Spiritualism

From rebel to retail − inside Bob Marley’s posthumous musical and merchandising empire

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, February 6, 2024

But as a music industry scholar, I wonder if the film is yet another extension of the Marley marketing machine.

Key Points: 
  • But as a music industry scholar, I wonder if the film is yet another extension of the Marley marketing machine.
  • This image, however, is fundamentally at odds with what has happened to Marley’s name and likeness since his death.
  • Now you can buy Bob Marley backpacks, Bob Marley jigsaw puzzles – even Bob Marley flip-flops.

On and off the record

  • According to the publication, Marley earned US$16 million – or rather, his estate did.
  • The commercial power of Bob Marley’s name generates the royalties earned by the estate, though precise percentages are not publicly available.
  • One posthumous musical release, in particular, has been a gold mine: Marley’s “Legend” compilation album.
  • But the material absent from that record speaks volumes.
  • These tracks don’t appear on “Legend.” In fact, none of the tracks from “Survival” do.
  • And so four decades after his death, Bob Marley remains the world’s top reggae artist.

Merchandising a mystic

  • In an era of minuscule music royalties, a large portion of that $16 million in earnings also comes from merchandising, which has further watered down Marley’s revolutionary politics and spiritualism.
  • Thanks to what two writers called “the Disneyfication of all matters Marley,” you can now buy Bob Marley-themed coffee, ice cream and body wash. There’s sustainably sourced, Bob Marley-branded audio equipment, in addition to a line of Bob Marley skateboard decks.
  • It’s funded by the American private equity company Privateer Holdings, which the Marley family had approached to gauge their interest in collaboration for the product’s release.
  • The creators of the Starbucks logo were hired to design the logo for Marley Natural, further underlining the venture’s commercial ties.
  • In 2001, his daughter Cedella, who runs parts of the estate, released a fashion line called Catch a Fire.
  • On it, tracks like “Slave Driver,” “Concrete Jungle” and “400 Years” connect the poverty of the present to the injustices of the past.

The reel situation of ‘One Love’

  • The estate has long portrayed the rampant commercialization of the Marley name and image as an important way to sustain and spread the artist’s ideals.
  • However, I think it’s important to ensure that the artistic and cultural values embedded in his music do not become clouded in a haze of rampant commercialization.
  • And his anti-imperialist messages, as warmongers threaten basic human rights around the world, are perhaps needed now more than ever.


Mike Alleyne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Kandinsky at the Art Gallery of New South Wales: a precious gem of a show celebrating the transformative power of art

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, November 8, 2023

His work and theories on art profoundly influenced the School of Paris, the American Abstract Expressionists, as well as the expressionist painters working in Australia.

Key Points: 
  • His work and theories on art profoundly influenced the School of Paris, the American Abstract Expressionists, as well as the expressionist painters working in Australia.
  • This is a precious gem of a show that celebrates the transformative power of art – its ability to transcend the material realm and to nourish us spiritually.

Russian imagery, spiritual realm and colour auras

  • He expressed a profound belief in Russian Orthodoxy as the sole true faith.
  • Building on the heritage of spiritualism inherent in Russian Orthodox icons and the inventive whimsical narratives in Russian folk art, Kandinsky also explored the spiritual realm and colour auras integral to theosophy.
  • He wrote the single most influential essay in 20th-century art, On the spiritual in art, in 1911.

Speaking directly to the soul

  • Kandinsky invites the viewer to take a walk in the painting and explore an enchanted landscape.
  • A mistrust of science was linked to a mistrust of the physical world observed through the senses and the desire to explore a spiritual reality that bypasses empirical observation and speaks directly to the soul.
  • The eye is the hammer, while the soul is a piano of many strings […] [harmony rests] on the principle of innermost necessity.
  • The eye is the hammer, while the soul is a piano of many strings […] [harmony rests] on the principle of innermost necessity.
  • Read more:
    Three questions not to ask about art – and four to ask instead


Sasha Grishin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

‘The Undead Archive’ exhibit: Contemporary artists respond to 1920s photos of mediums manifesting spirits

Retrieved on: 
Friday, October 27, 2023

In Dr. Hamilton’s darkened seance chamber, as Doyle would later write, he experienced a luminous table fly into the air.

