Dr. des. Bastiaan Van Rijn

Teaching

Teaching Interests:

My teaching combines a broad interest in the disciplinary study of religion with thematic content open to students from all backgrounds interested in the phenomenon of religion. When it comes to supervision of essays and papers, I am especially interested in the following topics:

Alternative spirituality in contemporary society;
Methods of Western divination;
Comparative approaches to religion;
Heterodox currents of the nineteenth century (from Swedenborgianism to animal magnetism, Spiritualism, and more);
Scientific experimentation with aspects of religion;
The cognitive science of religion;
Playfulness in relation to religion

Beyond these, I am open to other topics as well and I am more than happy to discuss possible projects in more detail.

Given Courses:

2020–2023
Year	Course Title	Type
2023	To Be or Not to Be: Religions’ Engagement with Death (With Sarah Perez)	Systematic
2022	Religion in the Laboratory (with Jens Schlieter)	Systematic
2021	Das faszinierende “Andere”: Religion und Religionen in Vergleich (With Andrea Rota)	Systematic
2020	Confronting Death: An Introduction to Death, Dying, and Religion (With Sarah Perez)	Systematic

Publications & Presentations

Books:

With Jens Schlieter and Sarah Perez, eds. Accepted. Intentional Transformative Experiences:Theorizing Self-Cultivation in Religion and Esotericism. Berlin: De Gruyter.
2023. "The Experimental Culture of Afterlife Research: Attempts by Spiritual Animal Magnetizers to Prove Life after Death." PhD diss., University of Bern [unpublished as of now].

Articles and Book Chapters:

Accepted. "Building a Typology for Intentional Transformative Experiences: Louis-Alphonse Cahagnet's Experiments with Magnetic Somnambulism and Hashish." In Intentional Transformative Experiences:Theorizing Self-Cultivation in Religion and Esotericism, edited by Jens Schlieter, Sarah Perez, and Bastiaan van Rijn. Berlin: De Gruyter.
With Markus Altena Davidsen. 2020. “Studying Religions as Narrative Cultures: Angel Experience Narratives in the Netherlands and Some Ideas for a Narrative Research Program for the Study of Religion.” In Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion, edited by Dirk Johannsen, Anja Kirsch, and Jens Kreinath, 91–122. Leiden: Brill.
2017. "The Mind Behind the Cards." MA Thesis, Leiden University. Awarded the Cornelis Tiele MA Thesis Award 2018 (NGG).

Book Reviews:

2024. [Review of the book Lightning in the Age of Benjamin Franklin: Facts and Fictions in Science, Religion, and Art, by J. W. Buisman]. Journal of Religious History, preprint.
With Sarah Perez 2023. [Review of the book Virtual Immortality God, Evolution and the Singularity in Post and Transhumanism, by O. Krüger]. Journal of Posthuman Studies 6 (1): 89–94.
With Sarah Perez. 2022. [Review of the book Virtualität und Unsterblichkeit – Gott, Evolution und die Singularität im Post- und Transhumanismus, by O. Krüger]. Zeitschrift für Junge Religionswissenschaft 17.
2019. [Review of the book Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism, by E. Ogden]. Correspondences 7(2), 505-510.

Presentations:

September 6, 2023. “Weighing Souls and Sculpting Spirits: The Spiritual Machinery of Matla and Zaalberg van Zelst,” Religions and Technologies, EASR, University of Vilnius.
June 27, 2023. “Cards, Guides, the Unconscious, or Spirit: The Practical Consequences of Tarot Practitioners’ Notions of how their Practice Works,” Conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism, Malmö University.
October 21, 2022. “Between Science and Religion: Proving the Afterlife through Animal Magnetism,” Animal Magnetism in Motion: Reconfigurations and Circulations, 1776-1848, University of Fribourg (Switzerland).
September 2, 2022. “The Beginning of an Afterlife-centered Experimental Culture,” Experiments with Experience, University of Bern.
June 29, 2022. “Liberating the Afterlife Through Science: Spiritual Animal Magnetizer's Attempts at Overcoming Empirical Limits,” Religion and States of Freedom, EASR, University College Cork.
With Sarah Perez. June 17, 2022. “A Harsh Reality: Conceptualizing a New Spiritual Response to Devastating Crises,” Humanities Faculty Symposium, University of Leiden.
May 14, 2022. “A Matter of Life and Death: Experimental Systems of the Supernatural,” Collegium Generale: Experimente, University of Bern.
April 28, 2022. “Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed... Contemporary (Animal) Magnetism's Conceptualization of Healing Energies,” Subtle Energies: Explorations within Holistic Healing and Spirituality, University of Vienna.
April 8, 2022. “Afterlife Researches: 170 Years of Shared Experimental Styles and Problems,” Research Seminar of the Institute for the Science of Religion, University of Bern.
With Sarah Perez. September 17, 2021. “Confronting Death: Inspiring Innovation through Interdisciplinary Dialogues,” Interdisciplinary Dialogues on Death Rituals: Materializing the Absent, University of Bern.
September 2, 2021. “Taming the Religious Vision: Animal Magnetizers’ Attempt of Scientification Through Replication and Verification in the 19th Century,” Resilient Religion, EASR, University of Pisa.
August 30, 2021. “Spiritual Animal Magnetism as a Science of Transformative Experiences: The Case Study of Louis-Alphonse Cahagnet,” Intentional Transformative Experiences: Theorizing Self-Cultivation in Religion and Philosophy, University of Bern.
March 26, 2021. “A Spiritual Science: Analyzing the Work of Louis-Alphonse Cahagnet,” Research Seminar of the Institute for the Science of Religion, University of Bern.
October 25, 2019. “The Experimental Culture of Animal Magnetism,” Research Seminar of the Institute for the Science of Religion, University of Bern.
With Jens Schlieter and Friedemann Rimbach-Sator. July 3, 2019. “Experiments with Experience: Spiritual Practice as Scientific Experimentation,” Western Esotericism and Consciousness: Visions, Voices, Altered States, ESSWE, University of Amsterdam.
With Jens Schlieter and Friedemann Rimbach-Sator. June 26, 2019. “Experiments with Experience: Spiritual Practice as Scientific Experimentation,” Religion – Continuations and Disruptions, EASR, University of Tartu.
May 9, 2019. “Seks, Drugs en Geesten: Mesmerisme, Spiritualisme en Occultisme in de 19e eeuw”, T.F.L.S. [student association] lecture, Leiden University.
April 30, 2018. “Divine Help From Above: Narratives of Angelic Signs and Interventions”, Stories of the Supernatural: Encounters with the Other Side in Literary and Everyday Narratives, Leiden Symposium on New Religiosity, Leiden University.
With Marlies van de Bunt. November 24, 2017. “Religious Narratives as Plausibility Structures,” Research Traineeship Conference, Leiden University.
With Markus Altena Davidsen and Marlies van de Bunt. May 19, 2017. “Religious Narratives as Plausibility Structures,” Tri-University Research Colloquium Religious Studies, University of Amsterdam.

Research

Research Interests:

Animal magnetism (Mesmerism), with a focus on spiritual magnetism
Science and religion, with a focus on experimentation
Contemporary spirituality, with a focus on Western divination
Playfulness within religion
Comparative study of religion

Research Project:

Experiments with Experience: Experimenting with Religions and Spiritual Practice as Experimentation (SNF-Project)

Within the Experiments with Experience project, I research the works of spiritual animal magnetizers. My goal is to explore how they used discourse on experimentation to build frameworks in which their views of life after death were (in their eyes) proven experimentally. I analyse their strategies to better understand the logic of experimentation of these actors. Furthermore, in a broader sense, I compare this logic to other ‘afterlife studies’ such as Spiritualism and near-death experience research to trace historical continuities and differences. These two research lines come together in the concept of the 'experimental culture of afterlife research,' which I hold to have arisen in the late eighteenth century, and which has continued in different forms up until today. The project should give new insights into the theorization of the interactions between ‘science’ and ‘religion,’ as well as give a new interpretation of several understudied figures in (especially) the history of animal magnetism and related currents.

CV

Academic Curriculum Vitae:

2023–present: Assistant at the Institute for the Science of Religion, University of Bern.
2019–2023: PhD candidate at the Institute for the Science of Religion, University of Bern. SNF-research project: Experiments with Experience: Experimenting with Religions and Spiritual Practice as Experimentation.
2013–2017: BA and MA, Study of Religion, Leiden University. MA thesis: The Mind Behind the Cards: Searching for the Source of Tarot Divination's Popularity through a Cognitive Analysis.

Institute for the Science of Religion