Venetia Robertson

The threads of religion and popular culture have been woven together by a number of scholars drawing on the role of ritual, belief, and the sacred as present within fandoms. The correspondences between the two phenomena are so frequently pointed out that Sean McCloud has called it a case of “parallelomania”, and has suggested a focus on identity formation rather than religiosity as a more fruitful endeavour (2003: 188). Indeed, Adam Possamai, in his own work on the creation of “hyper-real religions” through the infusion of cultural products with religious meaning, emphasizes that we should concentrate on “why and how some social actors find a spiritual/religious meaning in a popular piece of work and what they do with it” (2007: 22). Hence, the project of this chapter is to add one more thread to this rich tapestry by investigating how the personal spiritual narratives of certain women have been formed through their descriptions of metaphysical yet sensual encounters with their supernatural idols. Case studies will be drawn from two distinct contexts: medieval Christendom and modern fandom: vastly different circumstances, yet with some striking similarities. How women from each have confronted the patriarchal norms of the male-dominated arenas of Christian theology and the geek subculture respectively, and articulated through confessional, autobiographical writing (historically, a man’s technology) a sense of sacred selfhood, will be the focus of this discussion. What will be demonstrated is the effectiveness, even perhaps the necessity, of creative engagements with cultural products, from Jesus mythology to videogame worlds, for marginalised figures like women to craft a meaningful ontological and theological understanding of the world and their place in it.

Within the mainstream realms of Christendom in England’s Middle Ages, and fandom and digital culture in the West of the contemporary period, the female subjects of this chapter find themselves on the fringes due to their unorthodox belief that they have unique mystical relationships to their gods. In the first scenario are two of history’s most famous female mystics, Julian of Norwich (c. 1342-1416) and Margery Kempe (c. 1373-1438), who wrote of their visitations by Jesus Christ, the revelations he delivered, and the romantic and esoteric nature of their connection to him. In the second are two women who belong to a far less-established phenomenon called ‘Soulbonding’, that shares many characteristics with centuries-old Christian experiences of theophany. Soulbonding is a term that describes an intimate relationship between an individual, in this case, a fan, and a fictional character from a novel, television show, film, or videogame, in short: “to form and/or experience a robust mental or empathic connection with one or more fictional characters” (Soul Bonding 2004-2015). The character, the ‘Soulbond’, is believed to be a sentient and often magical entity, autonomous from their fictitious setting, and capable of interacting with the ‘Soulbonder’, a human who discovers a profound affinity (or ‘bond’) with this being.

This study looks at two young women, calling themselves Mrs Sephiroth and Sephirothslave, whose complicated Soulbond with the villain of the Final Fantasy videogame saga, Sephiroth, was detailed online between 2004-2012 via journals like Sephirothslave’s (aka Julia) Blurty, blogs like Mrs Sephiroth’s (as Summoner Yuna) Dreaming of Sephiroth, and discussions on ‘fanatical’ websites like the page for Sephyism or Sephirothslave’s DeviantArt account. While belief in the divinity of Christ and his ability to commune with chosen people was, and remains relatively normal in Christian society, and likewise within fandoms using the internet to disseminate extra-canonical and imaginative expansions on fictional worlds, stories, and characters is accepted, the narratives weaved by Julian, Margery, Mrs Sephiroth, and Sephirothslave provided such controversial and radical challenges to normative and traditional notions of authority and authenticity, disrupting the bounds of their gender, social status, and identity as a believer/fan, even their humanity, their work has seen them distrusted, denigrated, and even despised by others...

This paper will introduce a little-known online phenomenon: the socio-spiritual Therianthropy movement. Therianthropes are individuals who identify as part human and part non-human animal in a biological, mental, and metaphysical capacity. Therianthropes have, in essence, an anthrozoomorphic identity that draws upon the spiritual and supernatural associations of the animal kingdom. I discuss Therianthropes as animal-human “shape-shifters” to highlight the sacred and liminal identity these individuals have formulated through their engagement with “popular occulture.” Therianthropy, as both a web-based community and an identity, exemplifies the postmodern bent of new spiritual directions in the re-enchanted West.

The newest incarnation of the My Little Pony franchise, the children’s cartoon program My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has attracted a sizeable viewership among an unexpected demographic: adolescent men. This article looks at this group, known as Bronies, and assesses how the geek subculture that this fandom exists within frames the fan’s understanding of the show, its pony protagonists, and their own self-reflection. Focusing on the role of anthropomorphic animals, this discussion will explicate how normative notions of gender, attitude and behavior are challenged by interaction with this text. This study aims to highlight the significance of fictional animals as tools for personal meaning-making.

