1st Edition
Trance and Transfiguration in Rock Art and Literature
Contributors
Foreword
David Whitley
Introduction: Between Visionary and Mystical Experiences
Richard Alan Northover
Trance and Transfiguration in Rock Art and Literature
Richard Alan Northover
A World without Selves: A Reply to Richard Alan Northover’s Lecture
Wayne Stables
John Taylor (1620) and the Shakespeare-Hemp-Cannabis Hypothesis: Was the “Noted Weed” a Source of Inspiration for Creativity (“Invention”)?
Francis Thackeray
Sceptical Reflections on Hallucinogens and Other Worlds
Dan Wylie
Conclusion: Trance, Healing and Transgression
Richard Alan Northover
Additional Material: Five Blogs and a Critical Reading
Critical Diaries
Dan Wylie
Blog 1: No 116 – Where’s the Zol in Our Literature?
Ethicalanimal
Richard Alan Northover
Blog 2: Newgrange, Ireland: Neolithic Spirituality
Blog 3: Otherworldly Termites
Blog 4: Embodied Metaphors in Shamanic Art
Blog 5: The Axis Mundi, Shamanism and Trance States
Critical Reading
Richard Alan Northover
Altered States of Consciousness in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Shaman (2013)
Index
Biography
Richard Alan Northover is a Professor of general literary theory and critical theory in the Department of Afrikaans and Theory of Literature at the University of South Africa. His PhD, obtained at the University of Pretoria in 2010, concerns the work of J.M. Coetzee in relation to animal ethics. In addition to articles on the work of JM Coetzee, he has published on Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy and southern African rock art, both prehistoric and contemporary, placing his work in the fields of animal studies and ecocriticism. His inaugural lecture, delivered in 2023, was the point of departure of this book.
