A healthy thread to take up now and then, as mentioned by the list managers
previously,
Kathryn
----- Original Message -----
From: "Samuel Wagar" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 9:43 AM
Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Academia and Amateurs
> There's a really useful cross-fertilization. The academic standards of
> evidence, the value of rigorous and logical argument and reasoning, the
> use of primary sources; these, and other things are vary valuable gifts
> from academia to the occult subcultures.
>
> In my own Pagan community here in British Columbia, there is far too much
> wishful thinking and wholehearted swallowing of myth as though it were
> fact, plus holier than thou posturing, plus periodic bursts of
> anti-intellectual self-protection by people that haven't read any of the
> primary literature. Plus the "secret history" - Madame Blavatsky, peace be
> upon her, did not discover the great secrets of the ages in a hidden
> Tibetan library - it just doesn't exist, and the Great White Brotherhood,
> and the Great Ancient Matriarchy, and so on.
>
> In my identity as a Wiccan Priest, then, I find the academic outlook and
> tools bracing and very valuable. As an academic I find the ideas of the
> magickal persona, the constructed self, the techniques of ecstacy are
> valuable "post-modern" (really, pre-modern) tools. By dissolving the
> separation of the person from the object of study a deeper integration and
> understanding can result and insights and goading to further study.
>
> Best,
>
> Sam Wagar
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