Research LibraryEvery source cited across this school, in one place

Jung on the shadow Attested

The shadow, projection and individuation run throughout the Collected Works, with the most direct treatment in Aion (CW 9ii). The Red Book documents his own confrontation with the unconscious. Note: “golden shadow” is a later post-Jungian term, not Jung's phrase, the idea that the shadow holds disowned positive material is his.

Spiritual bypassing Attested

John Welwood, Principles of Inner Work: Psychological and Spiritual, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 16(1), 1984, 63–73, from a 1983 talk at the Omega Institute. Chö gyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, Shambhala, 1973. Robert Augustus Masters, Spiritual Bypassing, 2010.

The Spiritual Bypass Scale Studied

Fox, J., Cashwell, C. S., & Picciotto, G. (2017). The opiate of the masses. Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 4(4), 274–287. Community sample N = 661; two facets (Psychological Avoidance, Spiritualizing) on a second-order factor; alphas .75–.87. Brazilian adaptation Picciotto et al. 2018; Korean and Indian adaptations followed.

Meditation-related adverse effects Studied

Goldberg, S. B., Lam, S. U., Britton, W. B., & Davidson, R. J. (2022). Prevalence of meditation-related adverse effects in a population-based sample in the United States. Psychotherapy Research, 32(3), 291–305. 434 respondents; 50% endorsed at least one adverse-effect item; 10.6% some functional impairment; childhood adversity associated with elevated risk.

Rumination Studied

Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (1991), response styles theory. Nolen-Hoeksema, Wisco & Lyubomirsky (2008), Rethinking Rumination, Perspectives on Psychological Science, including the correction that rumination predicts onset more consistently than duration. The brooding / reflection distinction comes from psychometric work on the Ruminative Responses Scale.

Expressive writing Contested

Pennebaker & Beall (1986), Journal of Abnormal Psychology 95, 274–281. Smyth (1998) meta-analysis, d ≈ 0.47. Frattaroli (2006) meta-analysis. Meta-analysis restricted to randomised controlled trials (2009) finding no significant effects. Read all four before deciding what you think.

Internal Family Systems Contemporary

Scoping review of IFS research, Clinical Psychologist, 2025: 27 studies from 2001–2024, 17 case studies, 2 randomised controlled trials, 90% United States.

The attack-surface argument Practitioner

The table in §07, the chain in §08 and the claim that this page sits beneath the rest of the library are the school's own synthesis. The components are sourced; the assembly is ours, and it is offered as a way of holding the material rather than as a result.

The four-domain lens and the gate Practitioner

The Naialu framework, developed by this school's author. Every structural claim on this page, the domains, the gate, coherence as alignment across all four, and the grid ratings, carries this tag.

Contemplative adverse effects Studied

Goldberg, S. B., Lam, S. U., Britton, W. B., & Davidson, R. J. (2022), Psychotherapy Research 32(3), 291–305: 434 respondents, 50% endorsing at least one adverse-effect item, 10.6% some functional impairment, childhood adversity associated with elevated risk. Britton et al. (2021), mindfulness-based cognitive therapy dismantling study, functional impairment in roughly 37% of 96 participants.

Social connection Studied

Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review. PLoS Medicine 7(7), e1000316. 148 studies, 308,849 participants, OR = 1.50 (95% CI 1.42–1.59); strongest for complex measures of social integration (OR = 1.91).

Time outdoors Studied

White, M. P. et al. (2019). Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing. Scientific Reports 9, 7730. Around 20,000 respondents in England; no association below 120 minutes per week; it made no difference whether the time came in one visit or several. Cross-sectional and self-reported, an association, not a demonstrated cause.

Expressive writing Contested

Pennebaker & Beall (1986); Smyth (1998) meta-analysis, d ≈ 0.47; Frattaroli (2006) meta-analysis, small positive effects; a 2009 meta-analysis restricted to randomised controlled trials finding no significant effects. The grid rates it as a strong belief-domain tool on the basis of cost and safety as much as effect size, and you should know that.

The grid ratings Practitioner

A practitioner's read, not a measurement. Individual rows connect to the research on their own pages; no study has ever rated a practice on these four domains, because these four domains are ours.

Chevreul, 1833 and 1854 Attested

Open letter to Ampère on a particular class of muscular movements, published in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 1833; expanded as De la baguette divinatoire, du pendule dit explorateur et des tables tournantes, Paris, 1854. Findings: swing reduced under support, sight-dependence, loss of the effect once understood.

Carpenter, 1852 Attested

W. B. Carpenter, On the Influence of Suggestion in Modifying and Directing Muscular Movement, Independently of Volition, Royal Institution of Great Britain, 12 March 1852. The paper that names the effect.

Faraday, 1853 Attested

Letter in The Times, 30 June 1853; also published in the Journal of the Franklin Institute, vol. 56. The card stack, the pressure indicator, and the conclusion that tables move by unconscious muscular action and nothing else.

The board's patent Attested

US patent 446,054, filed 28 May 1890, granted 10 February 1891 to Elijah J. Bond, assigned to Charles W. Kennard and William H. A. Maupin. Kennard Novelty Company incorporated 30 October 1890. Rights sold to Parker Brothers 1966; Hasbro acquired Parker Brothers 1991.

Ideomotor expression of implicit knowledge Studied

Gauchou, Rensink & Fels, Expression of nonconscious knowledge via ideomotor actions, Consciousness and Cognition 21 (2012), 976–982. Guessed questions: 50% spoken, 65% board. Counter-finding: a 2021 replication using a Chevreul pendulum, published in the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, found no advantage over verbal report.

The Munich barn experiments Contested

Wagner, Betz & König, final report to the German federal research ministry, 1990. Critique: J. T. Enright, Water dowsing: the Scheunen experiments, Naturwissenschaften 82 (1995), and Testing dowsing: the failure of the Munich experiments, Skeptical Inquirer 23(1), 1999. Rebuttal: Betz et al., Naturwissenschaften, 1996. Read both sides.

The ADE 651 Attested

R v McCormick, Old Bailey, April–May 2013. Three counts of fraud; ten years, the statutory maximum; sentencing remarks of Judge Richard Hone. UK export ban to Iraq and Afghanistan, 2010.

Facilitated Communication Studied

Schlosser et al., Facilitated communication and authorship: a systematic review, Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 2014. Hemsley et al., systematic review 2014–2018, published 2018, informing the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association position statement. American Psychological Association resolution, August 1994. Rapid Prompting Method: systematic review in the Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 2019: an empty review. Wendrow case, Oakland County, Michigan, 2007–2008.

Applied kinesiology Studied

Originated by George J. Goodheart Jr., 1964. Kenney, Clemens & Forsythe, Applied kinesiology unreliable for assessing nutrient status, Journal of the American Dietetic Association 88 (1988), 698–704. Triano, blind study, Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics 5 (1982), 179–182.

The relocation argument Practitioner

The framing of §14 and §15: that this is a relocation rather than a debunking, and that the danger begins at the moment of externalisation rather than at the moment of movement: is the school's own position, and it is how this library holds the evidence together.

Jim Lewis and the origin of the map Contemporary

James Lewis Slayden, 5 June 1941 – 21 February 1995. Astro*Carto*Graphy booklet, 1976, introducing the interpretations and the concept of parans. Sourcebook of Mundane Maps, first edition 1979. Marc Edmund Jones Award 1978; Regulus Award 1992. The Psychology of Astro*Carto*Graphy, from Lewis's writings and lectures with additional material by Kenneth Irving.

The patent and trademark Attested

US patent 4,304,554, applied for 1980, granted 8 December 1981, inventor James Slayden Lewis, covering a transparent overlay superimposed on a map. Patent expired 2000; the Astro*Carto*Graphy trademark lapsed in 2011. First software written by Michael Erlewine in the late 1970s.

The older layer Attested

Relocation of a chart and the reading of angular planets are traditional, running back through Ptolemy. Donald Bradley is the only astrologer named in the dedication of Lewis's 1976 booklet; Charles Jayne and others worked on locational astrology earlier. Astro-locality maps appear in the literature from around 1941, used for mundane rather than natal purposes.

The astronomy Studied

The lines are ordinary spherical astronomy. Ten planets across four angles, Ascendant, Descendant, Midheaven and Imum Coeli, give forty lines on a standard map; MC and IC lines are meridians, Ascendant and Descendant lines are curves. Nothing in this calculation is disputed by anyone.

The evidence, and the dispute Contested

No controlled study of astrocartography specifically exists. The inherited base: Carlson, S. (1985), A double-blind test of astrology, Nature 318, 419–425; Dean, G. & Kelly, I. (2003), Journal of Consciousness Studies: over 2,000 “time twins” born in London, 3–9 March 1958, more than 100 characteristics, no resemblance found. Reanalyses disputing Carlson: Vidmar (2008), Ertel (2009). Read the astrology page for the full argument on both sides.

Attested. Plato's Symposium, and the attribution of the split-soul myth to the character of Aristophanes within it.

Studied. Attachment research on anxious and avoidant patterns; the behavioural literature on intermittent reinforcement; research on expressive writing after emotional upheaval; work on intense early-stage attraction and intrusive thinking.

Contemporary. The twin flame framework in its current form, including runner and chaser, numbered stages, divine timing and the 11:11 association, all traceable to twentieth and twenty-first century esoteric publishing and online content.

Contested. Whether the framework is net harmful in every case. This page argues it is harmful in a specific and predictable set of circumstances, not universally.

Practitioner. The assessment of which components are worth keeping, and the reading of divine timing as an exit-blocking device, are the author's own positions.

Your specific relationship — nothing here is an assessment of it, and no page could be.

Clinical questions — where distress is severe, this page is not a substitute for speaking to someone qualified.

Named organisations — we describe patterns rather than adjudicating particular groups or individuals.

The individual patient data meta-analysis Studied

Vickers, Cronin, Maschino, Lewith, MacPherson, Foster, Sherman, Witt & Linde for the Acupuncture Trialists' Collaboration, Archives of Internal Medicine (2012) — 29 of 31 eligible RCTs, 17,922 patients. Updated in The Journal of Pain (2018, searched to 31 December 2015) — 39 trials, 20,827 patients. Inclusion required unambiguously adequate allocation concealment; sham trials with high risk of bias from poor blinding were excluded. Acupuncture superior to sham for back and neck pain, osteoarthritis and chronic headache (all p < 0.001), and superior by a larger margin to non-acupuncture controls, with effects persisting over time. The authors describe differences between true and sham as relatively modest.

The sham-type finding Studied

MacPherson, Vertosick, Lewith, Linde, Sherman, Witt & Vickers, PLOS ONE (2014) — secondary analysis of 29 trials, 20 with sham controls (n = 5,230) and 18 non-sham (n = 14,597). Acupuncture was superior to every category of control. Trials using penetrating sham needles showed smaller effect sizes than those using non-penetrating or non-needle sham, difference −0.45 (95% CI −0.78 to −0.12; p = 0.007), reducing to −0.19 after excluding outliers. Implication stated by the authors: the primary estimates may have underestimated the effect versus sham.

Dose Studied

MacPherson, Maschino, Lewith, Foster, Witt & Vickers, PLOS ONE (2013) — more needles and more sessions associated with better outcomes versus non-acupuncture controls, with the authors noting potential confounders including differences in control group and sample size.

The tradition Attested Attested

Huangdi Neijing, compiled over centuries around the Han period, as the foundational text. “Traditional Chinese Medicine” as a standardised system was consolidated in the People's Republic of China from the 1950s, drawing together a far more varied regional inheritance. Alphanumeric point codes are a modern teaching and research convention.

Where the record is thin Contested

Adverse-event rates for acupuncture come largely from prospective practitioner surveys rather than mandatory reporting, so absolute incidence figures should be treated as estimates. The dry needling question — whether it is a distinct modality or acupuncture under another name — is genuinely unresolved and is being contested through regulators and courts rather than through evidence.

Phototoxicity Studied

Furanocoumarins (psoralens), principally bergapten and oxypeucedanin, in expressed citrus peel oils — Citrus bergamia, C. aurantium, C. limon, C. aurantifolia — and in angelica root and tagetes. Not present in distilled citrus peel oils. Reactions from pigmentation through blistering to full-thickness burns; onset within 24 hours, peak 36–72 hours post-UVA. IFRA maximum for bergamot in leave-on products: 0.4%. Risk considered removed if skin is protected from UVA for at least two hours. Historically termed berloque or bergapten dermatitis; Klaber coined “phytophotodermatitis.”

The endocrine question Contested

Henley, Lipson, Korach & Bloch (2007), Prepubertal gynecomastia linked to lavender and tea tree oils, NEJM — three cases plus in-vitro oestrogenic and anti-androgenic activity. Ramsey et al. (2019) added premature thelarche cases. Against: a review applying Hill's criteria across five publications and roughly twelve patients concluded dermal penetration is likely insufficient, both conditions frequently regress spontaneously, and causation has not been demonstrated; a published letter argued the in-vitro findings may reflect endocrine-disrupting contamination from plastic labware.

Ingestion toxicity Attested

US Poison Control guidance on lavender oil: toxic if swallowed; very small amounts toxic in children, causing severe sedation; larger amounts producing ataxia, headache, confusion, lethargy, coma, blurred vision and respiratory difficulty. Wintergreen (methyl salicylate), eucalyptus and camphor, pennyroyal (pulegone hepatotoxicity), tea tree and clove are the oils most associated with serious ingestion cases.

