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SATAN / SATANISM Satan translated from the Hebrew, means 'the enemy'. Considered to be the embodiment of evil in Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions. Satan has many aliases, the Devil, the Prince of Darkness and Beelzebub being among the most common, it is used not to refer to him directly by as to utter the sound or name of Satan is thought to draw unwelcome attention. There are those who revere him as a deity, as a source of black magic, and rituals are performed to him. The worship of the Devil is known as Satanism.

Unlike many religions and philosophies, Satanism generally focuses upon the spiritual advancement of self, rather than upon submission to a deity or a set of moral codes. It should be noted also that so-called classic 'Satanism' is not actually known to be practised in the world today. This is the Satanism depicted during the Inquisition with tales of murder, incest and baby eating.

The emergence of modern Satanism was largely the result of a hoax carried out by French journalist Leo Taxil in the late nineteenth century. In 1884 Taxil published pamphlets detailing a vast satanic organisation, the Palladian order, which was associated with Freemasonry. After several years, during which the Catholic Church lent the anti-Palladian crusade its full support, Taxil announced that the whole things was a fraud, concocted to demonstrate how gullible the Catholic Church was. The word 'Satanism' first entered the English language in media accounts of the Palladian affair.

The 1960s and 70s saw a large scale campaign to prove that secret conspiracies of Satanists were at work in American society, committing crimes and encouraging sex, violence and revolution. These claims reached a peak of frenzy in the 1980s with dozens of satanic abuse accusations and prosecutions. The 1980s also saw the emergence of Satanism as a small but high profile sub culture among American teenagers. Drawing their inspiration from Anton LaVey's 'Satanic Bible', and from other Satan related ideas in literature, music and popular culture, adolescent Satanists became the focus of a great deal of debate and uproar in the media when a few disturbed teenagers committed crimes in the name of Satanism.

Many contemporary Satanists eschew traditional religious beliefs, attitudes and worship in favour of a more egotistic worldview and practices such as magic.

SHADOW According to Carl Jung, the shadow is the hidden or unconscious aspect of a person that the conscious self [the ego] has either repressed or ignored. The shadow is mostly composed of those elements of themselves a person finds distasteful, such as taboo urges, resentments and animal instincts. These repressed elements, however, still find a way to be heard by the projection of those qualities on to someone else. In other words, someone else is blamed for a persons own weaknesses. Despite negative associations of the shadow, acknowledging and assimilating it into the ego is, according to Jung, a sign of a healthy person.

SHAMAN A magician - priest - healer - wise person who serves tribal peoples of the Americas, India, Australia, Siberia and Mongolia, as well as in some northern European traditions. In other traditions shamans are also known as witch doctors or medicine men.

The shaman is a follower of a visionary tradition that reaches back to prehistory and is based on animistic ideas about the world. They are often well versed in herbalism and spiritual healing and can enter altered states of consciousness to tap into the elemental powers of nature and the spirit world for the health and well being of their people. They will typically use rhythmic drumming, dancing, chanting, fasting, drugs and vision quests to induce trance states, which allow the shamans should to enter the sprit world in order to heal, divine the future, communicate with spirits of the dead and perform other supernatural feats.

Shamans also consult spirit guides in the form of animal guardians called totems. They guide their people to awareness and maturity by helping hem to contact their own totem guides, or something through the use of psychogenic or psychedelic substances.

The shaman lives in two worlds: ordinary reality and non-ordinary reality called the 'shamanic state of consciousness'. The shaman remains lucid throughout his altered state, controls it and recalls afterwards what transpired during it. In this state he has access to information that is closed off during ordinary reality.

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH first organisation established to investigate the paranormal scientifically, set up in London in 1882. The Society for Psychical Research [SPR] was formed by a group of individuals whose aim was to discover scientific proof of spiritualist phenomena. In 1885 the SPR helped found the American Society for Psychical Research in Boston.

In time the SPR turned it attention from physical mediumship to other phenomena that might suggest evidence for ESP or survival after death, such a mental mediumship. By 1900 the Society had produced thousands of reports and articles as well as substantial works such as 'Phantasms of the Living' [1886], a huge study of apparitions, and 'Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death', a comprehensive study of evidence for survival.
By 1910 most of the key members of the group had died but after death they reportedly communicated through various mediums, providing evidence for cross correspondences.

