In 1973 a study in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion surveyed 434 people in the Greater Los Angeles area and found that approximately 44 percent of respondents had experienced some sort of encounter with the dead. Respondents reported contact through direct visits from the dead, séances and most often dreams, which accounted [...]
Often times the memory of someone lingers on with us through material objects that they favor, or sensory information that we link with them, be it the scent of a certain perfume or the taste of their favorite food. Their persona lives on through the living, in the kind of afterlife that Sheffler touches on. [...]
For the Aymara people they believe that a person’s being is comprised of seven souls. One of these souls stays with the skull of an individual when he or she dies, and has the power to provide protection, heal, and enter into a person’s dreams. These skulls are called natitas and every year to mark [...]
Maruyama Ōkyo by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. Hauntings, spirits, our interaction with the departed has always been fascinating. Unexplainable happenings with ghosts or spirits has always been a part of my cultural background but it didn’t solidify until I had experienced something that could be defined as such. Recently I began reading a [...]
Due to a recent influx of information concerning the progress of the anthropocene, and its intersection with the continuing spiral of the health food and diet industries through the world market, it is easy to see concerns relating to immortality, sustainability, and livelihood that all contribute to notable changes in dietary behaviors as well as [...]
“I am a 21st Century person who was accidentally launched in the 20th. I have a deep nostalgia for the future.” -FM-2030 FM-2030 was born Fereidoun M. Esfandiary in 1930. He is often credited as a foundational transhumanist. Broadly, transhumanism is a range of cultural, ideological, and political approaches to thinking about the future of [...]
Widespread monogamy’s implementation into society first occurred in Germany during the fifteenth century and was catalyzed by the Italian Renaissance, as a practice whose popularity took hold as a type of cultural safeguard, such as the also popular persecution of witches during the Protestant Reformation. This reterritorialization of “taboo” behaviors, especially the sexuality of women, [...]
Satanism as a concept tends to bring to mind notions of evil , darkness, and perhaps even death. This a misconception, as very well-known examples of Satanism are not even concerned with devil-worship. Of course, there are religions existing today, whose philosophies and ideologies are centered around worshipping the devil, but not the [...]
The concept of immortality is often thought of in regards to legacy: a byproduct of the self that transcends an individual lifetime. There is so often a drive to put something meaningful into the world that can both represent who we are and extend beyond the time we spend consciously and bodily on the earth. [...]
I have been intrigued with the ‘Supermarket of the Dead’ ever since I first found the English catalogue in the Perez Art Museum in Miami. ‘Supermarket of the Dead’ was a show organized in Germany at the Dresden State Art Collection. More on the details below, or on the website, but just coming off the [...]