Gattefossé Attested

René-Maurice Gattefossé coined “aromathérapie” in the 1930s. The burned-hand account is his own, and this page reports it as an origin story rather than as a demonstrated result.

Where the record is thin Contested

Dilution percentages here follow widely-taught aromatherapy guidance rather than a regulatory standard, and practitioner bodies differ on the exact figures for children. Pet toxicity is well attested clinically but the veterinary literature is thinner than the strength of the warning implies — the warning is retained because the consequence is severe and the cost of caution is nil.

The meta-analysis Studied

Fincham et al. (2023), a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials on breathwork and mental health. Breathwork associated with lower subjective stress (primary outcome), anxiety and depression (secondary), versus non-breathwork controls; small-to-medium effects. For the primary outcome, ten studies were slow-paced and two fast-paced, at moderate and high risk of bias respectively. Only around 20% of included RCTs actively reported on adverse events.

Cyclic sighing Studied

Balban et al. (2023), Stanford — a randomised trial of five minutes daily for one month comparing cyclic sighing, box breathing, cyclic hyperventilation with retention, and mindfulness meditation. All improved mood and reduced anxiety; cyclic sighing produced the greatest improvement in positive affect and the greatest reduction in respiratory rate. Noted limitation: no placebo control, so attention and expectancy effects cannot be excluded.

Holotropic Breathwork Attested

Developed by Stanislav Grof in the mid-1970s following two decades of work with LSD in psychotherapy, as a non-drug route to what he termed holotropic states. Accelerated breathing, evocative music, optional bodywork; group format most common; sessions up to three hours. Rhinewine & Williams (2007) characterise the defining element as prolonged voluntary hyperventilation.

Physiology Studied

Hypocapnia from ventilation in excess of metabolic need; cerebral vasoconstriction and respiratory alkalosis producing dizziness, paraesthesia, visual change and carpopedal tetany. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia as the basis of the extended-exhale effect. Shallow-water blackout — hyperventilation removing the CO₂ drive to breathe, allowing loss of consciousness before the urge to surface — is a recognised and documented drowning mechanism.

Where the record is thin Contested

Adverse-event data for high-ventilation breathwork is genuinely poor. Reported side effects come largely from anecdote and from trial consent documents rather than systematic surveillance. Contraindication lists circulated by breathwork schools are widely shared and broadly consistent, but this page has not found a single authoritative clinical source consolidating them, and says so rather than implying one exists.

The lineage Attested

William Garner Sutherland (1873–1954), osteopath; observed bevelled cranial sutures and inferred articular mobility; taught from the 1920s; The Cranial Bowl (1939) sets out the primary respiratory mechanism. John Upledger, osteopathic physician at Michigan State, developed craniosacral therapy from the 1970s as a practice open to non-osteopaths, describing a craniosacral rhythm of approximately 6–12 cycles per minute through the dural tube from cranium to sacrum.

The mechanism reviews Contested

Ernst, Craniosacral therapy: a systematic review of the clinical evidence, Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies (2012) — studies to date do not suggest the existence of a PRM; interexaminer reliability not convincingly shown; no scientifically convincing evidence of clinical effect beyond placebo. Green et al. found that apart from Upledger's own study, all investigations determined craniosacral rhythm assessment unreliable. Hartman & Norton reached similar conclusions and suggested teaching and practice of cranial osteopathy should be severely limited. A 2024 systematic review in Healthcare concluded Sutherland's theory “has become dogma, despite scientific progress refuting it,” with Traube-Hering-Mayer waves driven by autonomic activity now the leading hypothesis, and called for a paradigm shift.

What holds up Studied

Reviews confirm that adult cranial sutures do not obliterate, fuse or ossify until well into late life, with some evidence of potential movement at suture sites earlier. CSF movement and pulsation are measurable by multiple imaging and pressure-monitoring methods, and a cranial pulse distinct from cardiac and respiratory activity is supported. Limited support exists for the assumption that manual manipulation can induce motion at the cranial sutures.

Where the record is thin Contested

Massage and bodywork evidence is summarised here at a general level; individual modalities vary considerably and trials are frequently small and hard to blind. Adverse-event data for craniosacral work is sparse — a reflection of low physical risk and low reporting rather than of demonstrated safety, and the contraindications above follow standard manual-therapy guidance rather than trial evidence.

The conditions for intuitive expertise Studied

Kahneman, D. & Klein, G. (2009), Conditions for Intuitive Expertise: A Failure to Disagree, American Psychologist 64(6), 515–526. Two researchers from opposing traditions — heuristics-and-biases and naturalistic decision making — mapping the boundary between genuine intuitive skill and overconfident impression. Their conclusion: evaluating an intuitive judgment requires assessing the predictability of the environment and the individual's opportunity to learn its regularities. Reliable intuition requires both an environment with valid cues and prolonged practice with rapid, unambiguous feedback. “Subjective experience is not a reliable indicator of judgment accuracy.”

The mechanisms Studied

Ideomotor action, the Forer effect and cold reading are sourced in full on their own pages in this library. Memory reconstruction and the malleability of recollection under suggestion, and the well-documented risk of confidently held false memories arising in relaxed, trusting, suggestible states, underpin the trauma-implantation warning in §08.

Where the record is thin Contested

There is no body of trial evidence on intuitive healing as such — it is a way of working rather than a defined intervention, and it has not been studied under that name. This page therefore reasons from the decision-science literature on intuition and from the mechanisms documented elsewhere in this library, and says so rather than implying a trial base exists. The calibration protocol in §04 is a practical application of Kahneman and Klein's second condition, not a validated instrument.

Attested. The instructional literature of the Hindu, Buddhist, Christian contemplative, Sufi and Jewish traditions, including their own accounts of difficult stages.

Studied. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses of mindfulness-based programmes for anxiety, depression and pain; trials of MBCT for depressive relapse prevention; the methodological critiques concerning active controls, blinding and publication bias; the research literature on meditation-related adverse experiences, of which the qualitative work by Lindahl and colleagues published in 2017 is the standard reference.

Contemporary. The commercial packaging from Transcendental Meditation onward, MBSR's clinical framing from 1979, and the app-era claims that outran the evidence.

Contested. The size of the true effect once expectancy and active controls are accounted for; the interpretation of structural neuroimaging findings in long-term meditators.

Practitioner. The specific safeguards in section nine, and the position that short consistent practice is the right starting point, are the author's own.

Advanced insight practice — described from outside. It belongs with a teacher in a lineage, not with a web page.

Clinical judgement — nothing here assesses whether meditation is appropriate for any individual.

Prevalence figures — estimates of how often adverse experiences occur vary widely with method, and we report the range rather than picking a number.