The SPR differs from the American society in that for the most part it leaves research to its members, whereas in the ASPR this is left to the staff. Currently it runs a programme of monthly lectures with a variety of invited speakers, held in the Lecture Hall of the Kensington Public Library. Admission is free to SPR members, with an admission fee for non-members. The SPR also runs courses in psychic development and holds an annual conference at different venues around the UK. www.spr.ac.uk

The SPR maintains an impressive library and publishes research articles in the Society's 'Journal and Proceedings', which, since 1995, have appeared in a magazine called the 'Paranormal Review'. Research and information about the society is also available online www.spr.ac.uk

SOUL MATE the romantic belief that every person soul has a counterpart and true happiness and fulfilment can only be found by meeting and joining with that counterpart. In some cases this search may span several incarnations.
Some people consult psychics, astrologers and so on in an effort to find or attract their soul mate. Opinions differ as to whether soul mates will come together naturally or whether they must earn their affinity. It is generally thought, however, that an obsession with soul mates puts unnecessary pressure on a relationship by creating impossible expectations.

SPIRITa supernatural force of nature, discarnate entity or the animating essence within our physical bodies; sometimes referred to as soul but not precisely the same as the soul. Spirits can also represent places, such as the spirit of lakes, trees, mountains and scared sites.

Spirit is the divine essence of who we are, an individual part of the three aspects of human existence: mind, body and spirit. In many belief systems the spirit survives death and can be contacted by a medium on our plane of existence.

Spirits are commonplace in the religions and folklores of the world and come in a multitude of shapes and forms, such as fairies, elves, demons and angels. In some cultures they are also thought to personify characteristics and forces of nature, which are worshipped. They are believed to exist in an invisible realm but can be seen by persons with clairvoyance. They are also thought to intervene at times in the affairs of humanity, for better or for worse.
The term is often used to describe all non-physical entities, including ghosts, but a spirit is not strictly speaking the same as a ghost even though the distinction between the two is sometimes vague. Spiritualism refers to a belief in the immortality of the soul and to communication with spirits of the dead, according to medium Arthur Ford, spirit was 'nothing more than the stream of consciousness of a person with which we are familiar in every human being. This is what survives death not as a spiritual wraith but as an oblong blur.' Society for Psychical Research founder Frederick Myers suggested in his book 'Human Personality and Its Survival After Death' [1903] that the spirit is the unknown part of a mans personality, 'which we discern as operating before or after death in the methetherical environment.'

SPIRIT GUIDE A discarnate entity often perceived as the higher self or a spirit of the dead that serves as communications bridge, guardian or guide. In shamism the spirit guide is known as a totem animal in spiritualism it is known as the mediums control, while in witchcraft it is known as a familiar.

It is widely held around the world that every person has one or more spirit guides from birth that remain with the person throughout their life. At death these guides assist the soul in crossing over to death. Psychics are often very aware of their spirit guides. Some speak to them in dreams, see them clairvoyantly or receive clairaudient messages through meditation and visualisation. Children who have imaginary friends may be communicating with their guides.

SPIRITUALISM religious and social movement that began in the United States in 1848 and quickly spread to Britain and Europe. Interest peaked in the early twentieth century and then subsided, although today it still remains a vigorous religion around the world, especially Britain and America. Its appeal originally derived from the evidence it purported to provide of survival after death, manifested through mediums who allegedly communicated with spirits and performed paranormal feats.

Spiritualists believe that the soul survives death and make a transition to the spirit world. Communication with these souls is made possible through purposeful contact with the departed - a séance - via a medium. The medium goes into trance and through his or her psychic ability allegedly establishes a link between this world and the afterlife. The spirits then speak through the medium, who is temporarily possessed by this entity. This contact is taken as proof by believers that there is indeed life after death.

Spiritualism had a difficult relationship with Christianity from the onset. Some Christians reject it as Satanic and even tried to have it legally banned. Some spiritualists believed in breaking ties with religion while others sought the endorsement of the Church by advocating belief in Christian principles.

