Six-week online course taught via Zoom by Morbid Anatomy Founder Joanna Ebenstein, featuring lectures by practitioner/scholars from each tradition

Dates: Thursdays Feb 18, Feb 25, March 4, March 11, March 18, and March 25
Time: 7 - 9 pm EST/New York City time (4 pm - 6 pm California time, 12 am - 2 am London time, 1 am - 3 am Paris/Amsterdam time)
Admission: $145 ($125 for $5/a month and above Patreon members)

PLEASE NOTE: All classes will also be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time

Suggested readings will be sent to students in advance of the first class

From hell to the bardos, the cult of the saints to ancestor spirits, limbo to the underworld, mediums to messages in dreams, this class will explore the ways in which the afterlife, the land of the dead, and communication with the spirit world have been conceptualized, practiced, and ritualized in a variety of religious and cultural traditions around the world.

To discuss every example would be an impossible undertaking; our solution will be to delve deeply into a sampling of five diverse traditions, with an eye towards resonances and overlaps. We will cover—via readings, discussion, and guest lectures by practitioner/scholars—the traditions of Christianity and monotheism; Buddhism and Hinduism; Haitian Voodou; Shamanism and animism; the Jungian worldview; and Spiritualism, a 19th-century religion built around communication with the dead.

Students will synthesize what they have learned through a final project they will share at the last class. This could take the form of an illustrated presentation on an afterlife tradition of their choice, an art project, a written response or another project of their choice.

Week One: Introduction, and Christianity (Catholic and Protestant) with Tara Isabella Burton
Week Two: Spiritualism, with Tiffany Hopkins
Week Three: Eastern Traditions (Buddhist and Hindu), with Bryan Melillo
Week Four: Voodoo, with Sandra Bidon
Week Five: Shamanism, with Christina Pratt
Week Six: Final Presentations

INSTRUCTOR AND PRESENTER BIOS

Sandra Bidon is an American-born Haitian Vaudou mambo priestess who has been practicing for over 20 years. Her great grandmother, grandmother and mother were also mambo priestesses. She also practices tarot card readings and Haitian herbal healing methods, and carries on the oral traditions of her culture. Her path began in Catholic school when, at the age of 12, she decided to find her spiritual creator. Her journey led her through her Vaudou culture of Ayiti (Haiti) to Roman Catholic history straight through African history and back again. Sandra seeks, through her work, to educate people about the beautiful, natural order hearing that is Vaudou. She also aims to combat the stigma related to the false, propagandic narratives created around Vaudou culture.

Tara Isabella Burton is the author of Social Creature: A Novel (Doubleday, 2018) and Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World (PublicAffairs, 2020). She is a contributing editor at The American Interest, a columnist at Religion News Service, and a regular contributor to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and more. She holds a DPhil in Theology from Trinity College, Oxford, where she was a Clarendon Scholar. She is a practicing Episcopalian.

Joanna Ebenstein is a Brooklyn-based artist, writer, curator, photographer and graphic designer. She is the creator of the Morbid Anatomy blog, library and event series, and was co-founder (with Tracy Hurley Martin) and creative director of the recently shuttered Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn. Her books include Anatomica: The Exquisite and Unsettling Art of Human Anatomy, Death: A Graveside Companion, The Anatomical Venus, and The Morbid Anatomy Anthology (with Colin Dickey). Her work explores the intersections of art and medicine, death and culture, and the objective and subjective.

Tiffany Hopkins began studying mediumship after moving into her great-great grandmother's cottage in Lily Dale, the world's largest community of Spiritualists. For her, mediumship isn’t just talking to the dead. Developing relationship with spirit - whether that of a loved one on the other side, our own higher selves, the mother Earth or any other presence that calls to our deepest truths - involves more than just conversation and brings more than just words. Her work combines her university-trained intellect with her universe-connected heart to bring flashes of understanding to the mostly incomprehensible world of mediumship. Today, she is a practicing medium, educator and consultant.

Bryan Melillo has studied meditation in the Jñana and Bhakti yoga tradition for the last 23 years. Having experienced a classically identifiable Kundalini experience in 1997 his path eventually led to Tiruvannamalai, India, where he’s been with the same teacher since 2001. Here, he began learning (and eventually teaching) a variety of breathing (pranayama) and mantra techniques. His exposure to many esoteric practices opened him to insights around the great eastern traditions on the death and dying process. Bryan recently completed an End of Life Doula certification training as his goal is to integrate eastern understandings of death with the growing western end of life care, death with dignity movement. Bryan has an active art studio and is an assistant professor at NYC’s Parsons School of Design.

Christina Pratt is a practicing shaman, who trained with Ecuadorian, Tibetan, Tamang, and African shamans. She is also the author of the two volume Encyclopedia of Shamanism; runs The Last Mask Center for Shamanic Healing; and is host and producer of a free podcast called Why Shamanism Now.