Bloodborne pathogens Studied

Universal precautions, CDC, from 1987–1989; standard precautions from 1996. OSHA Bloodborne Pathogens Standard, 29 CFR 1910.1030, promulgated 1991 and updated 2001 following the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act. The governing principle: all human blood and certain body fluids are treated as potentially infectious for HIV, HBV and HCV. Hepatitis B is substantially more transmissible than HIV and persists on surfaces; vaccination is recommended for adults aged 19–59 and for older adults with risk factors.

The cycle and cognition Studied

Meta-analysis of menstrual cycle effects on cognitive performance (2025): 102 articles, N = 3,943, 730 comparisons across attention, creativity, executive function, intelligence, motor function, spatial and verbal ability. No systematic robust evidence of cycle shifts; no evidence of publication bias on Egger's test. Earlier reviews concur that differences in sexually dimorphic tasks are small and difficult to replicate. Emotion-related changes replicate more consistently and are better associated with the luteal phase and progesterone. Larger cycle-linked difficulty is reported in premenstrual disorders and in ADHD, where the literature is preliminary.

The folk tradition Attested

Menstrual blood in love and binding magic is attested across European folk magic, Hoodoo, Latin American and other traditions, most commonly in the form of secret administration to a desired person. It also appears in protective and agricultural practice, and extensively in purity and taboo systems that restrict menstruating people.

Purity and pollution Attested

Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (1966) — pollution as cultural classification rather than hygiene. Applies to the disgust reaction; does not apply to the biosafety facts.

The modern reclamation Contemporary

“Sacred moon blood,” womb wisdom and cycle-reverence framings emerged largely within late twentieth-century Goddess spirituality and sacred-feminine movements, and spread through twenty-first century wellness and social media. Recent, frequently marketed as ancient.

Legal status Contested

Covert administration of a bodily substance can attract criminal liability in many jurisdictions, under offences that vary widely in name and gravity. This page deliberately names no specific charge as universal, and anyone needing an answer for their own jurisdiction should get one locally.

The ayahuasca–SSRI interaction Studied

Callaway & Grob (1998), Ayahuasca preparations and serotonin reuptake inhibitors: a potential combination for severe adverse interactions. Mechanism: harmine, harmaline and tetrahydroharmine as reversible MAO-A inhibitors. Counter-evidence on frequency: White, Kennedy, Ruffell, Perkins & Sarris (2024), systematic thematic review of ayahuasca and DMT adverse events — extremely rare case reports, no confirmed cases identified.

Ibogaine cardiotoxicity Studied

hERG potassium channel blockade by ibogaine and noribogaine → QTc prolongation → torsades de pointes. Alper et al. (2012), 19 fatalities 1990–2008, later updated to approximately 33. Published case reports of cardiac arrest at 200 mg (2.6 mg/kg) without structural heart disease. Brunt et al. (2026), Addiction, on CYP2D6 variability. Monitored-cohort contrast: 191 patients on continuous telemetry with genotyping, no significant arrhythmias.

Kambo Studied

Phyllomedusa bicolor peptides → SIADH → hyponatremia and cerebral oedema. Leban, Kozelj & Brvar (2016), Toxicon. Campodónico et al. (2019), Revista Médica de Chile. Tran et al. (2025), Cureus — first documented case of brain death attributed to kambo toxicity.

Sexual abuse in ayahuasca settings Studied

Chacruna Institute, Ayahuasca Community Guide for the Awareness of Sexual Abuse (2018), available free in fourteen languages with a legal-resources companion. Peluso et al. (2020), Journal of Psychedelic Studies 4(1). Chacruna's 2020 Ayahuasca Survey: 2,071 respondents, 745 cases analysed, 83.1% aware, 52.1% reporting direct or indirect experience.

Clinical and regulatory status Contested

FDA Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee vote 10–1 against, June 2024. Complete Response Letter to Lykos Therapeutics, 9 August 2024, published by the FDA 4 September 2025. FDA final guidance on psychedelic clinical trials, July 2026, addressing functional unblinding. Compass Pathways COMP360 targeting NDA submission in Q4 2026. All of this moves; date-check before relying on it.

Ayahuasca's contested antiquity Contested

Peter Gow and Bernd Brabec de Mori on a possible Napo-basin origin spreading via mission settlements and rubber camps. Evidence includes Catholic ritual features and reports of first contact within living memory among several Amazonian peoples. Contested scholarship, and Indigenous oral histories differ. Santo Daime founded around 1930 by Raimundo Irineu Serra; União do Vegetal founded by José Gabriel da Costa.

María Sabina and Wasson Attested

R. Gordon Wasson, Seeking the Magic Mushroom, Life, May 1957, describing a 1955 velada at Huautla de Jiménez. Subsequent documented consequences for Sabina: raids on her practice, her house burned, her son murdered, and her death in poverty in 1985.

The state-and-trait framing Practitioner

§11 applies the school's own coherence framework. The components are sourced on their own page; the application here is ours.

The lineage Attested

William H. Fitzgerald (1872–1942), ENT physician; zone therapy publicised from 1915, with Edwin Bowers' article “To stop that toothache, squeeze your toe” in Everybody's Magazine; Zone Therapy, or Relieving Pain in the Home (1917), expanded 1919. Ten vertical zones. Joe Shelby Riley added horizontal zones and hand, foot and ear maps (1919). Eunice Ingham (1889–1974), physiotherapist, Stories the Feet Can Tell (1938), followed by further volumes in 1951 and 1960; forty years of teaching; the modern practice is known as the Ingham Method.

The map problem Contested

Reflex areas correspond to neither the nervous system nor the acupuncture meridians, and published reflexology maps show several inconsistencies between them — the basis on which the diagnostic application is generally regarded as invalid. This is the central evidential problem and it is internal to the practice's own charts.

The evidence picture Studied Studied

Reasonably consistent findings for reduced anxiety and improved reported wellbeing, including in clinical settings. Inconclusive or negative for specific disease outcomes, and comparisons against non-specific foot massage generally fail to show an advantage for map-based work. This page reports that split rather than averaging it into a verdict.

Where the record is thin Contested

Claims of Egyptian and Chinese origin rest on depictions of foot massage rather than on any evidence of this map, and this page treats them as claims about foot massage in general. The contraindication list follows standard practitioner training guidance rather than a clinical trial literature — the DVT warning in particular is retained because the consequence is severe and the cost of caution is nil.

“Soul tie” as a teaching Contemporary Contemporary

Emerged in charismatic and Pentecostal deliverance circles in the later twentieth century; popularised by deliverance minister Frank Hammond. Deliverance ministry itself rose to prominence from the late 1960s. Scriptural passages cited in support: 1 Samuel 18:1 and 1 Corinthians 6:16. Rejected as unbiblical by numerous teachers and ministries within evangelical and Pentecostal traditions — the critique is substantially an internal one.

