10-week online class
Dates: Saturdays 10/23, 10/30, 11/6, 11/13, 11/20, 12/4, 12/11, 12/18, 1/8, and 1/15
Time: 3:00 - 4:00 pm EST/ NYC time (12-1pm California time, 8-9pm London time, 9-10pm Paris/Amsterdam time)
$75 ($65 for $5/a month and above Patreon members)

A PDF of the book will be supplied to all students

*Please note that class will not meet on 11/27, 12/25 and 1/1

Join practicing medium Tiffany Hopkins for a unique and active take on a reading group. She pairs up with parapsychology researcher George P. Hansen to take a guided, deep dive into his seminal book The Trickster and the Paranormal (2001).

A wide-ranging read that bends the mind, the author works with a huge number of examples to illustrate the abstract concepts he’s synthesized into brilliant illuminations of the elusive, shadowy world of the paranormal. Each class session will cover between 30 to 60 pages chosen by topic, not taking a linear progression. Each week you will receive updates by author George Hansen, in the form of recorded interviews, so you’ll have an overview of the topic to support your reading.

In our sessions, anyone who would like to present a short example, finding, performance or artwork that brings the topics to life will have time to share. The goal is to give ourselves the time and space to really digest the content, allowing us to illustrate—and share—our unique perspectives and interpretations of the vast amount of information the author brings together. If you are trying to make sense of phenomena like mediumship, UFOs, ghosts, magic or ESP through concepts like liminality, paradox, discernment, reflexivity, ambiguity— this is the place for you!

More about the book: By bringing together research from across academic disciplines and parapsychology, Hansen gives readers a macro perspective on the paranormal using the metaphor of the trickster. The book is a must-read for anyone developing their own opinions and beliefs about the paranormal, either in the world or in one’s own life. The book investigates the most common paranormal phenomena--from ghosts to UFOs to psychics--while situating it in the context of our own culture from the perspective of anthropology, folklore, sociology, semiotics, and literary criticism. The author’s eight years of experience as a professional parapsychologist brings insider knowledge to how laboratory research has expanded our understanding through quantitative analysis.

Week 1: Rationality: how we think brings us here today

• Chapter 2: An Overview of Tricksters

• Chapter 22: Totemism

Week 2: Disenchantment: the larger context to how we think

• Chapter 8: Weber on Charisma and the Disenchantment of the World.

Week 3: Power: how the context is held

• Chapter 1: Introduction

Week 4: Change: what is at stake for society

• Chapter 9: Cultural Change and the Paranormal

Week 5: Status: what is at stake for the individual

• Chapter 4: Victor Turner’s Concept of Anti-Structure

• Chapter 7: Winkelman on Magico-Religious Practitioners

Week 6: Marginality: where paranormal lives

• Chapter 3: Ernest Hartmann’s Mental Boundaries

• Chapters 5 & 6

Week 7: Binary Oppositions: how status quo is confronted

Week 8: Ambiguity: why it is so hard to make sense of it all

• Chapter 21: Laboratory Research on Psi

Week 9: Deception: why discernment is so important

• Chapters 10-19

Week 10: Paradox: the answer is not an answer

• Chapter 20: Reflexivity and the Trickster

• Chapter 23: Literary Criticism

Image: Dawn of A New Age, Mark Rogers (@markrogersart), 16 x 20 inches, oil on Panel 2016.

About the Artist

Mark Rogers is a self-taught artist from Portland, Oregon. Stylistically his work has been described as a mash-up of folk art, medieval painting, and fairy tale illustration. His work has found a place among both the complementary Pop Surrealism, and Magical Realism movements. Rogers creates narrative-driven paintings populated by fictional characters that inhabit his spooky, fantastical, and sometimes humorous oil paintings. His work has been shown in exhibitions across the United States and has been sold worldwide. He dwells in a small studio with his cat, Panther.

About the Author

George P. Hansen was professionally employed in parapsychology laboratories for eight years—three at the Rhine Research Center in Durham, North Carolina, and five at Psychophysical Research Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey. His experiments included remote viewing, card guessing, ganzfeld, electronic random number generators, séance phenomena, and ghosts.

About the Host

Tiffany J. 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 and reading The Trickster and the Paranormal helped her understand why. She combines a university-trained intellect with a universe-connected heart to bring flashes of understanding to the mostly incomprehensible world of mediumship. She is a practicing medium, educator and freelance futurist.