Key Points: 
  • In Dr. Hamilton’s darkened seance chamber, as Doyle would later write, he experienced a luminous table fly into the air.
  • Today, Hamilton’s legacy includes an uncanny trove of photographs related to his investigations of paranormal materializations.
  • A new scholarly collection of essays and an art exhibit, The Undead Archive: 100 Years of Photographing Ghosts, at the University of Winnipeg use an art historical lens to contextualize these uncanny photographs.

The ‘psychic force’

  • Doyle recounted how the table clattered again and again entirely on its own, with no sitter touching it.
  • One moment, it was quiet.
  • Psychic force, as some scientists believed, would extrude from the body of the medium and manifest as a organic plasm known as ectoplasm, through which spirits could communicate.

Expression of bereavement

  • It was not uncommon after the losses of the First World War and the 1919 influenza pandemic for North Americans to participate in seances and dabble in spiritualism as an expression of bereavement, as historians Felicity Hamer and Esyllt Jones have outlined.
  • Read more:
    Spirit photography captured love, loss and longing

    Interestingly, Hamilton rejected the popular religion of spiritualism, critiquing it as a cult.

Inspired ‘Ghostbusters’

  • They were also praised by researchers, including two who got into a famous public argument with the magician Houdini after claiming to debunk his magic, and Samuel Aykroyd, actor Dan Aykroyd’s great-grandfather.
  • The younger Aykroyd’s 1984 blockbuster Ghostbusters brought ectoplasm into popular culture.

‘Undead Archive’ exhibit

  • The exhibit, The Undead Archive: 100 Years of Photographing Ghosts, at the University of Winnipeg’s Gallery 1C03, and the University of Manitoba’s School of Art and Archives and Special Collections, similarly focuses on artistic interpretations of this mysterious substance.
  • Works include stop-motion videos of ectoplasm morphing into recognizable shapes: one by Shannon Taggart and one by Grace Williams.

Unseen, suppressed spiritual work

  • Erika DeFreitas uses crocheted doilies instead of ectoplasm, calling attention to unseen labour mediums carried out to support psychical researchers.
  • KC Adams, an Anishinaabe, Ininew and British artist living in Manitoba researched and created a virtual reality artwork for the exhibition that examines Ininew burial rituals suppressed under the Indian Act.

Pandemics and forgetting

  • In Burrows’s image, Tam looks upwards, as if in a trance, and is surrounded by green beads imitating the COVID-19 virus.
  • In the early days of the pandemic, Dr. Tam was constantly on national TV and social media, like a diviner laying out warnings.

Winnipeg as ‘psychic centre’

  • After sitting with the Hamiltons in their seance laboratory, in a July 5, 1923 letter to Lillian Hamilton, Doyle described Winnipeg as a “psychic centre,” in many ways divining Winnipeg’s loss of status as “Chicago of the North,” offering an alternative moniker.
  • The idea of Winnipeg as a supernatural place has been taken up by artists and authors, exemplified by filmmaker Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg, as well as the exhibition art, much of it created during COVID-19 lockdowns.


Serena Keshavjee receives funding from SSHRC.

Captivating and cathartic, a visionary and a truth-teller: playing Sinéad O'Connor’s music was my education

Retrieved on: 
Friday, July 28, 2023

Those records cut right through the other stuff I was listening to: guitar bands with men mostly.

Key Points: 
  • Those records cut right through the other stuff I was listening to: guitar bands with men mostly.
  • Music that told stories full of detail and delivered with sadness and tenderness and anger.
  • Read more:
    Sinéad O'Connor: a troubled soul with immense talent and unbowed spirit

A particular kind of passion

    • Troy was the first single from the first album, but did not become a huge hit.
    • I remember it
      Dublin in a rainstorm
      Sitting in a long grass in summer
      Keeping warm.
    • Tender and lilting at the beginning with shades of traditional Irish folk singing, and then, out of the blue, shockingly angry.
    • This seemed like serious, grown-up songwriting, full of a particular kind of passion.
    • O'Connor’s ability to contrast the personal detail with big picture politics was second to none and such a fine feature of her songwriting.

Courage and insight

    • She was so often dismissed by commentators as mad, rather than respected for her courage and insight.
    • As we know now, she was completely right about the things she spoke up about.
    • Her critique of religion and politics and her later explorations of Islam and Rastafarianism showed her seeking, questioning mind.

Religion shapes vaccine views – but how exactly? Our analysis looks at ideas about God and beliefs about the Bible

Retrieved on: 
Monday, July 17, 2023

“I never saw that coming,” Francis Collins, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, commented in 2022.

Key Points: 
  • “I never saw that coming,” Francis Collins, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, commented in 2022.
  • Even today, three years after the start of the pandemic, about 1 in 5 Americans have not received a single dose of any COVID-19 vaccine.
  • Someone’s feelings about vaccines in general might differ from their feelings about one specific type of vaccine, for instance.
  • However, Christians represented the bulk of the sample, given their larger share of the American population, and so our research focuses heavily on on their views.

Bible beliefs

    • One part of religious life that social scientists are often interested in is people’s views of the Bible.
    • We found that respondents who see the Bible as either the “inspired” or “the actual word of God” were less likely to see vaccines in general – not the COVID-19 vaccine in particular – as safe and effective, compared with those who see the Bible as just a book of history and morality created by humans.
    • All else being equal, those who said that the Bible is the literal word of God, for instance, scored 18% higher on our measure of general vaccine skepticism than those who see the Bible as having no divine source or inspiration.

God and country

    • One factor could be Christian nationalism, which has been increasingly visible in the public sphere since Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency.
    • A 1-point increase in agreement meant someone was 17% less likely to have received or plan to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
    • Another of our studies focused on how people view God.
    • Our data showed that simply believing there is a God, or a higher power that supervises the world, does not make an individual less likely to have received the COVID-19 vaccine.
    • On the other hand, believing that God can and will actively intervene in the world does make a difference.

New Release from Palmetto Publishing, TACHYON UNIVERSE, reconciles general relativity with quantum mechanics, and God with Physics.

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, July 12, 2023

In Tachyon Universe, author Samuel Console shares his incredible journey from not believing in God to having a series of epiphanies that changed his entire worldview.

Key Points: 
  • In Tachyon Universe, author Samuel Console shares his incredible journey from not believing in God to having a series of epiphanies that changed his entire worldview.
  • Indeed, Console’s entire conceptualization of God has evolved in ways that many readers will find challenging, enlightening, and intellectually stimulating.
  • Console has come to believe that quantum physics holds the answer to how we might frame spiritualism in view of science.
  • This extraordinary vision is a motivating and thought-provoking read for anyone who enjoys intersectional science and theology content.

White Lotus Day celebrates the 'founding mother of occult in America,' Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Retrieved on: 
Friday, May 5, 2023

Every May 8, thousands of people celebrate White Lotus Day, commemorating a remarkable and controversial Russian American woman: spiritual leader Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who died in 1891.

Key Points: 
  • Every May 8, thousands of people celebrate White Lotus Day, commemorating a remarkable and controversial Russian American woman: spiritual leader Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who died in 1891.
  • HPB, as followers affectionately call her, is remembered as a co-founder of the Theosophical Society.
  • Aiming to create a universal brotherhood of humanity, theosophy claimed that its tenets came from spiritual masters in the Himalayas.

The ‘veiled years’

    • Blavatsky was born into a noble family in the Russian Empire, within the territory of modern Ukraine.
    • As a child, she read occult literature at her grandfather’s home, sparking a lifelong desire to unlock secrets of the universe.
    • Together with other leaders who later joined the theosophical movement, they popularized Buddhist and Hindu ideas in the West, introducing concepts such as karma and reincarnation.

Universal religion

    • All objects, animate and inanimate, share the same essence, and the goal of human evolution is spiritual liberation, which might be attainable after many reincarnations.
    • Styling itself as a universal “wisdom religion,” theosophy aimed to merge knowledge from philosophy, religion and science to explain secret laws governing the universe.
    • To this day, the society’s official motto is “No Religion Higher Than Truth,” and the main objectives are “to form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity,” to “encourage the comparative study of religion, philosophy, and science,” and to “investigate unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in humanity,” according to the Theosophical Society in America.