Mermaids have persisted as a feature of popular culture for centuries as one of the most multivalent of all mythical creatures. The mermaid blurs the boundary between woman and fish, femininity and carnality, land and sea, human and other. She is also held to be an astral entity in various metaphysical circles, in the mermaiding industry she is often marketed as an ambassador for marine preservation, and in the general pervasiveness of this character, competing with inhuman beings such as vampires, werewolves, and angels in the heavily mediated realm of contemporary culture, the mermaid represents an additional opportunity to invest in an other-than-human identity. This paper explores the development of the mermaid and how she has been conceived of as ‘other’. It then questions how ‘otherness’, traditionally understood to be something different or deviant with regard to gender, sexuality, race, species, or divinity, may be of value in the explicitly human project of personal meaning-making. By looking to the ‘mermaider’ community, a fandom for mermaid mythology, it can be seen that mermaid identity offers a sense of re-enchantment, a path to reifying an authentic subjectivity, and a mode by which the other- than-human self is seen as a sacred self.

The Therianthropy community is comprised of individuals who profess an other-than-human identity, in particular an animal identity. Existing almost solely online, this socio-spiritual identity group experiences tensions between the individual and personal gnosis, and the community and communal consensus, when it comes to evincing the epistemologies, that is, knowledges concerning Therianthropy. By examining how themes of authority, belonging, and both group and self-acceptance are played out in the discourse and activity of this movement, implicit modes of initiation and rites of passage can be envisaged. These modes are vital for the success of this movement, as they continuously solidify a sense of group and individual identity through the clear designation of an in- and out- group. Yet, in doing so, the Therianthrope is held up as a liminal figure, an other-than-human being who resides in a sacred interstitial state. This is the essence of what separates Therianthropes from other humans, and what makes this identity group a challenge to traditional conceptions of initiation and rites of passage.

This paper aims to highlight the role of self-articulation in the creation of spiritual narratives that draw on popular culture, and in particular how women might mitigate their marginalised positions and subjectivities through such identity projects. This will be discussed with a focus on two contexts, vastly different yet with striking similarities—medieval Christianity in England, and the contemporary geek subculture—and the accounts of women who have confronted the patriarchal norms of these social spheres by writing of their religious and romantic relationships with their personal holy men. Four case studies of unconventional levels of engagement with famous figures from the popular culture of their time will be examined: the mystics Julian of Norwich (c. 1342-1416) and Margery Kempe (c. 1373-1438) who attested visitations from Jesus Christ in the middle ages, and, in the recent decade, two Soulbonders both in love with Sephiroth, the villain from the Final Fantasy videogame saga. ‘Soulbonders’ are people who feel a profound affinity with figures from books, films, videogames, and television shows, believing them to be autonomous, sentient beings that exist outside of a fictional setting. Such individuals go beyond the typical bounds of the fan, just as mystics tend to flout the boundaries of ordinary devoteeship. Through an analysis of their autobiographical writings (memoirs in the medieval instance, blogs in the modern), it can be seen how these persons, relegated to the fringes of religion, society, and even subculture because of their closeness with nonhuman beings, through have developed salvific personal theologies and mythologies to reify otherwise unorthodox and subversive identities and identification with the divine.

""For decades now the Internet has functioned as a hub for ‘popular occulture,’ that is, the merging of magic, mysticism, and the media. Cyberspace is, therefore, an ideal environment for the development of communities of individuals claiming supernatural, ‘other-than-human’ identities, for example, an elf identity or a wolf identity, somewhat inconveniently housed in an anthropomorphic body. The Internet provides ever-increasing modes of imaginative and interactive self-construction particularly attractive to individuals who feel that their identities are marginalized in their offline social worlds. This is readily evidenced in the online development of other-than-human identity groups, such as the Therianthropy, Otherkin, and Vampire movements. Shaped by the medium in question, the spiritual ideologies fostered in such ontological communities reflect the fast-paced, innovative, creative, and collaborative aspects of web 2.0.

This paper draws on Homi Bhabha’s notion of third space and hybrid identities to investigate the way in which these part-human, part-other ontologies are conceived. Stewart Hoover and Nabil Echchaibi’s adaptation of Bhabha’s theory with regard to the internet as a third space, as an in-between zone, neither public nor private, physical nor immaterial, will also be used to demonstrate the sympathy between this liminal medium and similarly interstitial identities. It shall be argued that the hybrid or liminal has been configured in this case to be a sacred state, beyond the bounds of the mundane, physical, intelligible world. The way in which the internet provides dynamic platforms for the development of identity (profiles that can be constantly updated, forums for discussion and debate, blogs for logging the process of self-discovery) supports and even encourages a processual understanding of the other-than-human self. This is a self that is never entirely other nor human, but both wavering and growing between the two, existing, as Victor Turner said, as ‘liminal personae’ or ‘threshold people’.""

