Lee Irwin

College of Charleston | C of C · Department of Religious Studies

Sophos Ontology: On Post-Traditional Spirituality discusses religious plurality and post-traditional perspectives on emergent forms of sacred sensibility, particularly for those identifying as “spiritual but not religious.” This book is divided into three parts. The first part is a retrospective account of multiple religious traditions, with emphas...

This paper offers an overview of soul, first in terms of historical models as delineated by five distinct soul theories, then as a phenomenological account of soul as an experiential reality, followed by research in Near-Death Experiences (NDE). Finally, the paper offers a comparison of traditional historical accounts with NDE research in order to...

reams Beyond Time: On Sacred Encounter and Spiritual Transformation offers readers an overview of dreams research as applied to non-ordinary dreams. I describes four basic types of dreaming: normative, mythic, psychic, and transpersonal, and he illustrates each type with specific dream examples. These types of dreaming are then used as a lens to lo...

This chapter addresses the impact of paranormal research on the study of comparative religions and demonstrates how this research offers new perspectives on the conceptualization of the human person. It reviews paranormal research over the last fifty years, discusses major theoretical issues therein and links these issues to religious conceptions o...

The following article is an exploration of supernal dreaming, a type of dream that engages the dreamer as a profound, participatory, and often revelatory event. Dream types are not well developed in dream research; this article contributes to the development of a more typological approach to dream analysis. Four dream types are presented and contex...

This book is about the nature of the “self” as a variable identity informed by process dynamics. I examine six aspects of the self as shared perspectives, all of which contribute to a creative model of self whose metaphysical attributes derive from a process view of pansentience. The six aspects are: the rhetorical self, the conscious self, the epi...

Article on the healing practices of the Muskogee shaman David Lewis and his training and beliefs on the Muskogee spiritual tradition.

American theories of reincarnation have a long and complex history, dating from 1680s to the present. It is the purpose of this paper to highlight the main currents of reincarnation theory in the American context, giving a brief historical survey. Sources surveyed begin with Native American traditions, and then move to immigrant traditions based in...

There is inherent irony in the conceptual relationship between Near Death Experience (NDE) and the mystical: death is not normally the means by which an individual seeks mystical insights even if, in analogical language, death is a metaphor representing transformation. There is immediate tension in the suggestion that dying is a possible condition...

Lucid dreaming is a fascinating and complex phenomenon that can be captured only partially in verbal descriptions. As a primary non-verbal condition, the construction of lucidity is an interpretative problem, a non-verbal condition whose manifestation does not require verbal explanations. However, the interpretive challenge is to give voice to a va...

This chapter surveys several distinct paradigms of mystical knowledge among Native American visionaries. These paradigms will be contextualized in terms of various expressive, semiotic aspects of Native American cultures, such as in art, ritual, music, and communal activity. The basis of this comparison, its epistemological sources, will be organiz...

Early Descriptive EthnographyAnthropology and Native ReligionsComparative History of Native ReligionsContemporary Native Spirituality

ABSTRACT: This paper is an overview of the movement among Native American prisoners to have access to native religious practices, specifically pipe ceremonies, sweats, and prayer and drum sessions in prison. These practices form the basis of a new movement that supports a wide range of native spiritual traditions, organized around a few basic cerem...

According to the Lakota holy man Nicholas Black Elk, hambleyapi, or “crying for a vision,” predates even the use of the sacred pipe and is the center of Plains Indian spirituality. This emphasis on dreams and visions acquired either spontaneously or through a vision quest is one of the central and unifying factors among many Native American religio...

For those unfamiliar with the White Buffalo and its relationship with Native American spirituality, this is the book to read. The author, curator of anthropology for the Denver Museum of Natural History, has written an accessible, informative guide that surveys the popular response to Miracle, the female white buffalo calf born in 1994. Pickering c...

Cette 'reponse' de Lee Irwin au debat entre C. Jocks et Sam Gill sur la conclusion de l'etude et de l'enseignement des religions americaines autochtones s'ajoute a d'autres critiques deja formulees. Irwin dit qu'a l'interieur de la communaute academique, il y a une representation croissante des autres comme partenaires legitimes et riches de sens,...

In August 1978, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) was passed by Congress as a guarantee of constitutional protection of First Amendment rights for Native Americans. This act was passed as an attempt to redress past wrongs by the federal government or its agents. That history of legal suppression was due to "the lack of a clear, comp...

The classic accounts of the Oglala holy man, Nicholas Black Elk, are three: Black Elk Speaks (1932) by John Neihardt, The Sacred Pipe (1953) by Joseph Epps Brown, and the later re-edited and annotated notes of the original Neihardt and Black Elk interviews published as The Sixth Grandfather (1986) by Raymond DeMallie. Michael Steltenkamp's (1993) a...

The shared worldviews of the indigenous peoples of North America are rooted and linked in a rich pre-Columbian artifactual and oral past that is still highly active today. One perspective into these worlds is obtained by understanding the nature of dreams and visions. In traditional Native American cultures, such a perspective is an essential part...

Based on field research among the Hopi Indians of Arizona, this essay explores problems that broadly can be defined as postmodern reflections on the study of religion. In dealing with the religions of living cultures and especially with cultures that have been subject to colonialism, students of religion are faced with the difficult issues of orien...

This comprehensive alphabetic reference of over 1,200 entries reveals the rich spiritual legacy of the native American nations, covering sacred sites, burial practices, spiritual leaders, traditional ceremonies, concepts of the afterlife, symbolism, dances and objects. The book also covers events and legislation that have shaped the development of...

During the second quarter of the 17th-century, Jesuits and Hurons engaged in a debate over the importance and centrality of dreams. From the Jesuits' perspective, dreams were peripheral and often opposed to Christian theology. For the Huron, dreams were a central feature of their religious practice and a primary source of both personal knowledge an...

This book supports the basic presupposition that Native American religion has always been the expression of an individual point of view. Endemic to the Sioux religious tradition, the Wicasa Wakan, "holy man" or shaman, has struggled over the last 150 years to preserve a religious heritage that has undergone continuous development and modification....

Though Chinese mythology and religion have been dominated by male gods and masters, the presence of female divinities has always been a part of Chinese folk belief. These various divinities, usually identified with the feminine principle of moist, dark, receptive nature, constitute a somewhat obscure pantheon of water sprites, dragon ladies, snake...