The neurobiology of bonding Studied

Oxytocin and vasopressin in pair bonding: the prairie vole literature from Winslow et al. (1993) and Williams et al. (1994) onward, plus human imaging work. The essential caveat: Berendzen et al. (2023), Neuron — Oxytocin receptor is not required for social attachment in prairie voles. CRISPR knockout animals still formed pair bonds. The system is involved; it is not a switch, and human intranasal-oxytocin findings are mixed.

Purity culture and its metaphors Contemporary

The chewed gum, used tape and wilted rose lessons of 1990s and 2000s abstinence education, applied predominantly to girls, and documented extensively in subsequent scholarship on religious sexual shame. Elizabeth Smart has spoken publicly about the chewed-gum lesson shaping her belief, during and after her captivity, that she had lost her worth. The You Are Not Chewed Gum campaign (2019) was created in response.

Tantra and neotantra Attested

Tantra as a family of Hindu and Buddhist traditions, overwhelmingly non-sexual in content. Neotantra as a twentieth-century Western construction. The documented record of abuse in “tantric” teaching settings is sufficient to state the pattern; this page describes the structure rather than naming individuals.

Sex magic Attested

Paschal Beverly Randolph in the nineteenth century; Aleister Crowley and the Ordo Templi Orientis in the twentieth. The mechanism described here — orgasm as a state of focus and heightened suggestibility — is the naturalistic account, not the traditions' own.

The Blavatsky dispute Contested

Hodgson, R. et al. (1885), Report of the committee appointed to investigate phenomena connected with the Theosophical Society, SPR Proceedings 3, 201–400. Hodgson's later reply: The defence of the Theosophists, SPR Proceedings 9 (1894). Harrison, V. (1986), J'Accuse: an examination of the Hodgson Report of 1885, Journal of the SPR 53(803), 286–310; expanded as H.P. Blavatsky and the SPR (1997), including examination of 1,323 British Library slides.

The channelling lineage Attested

Jane Roberts and Seth, from December 1963 until her death in 1984. Helen Schucman, Columbia research psychologist, reporting inner dictation 1965–1972, published as A Course in Miracles; Schucman died in 1981. JZ Knight (born Judith Darlene Hampton, 1946), reporting Ramtha from 1977; Ramtha's School of Enlightenment founded 1988 at Yelm, Washington. Esther Hicks and Abraham from the 1980s. Darryl Anka and Bashar from the 1980s. Carla Rueckert and the Ra material, 1981–84.

Ramtha's School of Enlightenment Contested

Founded 1988; private fenced compounds; critics describe it as a cult, a characterisation the organisation rejects. Reports of adherents constructing shelters and stockpiling supplies against predicted earth changes come from local reporting and former members. The 2007 Northern Cape case involved two members who had joined in 1997. Contested territory, reported as contested.

The mechanism Studied

Ideomotor action and the Facilitated Communication authorship literature — see the ideomotor page for full sourcing. Dissociation as a measurable, trainable alteration of consciousness. Cryptomnesia and confabulation as established features of memory. Incubation, insight and implicit processing as the basis of the “download.”

Temporary invited possession, and the position on summoning Practitioner

§04 is the school's own framing and the author's own practice position. It is not a finding, no evidence is offered for it, and §09 is deliberately constructed so that its safety guidance does not depend on it.

The Bath curse tablets Attested

Around 130 tablets recovered 1979–80 from the Sacred Spring at Aquae Sulis during excavations led by Barry Cunliffe and Peter Davenport, 1978–83. Second to fourth century AD, mostly in British Latin. All but one concern restitution of stolen goods; classed as “prayers for justice.” On the UNESCO Memory of the World UK Register — the only Roman British documents on it. One tablet carries what is currently the earliest known reference to Christianity in Britain; two may be in a British Celtic language, undeciphered.

United States v. Marks Attested

US Attorney's Office, Southern District of Florida. Indictment unsealed 16 August 2011 (Operation Crystal Ball), charging Rose Marks and nine co-defendants. Conviction on all 14 counts, September 2013, in a $25 million scheme. Sentenced 3 March 2014 to just over ten years, Judge Kenneth A. Marra, on documented losses of approximately $17.8 million. Investigated by Fort Lauderdale PD, US Secret Service and IRS-CI.

Bridget Cleary Attested

Born 19 February 1869, died 15 March 1895, Ballyvadlea, County Tipperary. Killed by her husband Michael Cleary and others acting on a belief that she was a changeling; nine people were charged and the trial was reported internationally. Strictly a fairy-changeling case rather than a witchcraft case, though contemporary newspapers reported it as a witch burning and the label has persisted. Angela Bourke's The Burning of Bridget Cleary is the standard account.

Nelson Rehmeyer Attested

Killed 27 November 1928 at Rehmeyer's Hollow, North Hopewell Township, York County, Pennsylvania, by John Blymire with John Curry and Wilbert Hess. Blymire, a powwow practitioner who believed himself hexed, had been told by a curse-finder that Rehmeyer was responsible. The object was a lock of hair and Rehmeyer's copy of The Long Lost Friend (John George Hohman, 1820). All three were convicted.

Nocebo, and what is contested Studied Studied

Nocebo effects are well documented in clinical trial literature, where participants receiving inert treatments report genuine adverse symptoms. Walter Cannon, “Voodoo” Death, American Anthropologist, 1942 — the phenomenon and proposed mechanism remain disputed. These two should not be blurred together, and this page keeps them separate deliberately.

Ritual and anxiety Studied

Performing ritual measurably reduces anxiety and restores perceived control, including with rituals invented for the purpose and carrying no traditional authority. This is the basis of the claim in §03 and §09 that the free version works for the same reason the paid version appears to.

The angelic hierarchy Attested

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, De Coelesti Hierarchia (The Celestial Hierarchy), fifth or sixth century — written under the name of the Dionysius of Acts 17:34, which is why it was long received as apostolic. Nine orders in three triads. Aquinas develops it in the Summa, drawing on Ephesians 1:21 and Colossians 1:16. Michael is the only figure called an archangel in the canonical New Testament (Jude 9); Raphael appears in Tobit, Uriel in 2 Esdras. Archangels are second-lowest in the scheme.

Ancestor veneration Transmitted

Qingming and tomb-sweeping (China); Obon and the butsudan (Japan); Chuseok and jesa (Korea); Pchum Ben (Cambodia); Têt (Vietnam); Akan, Zulu and wider West African libation; Yoruba ancestral shrines; Día de Muertos (Mexico); All Souls' and All Saints' (Catholic Europe). Note that Hindu shraddha rites, while honouring the dead, sit inside a rebirth framework that differs structurally from the Chinese and African models.

The spirit guide Contemporary

A product of nineteenth-century Spiritualism, conventionally dated from 1848, developed through Theosophy and the twentieth-century New Age. E. W. Wallis, A Guide to Mediumship and Psychic Unfoldment, argued against the concept from within Spiritualism as disempowering to living and dead alike.

Native American spirit controls Attested

Appearing in American séances from the 1850s, common by the 1880s. Noted by contemporary investigators including Abbott and Plate, Behind the Scenes with the Mediums. Examined in scholarship on Spiritualism and settler colonialism. The Black Hawk devotion in Black Spiritualist churches derives from Mother Leafy Anderson, spreading from the upper Midwest to New Orleans from the 1920s, and is a distinct living tradition.

Angel numbers Contemporary

Doreen Virtue, Healing with the Angels (1999), Angel Numbers (2005), Angel Numbers 101 (2008). Virtue converted to Christianity in 2017, renounced her metaphysical work, and has publicly asked people not to buy the earlier books and decks. The framework continues to circulate independently.

Continuing bonds Studied

The shift in bereavement research away from a detachment model toward continuing bonds — maintaining an ongoing relationship with the deceased — as a normal and frequently adaptive feature of grief. Sensed presence of the dead is commonly reported among the bereaved and is not in itself a sign of disorder.

The Sīvaka Sutta Attested

Sa—yutta Nikāya 36.21, in the Vedanā Sa—yutta. The wanderer Mo iyasīvaka at Rājagaha, in the Bamboo Grove. Eight causes of feeling: bile, phlegm, wind, an imbalance of the three, change of climate, careless care of the body, assault, and the result of kamma as the eighth. Available in translations by Bhikkhu Bodhi (The Connected Discourses of the Buddha, 2000), Thanissaro Bhikkhu, and others, freely readable online.

The Western chakra system Contemporary

Kurt Leland, Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan (Ibis Press, 2016), dating the modern system's arrival to June 1977. Christopher Hills, Nuclear Evolution: Discovery of the Rainbow Body (1977). Charles W. Leadbeater, The Chakras (1927). Sir John Woodroffe as “Arthur Avalon,” The Serpent Power (1919). Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life (1987).

Modern postural yoga Studied

Mark Singleton, Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (Oxford University Press, 2010). Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888–1989) at the Mysore Palace; his students Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, Indra Devi and T.K.V. Desikachar. The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali; the Ha ha Yoga Pradīpikā.

The abuse cases Contested

Stated as allegations, with forums and outcomes named. Choudhury: Jafa-Bodden civil verdict, Los Angeles, January 2016; arrest warrant for non-payment; six separate civil suits, several settled; denials of wrongdoing and no criminal charges brought. Pattabhi Jois: allegations by former students, with R. Sharath Jois's public acknowledgement of witnessing improper adjustments. John Friend: resignation from Anusara, 2012. Yogi Bhajan: independent investigation by An Olive Branch, commissioned by the organisations he founded, reporting in 2020.

Standing Practitioner

This page is written from outside every tradition it discusses. It should be reviewed by a Hindu scholar and a Buddhist teacher before publication. Careful sourcing is not the same as standing, and on this page that distinction matters more than anywhere else in the library.

The suppression history Attested

Code of Indian Offenses, 1883 — “Rules Governing the Court of Indian Offenses,” issued 30 March 1883 under Commissioner Hiram Price, following Secretary of the Interior Henry M. Teller's instruction. Never enacted by Congress. Penalties included withholding treaty rations for up to thirty days, and imprisonment of medicine men for not less than ten days or until they renounced their beliefs. Enforcement eased after 1934; the Code was not formally displaced until 1978. American Indian Religious Freedom Act, Public Law 95-341, 92 Stat. 469, signed 11 August 1978, codified at 42 U.S.C. § 1996 — a policy statement with limited enforcement power; peyote protections for members of federally recognised tribes followed in 1994 amendments. Potlatch ban in Canada, 1885–1951.

The Lakota Declaration Attested

Passed unanimously at Lakota Summit V on 10 June 1993 — roughly 500 representatives from as many as 40 tribes and bands of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota nations of the US and Canada. Principal authors: Wilmer “Stampede” Mesteth (Oglala Lakota), Darrell Standing Elk and Phyllis Swift Hawk. Reported by Valerie Taliman in The Circle, July 1993, and republished widely. The full text is freely available and short enough to read in ten minutes.

The Sedona deaths Attested

October 2009, near Sedona, Arizona. Kirby Brown (38) and James Shore (40) died at the scene; Liz Neuman (49) died after more than a week in a coma; eighteen hospitalised. Convicted June 2011 by a Yavapai County jury on three counts of negligent homicide, acquitted of manslaughter; sentenced to two years, released July 2013.

Standing Practitioner

Two things this page owes you plainly. The Indigenous sections need review by Indigenous scholars — this is written from outside, about people who have been written about from outside for four hundred years, and that is not a formality. The Hoodoo section needs review by Black practitioners and scholars on both sides of the openness argument — not one side, both. The position marked in §05 is the school's own opinion and carries no more weight than that.

Cunning-folk Attested

Owen Davies, Cunning-Folk: Popular Magic in English History (2003) — the standard work. Ronald Hutton on the historiography of witchcraft and modern paganism.

The legal chronology Attested

Witchcraft Act 1735 (9 Geo. 2 c. 5), royal assent 24 March 1736, in force 24 June 1736; repealed the Witchcraft Acts of 1563 and 1603; criminalised claiming that a person had magical powers; maximum penalty one year. Jean Maxwell convicted at Kirkcudbright, June 1805. Vagrancy Act 1824, section 4. Helen Duncan jailed 1944. Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951 (14 & 15 Geo. 6 c. 33), royal assent 22 June 1951, repealing the 1735 Act and substituting for part of Vagrancy Act s. 4. The 1951 Act repealed 26 May 2008 by the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.

DSM-5 cultural concepts of distress Studied

DSM-5 Appendix, Glossary of Cultural Concepts of Distress; cultural formulation chapter and Cultural Formulation Interview in Section III. Nine concepts listed: ataque de nervios, dhat syndrome, khyâl cap, kufungisisa, maladi moun, nervios, shenjing shuairuo, susto, taijin kyofusho. Note that mal de ojo is not among them — it was among the concepts that resisted DSM categorisation. No cultural concept maps onto a single psychiatric disorder or vice versa.

Hex signs Contested

Alfred L. Shoemaker, Hex Signs: Their Origins, History, Usage and Significance, with Don Yoder — the “chust for nice” position. The phrase was coined by the painter Milton Hill against Johnny Ott's magical interpretation. “Hex sign” as a term popularised in the 1920s via tourism literature; traditional terms were schtanna and blumma. Jacob Zook began producing tourist plaques in the 1940s. Most barns were unpainted before the 1830s. The Amish do not use them.