Today Spiritualist churches remain active in Britain, the United States, Brazil and other countries. The majority are modelled on Protestant churches but without a ministry. The emphasis is on spiritual healing [prayer, laying on of hands and energy transfer] and mental mediumship which can include trance messages communicated from spirits to the congregation. Spiritualists believe that their religion has been scientifically proved by the paranormal feats of mediums. This is because, according to believers, Spiritualism offers proof of life after death in a way no other religion can; the living can talk directly to their dearly departed, and, more importantly, learn how best to live to later profit after they themselves pass on.

The largest spiritualist organisation in the United States is the National Spiritualist Association of Churches of the USA but the largest spiritualist organisations in the world are in the UK: the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain and the Spiritualists National Union. Until 1951 Spiritualism had no legal status in the UK due to the Witchcraft Act of 1735, which enabled the prosecution of mediums as witches, but in 1951 that law was repealed and replaced by the fraudulent mediums' act.

STRING THEORY the theory that what are perceived, as particles are actually vibrations on strings on membranes in a 10- or 11-dimensional space. This theory resolves the incompatibility between general relativity [the principle that gravitational and inertial forces are equivalent] and quantum theory and unifies them.

String theory has been developed for several decades, with a goal to become 'the theory of everything', that is, to unify all four fundamental forces - gravity, electromagnetism, and strong and weak nuclear forces. A revolutionary discovery of the theory is that the while universe should have nine or ten dimensions of space, instead of three [length, width and height].

In an earlier version of string theory, it was assumed that only three dimensions are observed because the other extra dimensions are too small to be seen. However, a few years before 2000, researchers suggested that these extra dimensions could be as large as the ordinary dimensions. The reason they cannot be seen is because all matter and electromagnetic waves are confined in a three dimensional sub universe, called 'braneworld'.
String theory tries to explain multidimensional phenomena beyond Einstein's four dimensions [the three spatial ones plus time] and because it does this is has been proposed by some physicists as an explanation for so called paranormal phenomena. It attempts to address the mystery of the multi-dimensional nature of reality by hypothesizing the existence of hyperspaces that exist beyond the perceptual boundaries of the physical senses, and by so doing it could potentially validate psychic phenomena. Ultimately, it has been suggested that string theory will be capable of explaining everything there is to explain, including paranormal phenomena, but scientific research has not reached that stage yet and the suggestions remains controversial.

SUPEREGO according to Sigmund Freud, the superego is the higher part of the mind that gives a person a sense of right and wrong, of pride and guilt and of what is acceptable and what is not. It is the opposite of the id, which is the unconscious part of a person that only desires gratification of its own needs. The superego tends to make a person act in ways that are acceptable to society by repressing the needs of the id.

SYMBOL a symbol, in its basic sense, is a representational object or visual image for a concept, object, idea, quality or quantity. It expresses a concept or idea beyond the object or image itself. A symbol can be a material object whose shape or origin is related to the thing it represents: for instance, the cross is the main symbol of Christianity. A symbol can also be an image [icon] or a patter or colour, for example, the halo is a conventional symbol of sainthood in Christian imagery and the colour red is often used as a symbol for socialist movements. Symbols can also be immaterial entities like sounds, words and gestures, for example, bowing is a common way to indicate respect. The discipline of semiotics studies symbols and symbol systems in general; semantics is specially concerned with the meaning of words.

People respond to symbols both consciously and unconsciously every day. Symbolistic thought dates back to primitive times and in every culture, past and present, symbols play a crucial role both in religion and in society as a whole. Religious and metaphysical writing are known for their use of esoteric symbolism, because they are believed to contain secret wisdom assessable only to the initiated. Alchemical writings also made extensive use of symbols for spiritual and chemical processes [which practitioners also saw as symbols for each other]. Symbols also play a key part in magical ritual and practice because magic symbols are believed to be the keys to raising within the magician the qualities or abilities expressed by the symbols.

The interpretation of dreams as symbols of ones experiences is a main feature of Freudian psychoanalysis and Jungian analytical psychology, and the understanding of symbols and the integration of them into consciousness is an important part of various psychologies. Carl Jung believed that objects and ideas that become symbols are endowed with a great psychological power and can carry empowering messages to the psyche. According to Jung symbols are the language of the unconscious, but to be effective they must not be interpreted literally as their true meaning must always be beyond the reach of logic and comprehension.

Some common symbols
There are thousands of symbols that are recognised by most people all over the world, and millions more that are limited to certain religions, religions, societies, etc. Here is just a sample of the best known:

SYNCHRONICITY the phenomenon of simultaneous events occurring that are related but which have no discernible link to each other. Psychiatrist Carl Jung, who coined the phrase, felt the meaningful coincidences that linked seemingly unrelated and unconnected events happened for a reason. He spoke of synchronicity as being an 'acausal connecting principle' [i.e. a pattern of connection that is not explained by causality].

The concept of synchronicity has always been integral to Eastern thought but Jung was largely responsible for developing it in the West. He gave Albert Einstein credit for his inspiration - the two met when Einstein was developing his theory of relativity and it prompted Jung to consider a possible relativity of time as well as space. In his research Jung had encountered numerous synchronicities that he could not explain and which were so meaningful that their occurrence by chance would be highly improbable. As an example Jung quoted an incident that happened to one of his patients, who was describing a dream she had about a golden scarab. As she spoke Jung heard tapping at the window and when he opened it he found a scarabaeid beetle. His patient was so surprised by the coincidence that she stopped being defensive in therapy and started to consider what this could mean. Jung pointed out that the scarab was an archetypal symbol of rebirth and this led to greater maturity in his patient.

Jung also cited a personal example, and the following, from his 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections' [1962], sheds light both on the phenomenon itself and how Jung came to think about the relatedness between the inner and outer realms:

"I recall one time during the Second World War when I was returning home from Bollingen. I had a book with me, but could not read, for the moment the train started to move I was overpowered by the image of someone drowning. This was a memory of an accident that had happened while I was on military service. During the entire journey I could not rid myself of it. It struck me as uncanny, and I thought, "What has happened? Can there have been an accident?"
I got out at Erlenbach and walked home, still troubled by this memory. My second daughter's children were in the garden. The family was living with us, having returned to Switzerland from Paris because of the war. The children stood looking rather upset, and when I asked, "Why what is the matter?" they told me that Adrian, then the youngest of the boys, had fallen into the water in the boathouse. It is quite deep there and since he could not really swim he had almost drowned. His older brother had fished him out. This had taken place at exactly the time I have been assailed by that memory in the train."

Jung spent many years studying synchronicity in an attempt to discover why it occurred and in the latter part of his life explored quantum theory in an effort to explain it. However, he eventually came to accept that the mysterious connection between two seemingly unrelated aspects of mind and matter was that they were two different expressions of the same thing - vibrational energy.

Synchronicity for Jung was an alignment of 'universal forces' with the life experiences of an individual. Jung believed that many experiences perceived as coincidences were not merely due to chance, but instead reflected the creation of an event or circumstances by the coinciding or alignment of such forces. The process of becoming intuitively away and acting in harmony with these forces is what Jung labeled 'individuation' Jung said that an individuated person would actually shape events around them through the communication of their conscious with the collective unconscious.

Synchronicity has increasingly come to the fore in modern research by psychologists, parapsychologist and scientists on the nature of consciousness. For example, similarities between quantum physics and Eastern thought have been pointed out by Fritjof Capra in 'The Tao of Physics' [1984], and in his groundbreaking text 'Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Mind and matter' author F David Peat observes that synchronicity may appear naturally to a mind that is constantly evolving and sensitive to change.

Sceptics argue that the theory of synchronicity is not scientific at all, but an example of magical thinking, but despite this the idea remains popular today and is an important concept in the modern mind/body/spirit canon. Enthusiasts believe that even just being aware of the phenomenon can increase a persons awareness of universal harmonies and correpondences and open him or her up to new ways of thinking, being and living, and to new orders of political, social and spiritual unities.

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