Sara McNulty

Publication Date

11-1980

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

Erika Brady, Lynwood Montell, Cheryl Keyes

Comments

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Original department Modern Languages & Intercultural Studies

Degree Program

Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology

Degree Type

Master of Arts

Abstract

This study provides a folkloristic interpretation of trance channeling as a New Age phenomenon through the activities of two practitioners and a group of their followers who met the first time in November 1988 and again in June 1989 for individual and group therapy in Western Kentucky.

A portion of the paper describes a set of shared beliefs tantamount to an emerging new religion — an integrated belief system based not on Biblical teachings, but on structures deriving from New Age thought and action. Thus, the practitioners socially constructed a situation in which participants experienced symbolic meanings enhancing beliefs of what they already held. Moreover, the efficacy of the channeling session, while attributed to the supernatural agency within beliefs and expectations defined by the group, can be attributed equally to human interaction expressed via group dynamics.

The thesis presents a composite profile of eighteen female participants attending the November 1988 session and focuses on five women who typify the personalities at the 1988 and 1989 channeling sessions as well as other sessions the practitioners conducted in the tri-state area between May 1987 and May 1990. Half of the eighteen women attending suffered trauma, including sexual abuse, during childhood and adolescence. Many participants, disenamored with conventional counseling, sought those practitioners more for their reputed contact with and knowledge of the spirit realm than for their academic training. In quest of new meaning for their lives and reassurance that they could overcome obstacles, these women believed they could replace their anguish and doubt with hope through New Age therapy.

Disciplines

Anthropology | Folklore | Social and Behavioral Sciences | Social and Cultural Anthropology

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