Jung and the neo-pagan movement
- Authors: Waldron, David , Waldron, Sharn
- Date: 2004
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Quadrant Vol. XXXIV , no. 1 (2004), p. 29-46
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- Description: Neo-Paganism, one of the fastest-growing religious movements in the world today, has undergone a series of profound transformations in structure, belief, and symbolism over the past 50 years. One of the most significant is the appropriation of Jungian analytical psychology by broad sectors of the neo-Pagan movement and by some of its most eloquent proponents, such as Margot Adler, Miriam Simos, and Vivianne Crowley. However, the application of Jungian methodology as a means of legitimating religious belief is not as simple or unambiguous as neo-Pagan writers and conversely, critics of Jung such as Richard Noll,would attest.This paper explores the appropriation of Jungian theory by sectors of the neo-Pagan move m e n t . It also examines the neo-Pagan movement’s rather ambivalent relationship with Jung’s interpretation of the human psyche within the broader context of western modernity.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003000948
Ghosts on the Goldfields : Ballarat as a haunted city
- Authors: Waldron, David , Waldron, Sharn
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Supernatural cities : Enchantment, anxiety and spectrality Chapter 11 p. 229-248
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- Description: The history of Ballarat, situated at the heart of the goldfields of central Victoria, Australia, is closely tied to the colonial experience. As the site of the Eureka Stockade rebellion, its history is linked to the foundation myths of Australian democracy. It boasts both the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka (M.A.D.E), situated on one of the suspected sites of the rebels' stockade, and Australia's premier open air museum, the theme park of Sovereign Hill, which re-enacts life on the goldfields of the 1950s and 1860s. In Ballarat itself many of the businesses utilise symbols of the goldfields in their advertising and trademarks, as do many of the street names, festivals and public events. The Victorian architectural heritage is highly prized and showcased to the thousands of visiting tourists on Sturt and Lydiard Streets, and particularly those who come each year for Ballarat's Heritage Weekend festival held in May. Yet there is a dark side to this history. The prosperity of the gold was built on the land of the Wathawurrung Aborigines who were displaced and marginalised, and suffered under the weight of colonial occupation and environmental devastation. Likewise, despite the prominence of stories surrounding those who became wealty on the goldfields of central Victoria, many who came to Ballarat during the Victorian era found themselves displaced and living in extremen poverty, facing disease, hunger and vulnerability to crime, prostitution and dangerous working conditions. It is these stories from the underbelly of Ballarat's heritage that form the fodder of a thriving dark tourist industry, expressed in popular ghost tours and supplemented by a rich heritage of ghost stories in folklore and popular culture. In the tension between these two discordant narratives Ballarat has become, in popular imagination, a haunted city.
Playing the ghost : Ghost hoaxing and supernaturalism in late nineteenth-century Victoria, Australia
- Authors: Waldron, David , Waldron, Sharn
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article , Review
- Relation: Folklore (United Kingdom) Vol. 127, no. 1 (2016), p. 71-90
- Full Text: false
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- Description: This article employs a Jungian analytical perspective in its exploration of the phenomenon of ghost hoaxing in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century colonial Victoria, Australia, as observed through its reportage in the print media of the era. © 2016The Folklore Society.
Aradale : the making of a haunted asylum
- Authors: Waldron, David , Waldron, Sharn , Buchanan, Nathaniel
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Book
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- Description: First built in 1867, the remarkable Gothic structure of the former Ararat Lunatic Asylum, colloquially known as Aradale, has overlooked the regional town of Ararat for over 150 years. Throughout its history it has seen remarkable transformations in the history of Australian psychiatry and western society's treatment of the mentally ill, and it has participated in some of their darkest scandals. Today in popular press, the labyrinthine complex is commonly acclaimed as 'Australia's most haunted building' and is home to a flourishing dark tourism industry boasting tens of thousands of visitors a year. This book explores the history of the former asylum, and examines what is it that makes a place 'haunted' in the popular imagination, and what it is about hauntings that so invariably connects them with problematic histories.
Beyond the corridors of the mind: An exploration of the dark history of aradale psychiatric hospital
- Authors: Waldron, Sharn , Waldron, David
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Jung journal Vol. 14, no. 2 (2020), p. 49-63
- Full Text: false
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- Description: This paper explores the practice of care for patients in Aradale, the asylum established in the rural city of Ararat on the Victorian goldfields in 1867. It describes the institution's descent into madness, from the idealized image of treatment behind its construction to the abject failure of the institution to realize those ideals and the resulting horror of its history. The paper utilizes a multidisciplinary approach, drawing on both historical methodology and Jungian analysis in trying to understand the history of the asylum and the society in which it operated.