This paper looks at the conceptualisation of animals in the specific context of an online community of individuals who believe that they have non-human animal souls. Though human in physical form, these people, who call themselves Therianthropes, consider their spiritual self to be animal. A number of such other-than-human identity groups flourish on the Internet, as those with non-normative and marginalised identities often turn to this global medium to find the ontologically alike. However, the Therianthropy community in particularly interesting - while other groups may draw from the culture surrounding the robotic or machinic or the supernatural and fantastic to articulate their other-than-human selfhood, Therianthropes tend toward the natural world and the animal kingdom.  In doing so, certain narratives about animals are being formed, told, and woven into the lives of human beings and their journey towards an understanding of an authentic self.

Delving into the plethora of personal mythologies shared in the online community by Therianthropes, via blogs, forum discussions, tumblr and so forth, the ways in which the interspecies relationship has been reworked can be seen. Here, the autobiographical narrativisation of animal-human hybridity, metaphysical shape-shifting, and fragmented identities brings together notions of animality ranging from myth to materiality, spiritual belief to phenomenological experience. The human and the animal are inscribed onto one another through a process infused with religiosity, the resulting humanimality seen as symbolic, sacred, and as 'self', rather than 'other'.

This paper will address rites of grieving for pets who have passed and how this has been constructed in accordance with spiritual beliefs, particularly the Christian faith. By looking at the development of the industry and culture of pet loss (such as pet cemeteries, pet memorials, art made from cremation ashes, commemorative poetry and so forth) and the concurrent religious climate of the Western world, we can attempt to assess how the two have influenced one another. I will propose that Christians have expanded their biblical and their personal understanding of eschatology and salvation in order to accommodate a notion of immortality for their companion animals. From the annual ‘Blessing of the Pets’ ceremony held in many churches to post-rapture Pet Care, an increasingly creative approach has been taken by religious institutions and religious individuals alike to finding a place for animals in the afterlife. Taking into account the exegesis of biblical scholars, pronouncements by church officials, and the concerns of the Christian laity, this discussion should highlight some of the tensions and transformations that both the Kingdom of God and the Animal Kingdom are facing in the postmodern world.

For decades now the internet has functioned as a hub for ‘popular occulture,’ that is, the merging of magic, mysticism and the media. Cyberspace is, therefore, an ideal environment for the development of ‘otherworldly’ or supernatural identities. In this paper, I will introduce and discuss a number of socio-spiritual online communities (such as the Otherkin, Therianthropy, and modern Vampires) that have formed on the basis of these alternative ‘other-than-human’ ontologies. Focusing on the Therianthropy movement, populated by individuals who believe they are humans with animal souls, I will explore how a variety of notions from fantasy literature, popular culture, paganism, shamanism, Eastern religions, and gnostic and esoteric groups have been used by Therianthropes to articulate a sacred self.

Drawn from my own 12 month study of the Therianthropy, Otherkin and Vampire communities, and work in this area from Joseph Laycock (Boston University) and Danielle Kirby (University of Queensland), this paper will also look at some of the ethnographic difficulties inherent in an analysis of unconventional spiritual identities, particularly those that intentionally blur the boundaries of fantasy and fiction, and which are expressed almost exclusively through the ephemeral medium of the internet.

In postmodern society, spiritual individuals are looking beyond the confines of the ‘human’ to reify a sense of sacred self. One arena such individuals are delving into is that of the animal. Identifying as animal enables the adoption of the abundant mythological and mystical associations attached to our non-human companions. This paper explores the ways in which human-animal metamorphosis functions metaphorically and metaphysically in the contemporary spiritual zeitgeist. Focusing on the spiritual practice of ‘shape-shifting,’ this discussion will evaluate how the traditional binaries of animal/human, nature/culture, sacred/mundane have been used in to create a sense of transcendent, or ‘other-than-human,’ self.

This examination invites speculation as to how animals are viewed as spiritual commodities, and how they are imbued with essentialized, romanticized, and ultimately anthropomorphic qualities. I will endeavor to argue that the theme of human-animal shape-shifting is an idea representative of ego- rather than eco- spirituality, despite its preoccupation with the natural world. It will be demonstrated that this phenomenon is characteristic of the subjective turn of the contemporary spiritual milieu, wherein seekers are engaging creatively in a project of self-sacralization via non-human identities.

Fiction has a history of entanglement with religious belief, mythology, and doctrine. From established institutions to eclectic personal ontologies, fiction continues to influence and shape, even generate, spiritual philosophies. This paper focuses on a lesser-known phenomenon within this milieu, that is, the ‘Soulbonder’ community. Soulbonders, also called ‘Mediakin’ and ‘Otakukin’, are individuals who believe they have an intimate connection with a fictional character, such as a cartoon character, a character from a video game or a movie. Following William James’ suggestion of a ‘multiverse’, Soulbonders maintain that their favoured characters live and prosper on some otherworldly plane of existence. Online, Soulbonders have formed communities where they can share their stories, enjoy a support network, and discuss the metaphysical potential of this unusual relationship to fiction. They have become a recognizable and acknowledged subculture within fan cultures in general, as demonstrated by their inclusion in the fanlore wiki (fanlore.org/wiki) amongst other online encyclopedias. However, Soulbonders are distinct from ordinary fans by their mystical attachment to a particular text.

