinary citizens, is a form of religion. The...

Video: The Archaeology of Ecstasy: Psychedelics in the Ancient Mediterranean World

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Can archaeology help us recover the ecstatic experiences of ancient peoples from the Aegean or Near East? And, if so, what evidence is there that such ecstatic experiences were induced by what we now call “psychedelics”? To what degree was the ancient...

Video: Peril to Democracy: Racism and Nationalism in America

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The after effects of the 1/6 Insurrection continue to reverberate across America. Since that fateful and disturbing day, pushbacks against the teaching of race in America, abortion rollbacks, and Covid denialism have swept across the country. What has...