Hoodoo Transmitted

Harry Middleton Hyatt, Hoodoo – Conjuration – Witchcraft – Rootwork (1970–78) — thousands of pages of verbatim interviews recorded in the 1930s and 40s; a white collector, with everything that implies, but the practitioners speak in their own words. Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men (1935) — a Black anthropologist who trained in the practice. ⚠ Per the reference doc's own instruction: this section requires review by a Black practitioner or scholar before publication. Our sourcing is not sufficient authority here.

Stregheria and Aradia Contested

Stregheria marketed as an unbroken Italian witch religion, largely through Raven Grimassi from the 1990s. Its claimed source, Charles Godfrey Leland's Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899), is of seriously disputed authenticity, and most scholars regard Stregheria as a modern construction. Distinguish it from benedicaria, which is ordinary living Catholic folk practice and makes no such claim.

Other primary sources Attested

Johann Georg Hohman, Der Lange Verborgene Freund / The Long Lost Friend (1820). Vance Randolph, Ozark Magic and Folklore (1947). Biddy Early (c. 1798–1874, County Clare) — a documented historical healer, tried and acquitted under the Witchcraft Act.

Attested. Euclid's Elements, especially Book I Proposition 1 and the closing books on the five solids; Plato's Timaeus; surviving Islamic pattern scrolls and standing architecture; medieval masons' drawings.

Studied. The mathematical literature on phyllotaxis and divergence angles; published critiques of golden-ratio claims in architecture and art, of which Markowsky's 1992 survey of misconceptions is the standard reference; replication work on Fechner's rectangle-preference experiments.

Transmitted. Yantra and mandala practice as taught within Hindu and Buddhist lineages; Metatron as a figure in Hekhalot literature and 3 Enoch.

Contemporary. The naming and packaging of the modern system, traceable through twentieth-century esoteric publishing and fixed in its current form during the 1990s.

Contested. The dating of the Osireion figures; claims of deliberate proportional encoding in specific buildings.

Islamic geometric design — the technical literature is deep and specialist, and this page gives only a pointer to it.

Yantra practice — described here from the outside. For instruction, ask within the tradition.

Egyptological dating — we report that the Osireion dating is disputed; we are not in a position to settle it.

The four tools Attested

Gerald Gardner, Witchcraft Today, Rider & Company, 1954. A black-handled arthame appears in some manuscript versions of the Key of Solomon; the Key itself does not use “athame.” Gardner acknowledged drawing on Mathers' edition of the Key for his 1949 novel High Magic's Aid. The four elemental weapons appear in Golden Dawn practice, where the blade is air; in Wicca it is fire. Gardner's own tool list omits the chalice despite its constant ritual use; the Alexandrian tradition substitutes it for the censer. Note the timing: the Witchcraft Act 1735 was repealed in 1951, and Gardner published publicly immediately afterwards.

Sigils Contemporary

Austin Osman Spare (1886–1956), The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love), 1913. Popularised through chaos magic from the 1970s.

The hazards Studied

Mineral hazard data cross-checked against mineralogical and collector-safety sources. Uranium minerals: the principal risks are radon accumulation in enclosed spaces, uranyl compounds being toxic to the kidneys, and radioactive dust if a specimen is broken or ground. Standard guidance is to wash hands after handling, avoid breathing dust, keep specimens away from the body and out of sleeping areas, and store sealed. A single small specimen in a sealed container in a ventilated room is not a crisis — but wearing one, sleeping beside one, or grinding one is genuinely unwise, and collectors have found radon readings affecting house sales.

Expressive writing Contested

Pennebaker & Beall (1986) and the subsequent literature. Smyth's 1998 meta-analysis reported an average effect around d = 0.47; Frattaroli's 2006 meta-analysis found small positive effects; a 2009 meta-analysis restricted to randomised controlled trials found no significant effects. The notebook is still the cheapest and safest tool here — but the page should not oversell it.

Enclothed cognition Contested

Adam & Galinsky (2012), the lab-coat study. Widely cited and subject to replication difficulties. Cited here as suggestive rather than settled, because the page's own standard requires it.

The crystal studies Studied

Rose quartz, 2025: “Placebo effects in alternative medical treatments for anxiety: false hope or healing potential?”, CNS Spectrums (Cambridge), accepted August 2025. 138 adults classified as believers or non-believers, randomised to rose quartz or a visually matched placebo, 14-day protocol, Beck Anxiety Inventory and the Spanish Kuwait University Anxiety Scale, multilevel ANOVA and Bayesian analysis. Anxiety reductions occurred only among believers, regardless of which stone they received; no group differences in primary outcomes. Limitation the authors state themselves: belief was not randomised — participants self-selected into belief groups — so interpretive caution applies. Quartz, 2001: Christopher French, Goldsmiths, University of London. 80 participants meditating with real quartz or visually identical glass fakes after being primed to expect sensations. Both groups reported the sensations; nobody reliably distinguished real from fake. ⚠ Presented at a science festival and widely reported, but never peer-reviewed — cite it as suggestive rather than settled.

The Celtic Tree Calendar Contemporary

Robert Graves, The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Faber & Faber, May 1948 (revised 1952 and 1961). Thirteen lunar months of 28 days, each assigned a tree. No historical evidence exists for anything like it in ancient Celtic practice. Graves reduced the Ogham consonants from fifteen to thirteen, dismissing the others as late additions, in order to make the scheme work. Ogham itself is genuine: an early medieval alphabet on hundreds of stones in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Devon and Cornwall, cautiously dated to the late fourth century, used to record names.

The Sedona sweat lodge deaths Attested

October 2009, near Sedona, Arizona — the closing event of a five-day paid “Spiritual Warrior” retreat led by the self-help author James Arthur Ray. More than fifty participants in a two-hour lodge. Kirby Brown, 38, and James Shore, 40, died at the scene; Liz Neuman, 49, died after more than a week in a coma. Eighteen others were hospitalised. In June 2011 a Yavapai County jury acquitted Ray of manslaughter and convicted him on three counts of negligent homicide; he was sentenced to two years and released in July 2013.

Hoodoo Attested Attested

Harry Middleton Hyatt, Hoodoo – Conjuration – Witchcraft – Rootwork (1970–78) — an enormous primary-source interview collection; and Zora Neale Hurston's ethnographic work. African American folk practice, and not the same thing as Vodou, a conflation this page declines to repeat. ⚠ Per the reference doc's own note, this section should be reviewed by a Hoodoo practitioner or scholar before publication rather than resting on our sourcing alone.

Where the record is thin Contested

Several folk-attested entries here — the red protective thread, rue, rowan — are genuinely widely recorded but this page cannot yet name the specific collectors, and says so rather than inventing a citation. The origin of “white light protection” is likewise untraced; it is ubiquitous online with no attested lineage before the twentieth century, and Theosophy or New Thought is a plausible but unconfirmed source. The maxim that rosemary substitutes for any other herb is repeated as traditional and we have not found its origin. These are open gaps, marked as gaps.

The classical sources Attested

Huangdi Neijing (Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon), compiled over centuries around the Han period. Li Shizhen, Bencao Gangmu, Ming dynasty — approximately 11,000 therapeutic preparations drawn from around 1,892 substances.

The 1950s standardisation Attested Attested

Kim Taylor, Chinese Medicine in Early Communist China, 1945–1963, documents the process. Mao Zedong's declaration that Chinese medicine is “a great treasure house”; state policy from 1954 mandating preservation, integration and colleges; first state TCM colleges in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Guangzhou in 1956 with five-year degrees. Committees largely of Western-trained physicians, with traditional doctors as advisors, tasked with producing a “logical, internally consistent, standardized, homogeneous medical system out of the vast heterogeneous legacy”, conforming to dialectical materialism. Concepts judged superstitious were removed — the hun and po are absent from texts of the 1960s and 70s. Acupoints, needling technique, herbal practice and zang-fu pattern differentiation were all standardised, and this version was exported west by the first teachers.

Aristolochic acid Studied

Aristolochic acid nephropathy, following the Belgian slimming-clinic cases in which an Aristolochia species was substituted for another herb; severe interstitial renal fibrosis and a markedly raised incidence of urothelial carcinoma. Aristolochic acids are recognised nephrotoxins and human carcinogens. Species involved in TCM materia medica include Radix Aristolochiae Fangchi (Guang Fang Ji), Aristolochia manshuriensis (Guan Mu Tong), and Aristolochia debilis (Ma Dou Ling). Regulatory reviews place Aristolochia in the highest-risk class — prohibited for medicinal use — with aconite, asarum and ephedra restricted, and cinnabar and red lead flagged for heavy-metal content. Reviews also note that toxicity classification frequently lacks specified scientific criteria or a grading system.

Artemisinin Studied

Tu Youyou, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2015, for the discovery of artemisinin from Artemisia annua, a plant recorded in traditional Chinese fever remedies. The method was extraction, isolation and clinical testing. The distinction is stated on the page because the award is frequently offered as validation of TCM theory rather than of its pharmacopoeia.

Where the record is thin Contested

Pulse diagnosis reliability is asserted here as not convincingly demonstrated, which reflects the general state of palpation-reliability research rather than one definitive study. Formula-level herbal trials are numerous but frequently of low methodological quality, and this page does not attempt to summarise individual formulas. This page is written from outside the tradition and would benefit from review by a practitioner trained in China, particularly §02–§06.

Oettingen and mental contrasting Studied

Oettingen's first paper on positive fantasies and motivation appeared in Cognition & Emotion in 1996; Oettingen & Mayer (2002) reported the effect across four samples. Kappes & Oettingen, Positive fantasies about idealized futures sap energy (2011). Gollwitzer's foundational implementation-intentions review, American Psychologist, 1999. The combined MCII protocol was named WOOP in Rethinking Positive Thinking (2014). Effects are consistent but modest, and strongest for internal obstacles.

The New Thought lineage Attested

Phineas Quimby (1802–1866). Emma Curtis Hopkins (1849–1925), who trained the founders of Unity, Divine Science and Religious Science. Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, Unity (1889). Ernest Holmes, Science of Mind (1926). Wallace Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich (1910) — credited by Rhonda Byrne as the origin of The Secret. Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking (1952). Neville Goddard (1905–1972). Esther and Jerry Hicks, from the 1980s. Rhonda Byrne, The Secret (2006).

Napoleon Hill Contested

The Law of Success (1928); Think and Grow Rich (1937), which has sold tens of millions. Hill claimed that Andrew Carnegie commissioned him in 1908 to interview America's industrialists and discover the laws of success. Carnegie's biographer David Nasaw states he found no evidence of any sort that the two ever met, and no evidence that Hill's book about the conversations was authentic. Hill began making the claim only after Carnegie died in 1919. Hill's 1995 official biography concedes the Carnegie book used a contrived conversational format, while the Napoleon Hill Foundation maintains the meeting occurred. Other claims — that he helped end the First World War and wrote Roosevelt's fireside chats — are widely discredited, and he faced fraud allegations and an FTC false-advertising charge.

Kim Tinkham Attested

Diagnosed with stage III breast cancer in 2007 after The Secret aired on The Oprah Winfrey Show; wrote to the programme stating she would forgo chemotherapy; appeared on the show, where Winfrey urged her not to ignore medical science. She subsequently followed an alkaline-diet protocol. She died in December 2010, aged 53. Medical commentators reported the cause as almost certainly metastatic breast cancer; some of those close to her disputed this. The page notes the dispute rather than resolving it.

⚠ What this page deliberately omits Practitioner

The reference document for this page included a claim about the illness and death of another named individual connected to the Abraham material. We could not verify it to the standard this library applies to statements about real people who have died, so it has been left out. It is recorded here so the omission is visible rather than silent.

Needs clinical review Practitioner

The paragraph on reality shifting and “the void” concerns depersonalisation and derealisation being taught as a practice, largely to teenagers. The clinical framing should be checked by a clinician before publication.

The three principles and the ethics Practitioner

The working position of this school's author. No evidence is offered for the framework itself and none is claimed. Each principle is given with a safety translation and an evidenced core precisely so that a reader who rejects the framework entirely still has the useful part. That separation is deliberate and it is the page's answer to its own problem.

Anger rumination — the non-metaphysical case Studied

Anger rumination is defined in the literature as re-experiencing anger-evoking events, dwelling on angry thoughts and memories, and the mental rehearsal of possible acts of revenge (Sukhodolsky et al., 2001; Denson et al., 2006). It is associated with increased angry affect, aggressive cognition, aggressive behaviour and cardiovascular reactivity including elevated blood pressure (Denson, 2009). Bushman, Bonacci, Pedersen, Vasquez & Miller (2005), Chewing on it can chew you up: effects of rumination on triggered displaced aggression, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88(6) — rumination produces aggression toward people other than the one who caused the anger. A 2025 meta-analysis of 81 studies (115 effect sizes) in Scientific Reports found rumination associated with increased aggressive behaviour and prolonged cardiovascular reactivity — slower physiological recovery after anger.

Destabilisation risk Studied

The contemplative adverse-effects literature is sourced in full on the shadow work and coherence pages: a US population survey in which half of 434 respondents endorsed at least one adverse-effect item, 10.6% reported some functional impairment, and childhood adversity was associated with elevated risk. That finding is why Principle 2 is a prerequisite rather than a suggestion.

Spells-for-hire fraud Attested

The federal prosecution documenting this business model, its escalation structure and its scale is set out in full on the hexes and curses page and is not re-sourced here.

⚠ A note on how to read this page Practitioner

Every Practitioner claim on this page is offered, not decreed. If you take the risks in §02, the consent line in §05, the money warning in §04 and the floor in §07 — and discard the three principles entirely — you will still have most of what this page exists to give you. That is by design.