This phenomenon is reminiscent of many things – purported cases of spirit possession, having imaginary friends, engaging in role play, and so forth. Nonetheless, Soulbonders insist that this is a separate, and indeed a metaphysical rather than psychological, experience. This paper will explore some of the roots of this phenomena by turning to some ‘traditional’ examples of soul bonding, exhibited by the relationships between medieval Christian mystics, like Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, and Jesus. It will then examine the online subculture of Soulbonding, and question why mystical relationships have shifted from a focus on gods and more familiar angelic beings, to openly fictional characters, especially those from anime, videogame, and sci-fi/fantasy media. This analysis will provide some insight into our perceptions of reality and fantasy in the postmodern West.

**See an updated version of this paper as a chapter in the forthcoming volume by INFORM/Ashgate 'Fiction, Invention, and Hyper-reality: From Popular Culture to Religion'

Postmodernists have argued that the human condition as we know it has gone under drastic de-construction over the past decades. As such, the normative bounds of selfhood are being challenged by concepts such as fragmented identities, the 'posthuman self', and socially transgressive personas. One case study is Furry Fandom - a subculture consisting of individuals who have a profound connection to anthropomorphic animal characters, often ones that feature in cartoons, comics, or video games. Furries, as the fans are called, usually express their interest in their characters by creating fan art, donning costumes (sometimes even full-body mascot costumes called 'fursuits'), and convening online or at live events. While Furry Fandom has much in common with other role-playing communities, it also has pronounced sexual and zoophilic themes. Many Furries feel a particular affinity with their chosen or invented animal character, called their 'fursona'. Hence, they believe that in a psychological or spiritual sense, they are one with their animal counterpart, and take on bestial attributes in their everyday lifestyle.

Much of the criticism aimed at Furries is based on the perception that they maintain unhealthy relationships with, and attractions to, non-human animal species. This paper adds another element to this seemingly transgressive orientation by looking at Furry fetish art, particularly that surrounding the pregnant body. In the creative space of fandom, Furry artists have taken interesting license in combining the anthropomorphic animal with the sexualisation of human conception, gestation, and birth. What this might tell us about Furry Fandom from a semiotic standpoint, and whether or not such representations should be considered 'over the limit', will be questions this discussion raises.

The subject of this paper will be Therianthropy, a socio-spiritual movement of individuals who believe they are part animal, and part human in a psychological or metaphysical sense. Therianthropy is one of the few examples of a religious subculture that is born, bred, and exists almost exclusively, online. Therianthropes, as they are called, are variably neo-Shamans, werewolf enthusiasts, anthrozoomorphic fetishists, and ‘Animal People’ who have formed a cyber-community and developed a philosophy called ‘Spiritual Therianthropy’. I want to outline the unique collection of syncretic beliefs generally held by Therianthropes, and analyse the way in which web 2.0 has contributed to the construction of this movement and its constituents. Many Therianthropes report feeling isolated by their ontological struggle, amplified by other factors such as experiencing species dysphoria (wherein they feel disassocatied from their human body), ambiguous gender, bi-sexuality and autism. Thus, forums, blogs and homepages have become essential modes of support and expression, providing a space for self-reflection and identity projection. With this brief analysis, I intend to demonstrate the integral relationship of social media to this relatively new group, with emphasis on its role in the construction of selfhood.

Students will investigate typologies of 'religion', distinguishing between 'world religions' and other 'religions' (particularly indigenous religions), and recognise that these classifications resulted from European colonialism and the encounter of Christianity with other religions (in Asia, the Americas, and Africa). Religions with scriptures, priesthoods, and institutions paralleling those of Biblical traditions were privileged over oral cultures and indigenous religions. Students study methods of textual criticism and historical investigation of the 'origins' of religion, from which emerged the discipline of 'religious studies'.

What is the 'new' atheism? How have globalisation and new media affected religious practice? This unit considers a broad range of recent high-profile events and contemporary debates and controversies in religion. Topics include: the supposed rise of fundamentalism, arguments over 'the death of God', new forms of spirituality and enchantment. Through the use of case studies, from UFO-religions to The Gospel of Judas, students examine the overarching theme: What is the future of religion?

This unit is a general introduction to the history of religions, beginning with the emergence of religion in pre-literate societies as evidenced in art and archaeology. It then studies the ancient religions of Egypt and Mesopotamia, Persia, India, China, Israel, Greece and Rome; before turning to the growth and spread of world religions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. Students are expected to specialise in traditions and themes of their own choice in writing Essays.