Lasting stereotypes

    • English translations of ancient Indian texts and popular books about Buddhism fostered such interest and created fertile ground for theosophy to gain popularity in the West.
    • Her descriptions paint an idealized picture of religious and philosophical traditions she portrayed as superior to materialistic Western modernity.
    • In some ways, these ideas echoed common stereotypes in “Orientalist” art and writing of the era, which often depicted Asian cultures as unchanging and exotic.

Complicated legacy

    • Unlike many other scholars of India in the 19th century, however, she spent considerable time there, and in her writings from that period she often expresses outrage at British colonial injustices.
    • But her legacy is complex.
    • It is Blavatsky’s role in popularizing Eastern spiritual traditions abroad that has been her most lasting impact – even if her ideas were often unorthodox.

'Who the hell is Edgar?' – a viral Eurovision song about Edgar Allan Poe evokes a strange history of mediums and creative possession

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, May 4, 2023

“Who the hell is Edgar?” ask Teya and Salena, two young women fronting Austria’s entry to this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.

Key Points: 
  • “Who the hell is Edgar?” ask Teya and Salena, two young women fronting Austria’s entry to this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
  • Replete with dance routine, fake moustaches and a catchy chorus, their viral video and song attributes their success as songwriters to possession by the 19th-century author, poet and gothic celebrity Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849):
    There’s a ghost in my body and he is a lyricist
    It is Edgar Allan Poe, and I think he can’t resist
    Yeah, his brain is in my hand, and it’s moving really fast
    Don’t know how he possessed me, but I’m happy that he did
    There’s a ghost in my body and he is a lyricist
    It is Edgar Allan Poe, and I think he can’t resist
    Yeah, his brain is in my hand, and it’s moving really fast
    Don’t know how he possessed me, but I’m happy that he did

Channelling spirits

    • In the 1850s and 1860s, a group of young female spiritualists wrote and published poetry from the “spirit of Edgar A. Poe”.
    • These mediums claimed they could channel the spirits of loved ones through possessed speech, musical instruments and automatic writing.
    • They also maintained they could channel the spirits of celebrity ghosts, including recently deceased presidents, global historical figures and well-known writers.
    • Read more:
      Depression and language: analysing Edgar Allan Poe's writings to solve the mystery of his death

The living and the dead

    • He asks his readers to consider at what point death truly occurs if the dead can still speak or inhabit the bodies of the living.
    • Poe returned to the figure of the dead or dying beautiful woman throughout his career.
    • Today we can bring back the voices of the dead through sampling and even AI.
    • But the dead might also be said to survive in the creative responses they continue to inspire.

Smoke and Mirrors

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, March 22, 2023

LOS ANGELES, March 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - On 25 March, renowned mixed media photographer and NFT photography advocate Justin Aversano will debut the latest iteration of his acclaimed series 'Smoke and Mirrors' at Gabba Gallery, Los Angeles.

Key Points: 
  • LOS ANGELES, March 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - On 25 March, renowned mixed media photographer and NFT photography advocate Justin Aversano will debut the latest iteration of his acclaimed series 'Smoke and Mirrors' at Gabba Gallery, Los Angeles.
  • The exhibition will feature 78 limited edition silkscreen prints attached to NFTs that reimagine a tarot deck through the medium of photography.
  • Smoke and Mirrors presents a timely exploration of memory, history, spiritualism and psychogeography of Aversano's sitters with a nod to the global growing interest in technopaganism and spirituality expressed through photography.
  • Marrying the worlds of occult and crypto, Aversano's evocative portraits showcase a sense of community, family, love, grief and individualism.

Former High Ranking Priest Casting Spell's Now Teaches Christian's How to Walk a Prayerful Life Against Dark Forces in the World

Retrieved on: 
Monday, February 27, 2023

Ramirez shares with Christians how to conquer the enemy's demonic attacks with power through Christ.

Key Points: 
  • Ramirez shares with Christians how to conquer the enemy's demonic attacks with power through Christ.
  • It’s a great reminder and an encouragement to all Christian believers that while the thief comes to kill, steal, and destroy, Christ gives life abundantly.
  • They have lulled us to sleep, allowing the enemy to get away with great deception to destroy our lives.
  • He is an internationally well-known evangelist, author, and highly sought‐after speaker who teaches believers worldwide how to defeat the enemy.