Tolly Burkan, also known as Bruce Burkan, (born May 17, 1948 in New York City) is a firewalker and former magician.[1][2] He is part of the Human Potential Movement.[1] He is also the founder of the Firewalking Institute of Research and Education.[3]
Tolly Burkan | |
|---|---|
 Burkan in 2005 | |
| Born | May 17, 1948 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Firewalker Magician |
| Website | tollyburkan |
Biography edit
During the 1970s, Burkan created a firewalking class and began teaching firewalking to the general public.[4] In the 1980s, he started working with large corporations and began training instructors.[5]
Burkan's disappearance from Asbury Park, New Jersey and his subsequent reappearance two months later, after a memorial service, was the subject of national news in 1967.[6][7] Although he would explain in his book Dying to Live and in news stories years later [8] that he had run away from home for two months, the incident would continue to be cited in pseudoscience books as "still unexplained" and evidence of alien abduction [9] or teleportation [10]
Bibliography edit
- Extreme Spirituality
- Let It Be Easy
- Dying to Live: From Despair and Death to Freedom and Joy
- Guiding Yourself Into a Spiritual Reality[11]
References edit
- ^ a b "Firewalking hot trend in Southern California - UPI Archives". UPI.
- ^ Vilenskaya, Steffy, Larissa, Joan (December 1991). Firewalking: A New Look at an Old Enigma (First ed.). Bramble Co. pp. 253. ISBN 0962618438.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ "Rare feat". Tampa Bay Times.
- ^ HEALING STATES by Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D. and Stanley Krippner, Ph.D. Simon & Schuster 1987
- ^ "ANCIENT ART IS A HOT EXPERIENCE - WALKING ON FIRE", Miami Herald, February 14, 1997.
- ^ "Missing 2 Months, 'Dead' Jersey Boy Returns to Family", New York Times, October 25, 1967
- ^ "19-Year-Old Bruce Burkan 'Returns From The Dead'", AP report in Jackson (TN) Sun, October 26, 1967, p2
- ^ "From Misery To Near-Death To A Glimpse of Happiness", by Joan Barbato, Morristown (NJ) Daily Record, March 13, 1975, p17
- ^ Our Haunted Planet, by John A. Keel (Galde Press, 1999) p181
- ^ "Teleportation... The Ultimate Trip", by George Cunningham-Tee, in Pittsburgh Press Sunday Magazine, November 20, 1983
- ^ "In the Easy Chair with Mike Merner". Westerly Sun. July 29, 2018.
Further reading edit
- Carey, Art (1 May 2002). "A guru's guide to fire walking and forgiving". The Philadelphia Inquirer. p. D01.
- Beth Ann Drier, "The Curious Hot Foot It to a New Fad," Los Angeles Times, 11 April 1984, pt. 1, 1.
- Chipello, Christopher (18 April 1989). "If Past-Life Trauma Has Got You Down, Firewalk May Help". Wall Street Journal. pp. A1–A2.
- USA Today 4-2-90 Page 1, Section D
External links edit
- Official website
- National Geographic
- Loring M. Danforth, Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anastenaria of Greece and the American Firewalking Movement, Princeton University Press
- ABC Science article
- Discovery Channel
- Edwards, Emily D. “Firewalking: A Contemporary Ritual and Transformation.” TDR 42 (1998): 98-114.—analysis of Burkan's seminars
- Mythbusters - Firewalking 101
- "The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena"