I am very interested in reading Toyin's post about how magic has played a
significant role in his academic work. This is indeed my own experience too.
I have been writing about magic from a subjective anthropological approach
for over twenty years and have increasingly been combining magical insights
with an analytical frame of mind. My second ethnology The Nature of Magic -
a study of pagan relationships with nature - was written during one hot
summer while I was channelling my ancestor, the spirit of my dead
grandfather. I found that this helped me organize the structure of the book
and deal with many of the theoretical issues concerned - the book is
dedicated to my grandfather. 

In my latest book The Anthropology of Magic, just published, I argue that
such magical knowing, using imagination and intuition, is not only a
legitimate form of knowledge but also a creative part of being human, and
it's only relatively recently in human history - in the last few hundred
years - that it has come to be denied with the development of a
rationalizing science.

It would be good to hear from others on this subject...

If anyone is interested in discussing this further there is a seminar on
legitimate forms of knowledge for academic practitioners of magic at Girton
College, Cambridge on 13th May. I can give further details if required.

Susan Greenwood


On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 5:35 PM, toyin adepoju
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
 
Magical techniques have played a very significant role in my academic
work.Here is one example:
 
I once performed an invocation of the Yoruba/Orisa Tradition  Orisa (deity)
Orisanla using an adaptation of the description of him in Bolaji Idowu's
Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief and the Assumption of God form ritual from
Israel Regardie's Tree of Life.The ritual involved calling the deity into
myself by visualising myself as the deity while intoning the deity's name at
the climax of the visualisation.I was doing this bceasuse I felt led to do
so to  through a feeling of not wanting to start writing  even after
completing my research for an MA thesis I was doing at the time,as if
something was missing,like a  mental clog.The thesis   involved adapting
Yoruba Ifa divination to autobiographical theory and the study of the Dutch
artist Vincent van Gogh.Orisanla was central to the essay because I compared
his mythic cycle with van Gogh's life and work.Interestingly I felt led to
do this invocation because of the resemblance between the drawing of the
legendary English magician Merlin on a children's Arthurian book I bought at
a bookshop that day  in terms of  the same sense of venerable age Idowu
attributes to Orisanla.An experience of synchronicity, it seems,since I had
gone to that bookshop beceause I felt at a loose end on accounf of the
inexplicable  sense of not being able to write.
 
Shortly after completing the ritual and forgetting about what I
wanted,particularly since I had no particular desire in the first place,my
motivation being more intuitive and subconscious than clear even to me,the
same day I think,I experienced a flood of new ideas that expanded the scope
of my research.I was able to visualise the structure of the ideas in much
better detail than before and was even able to represent this structure in
terms of a diagram indicating what ideas to explore and what books to read
for those ideas.The essay turned out very well due to this and other factors
that were not directly about magic,if at all.
 
The essay was published recently by the academic journal  Reconfigurations.
<http://reconfigurations.blogspot.com/2009/11/toyin-adepoju-ifa-divination-v
an-gogh.html> 
 
A particularly beautiful thing about the experience is that there is no
mention in the essay of my use of that ritual-the whole essay is
intellectual and imaginative,using only the kind of logic one finds in
academic writing.That absence of information on the reader's part on my use
of magic has no bearing on the reader's  appreciation of the internal logic
of  the essay.I intend,though,one day to use this experience,among others,
to argue  that magic and rational thinking,even academic work,can go
together,and that magic can be a legitimate means of intellectual and
academic knowledge.
 
I have read Orisanla is normally given an offering of a snail,something
without blood.I did not offer anything.Could I be said to have offered
myself instead?
 
I would like to know about any others,through the open forum or private
email,who have had related experiences.
 
Thanks.
Toyin