Channeling, Possession, and Gender: The Case of Unicult

15.^th January:
Guest lecture II: Channeling, Possession, and Gender: The Case of Unicult

The invitation to the guest lecture is enclosed.

The new religious movement known as Unicult is a contemporary New Age spiritual community whose members meet primarily on the social media platform Discord. Most of its content and many of its teachings are highly technological, and the group promulgates its content via social media. Yet its members engage in highly embodied religious practices, including meditation, yoga, crystalwork, entheogenics, and dreamwork. Its founder Unicole Unicron and many of its members also engage in the practice of channeling, wherein they seek to communicate with extraterrestrials and other spiritual beings to receive personal and collective religious value. In this talk, I consider the Unicult practice of channeling in the context of the body and gender, and especially in terms of questions of consent and empowerment. Is channeling just possession with consent? How do Unicult practitioners of channeling subvert the discourse of spiritual intrusion, and in what way does this provide a way for them to engage questions of gender and embodiment? Here I argue that channeling offers a particularly helpful way to situation the movement within their social, religious, and cultural context.

Benjamin E. Zeller is Professor and Chair of Religion at Lake Forest College. He studies North American religion, focusing on such topics as new religions, the religious engagement with science, and the quasi-religious relationship people have with food. He is the author or editor of six books, and co-general editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions.