OMGs, Pitch, ROTFL!!!! Yikes, it's Hogwarts gone wild!
Yes, you're absolutely right: SECULAR. In fact RH also states that; I was the one who neglected to mention it. Mea culpa.
But please don't send the Robed Deans of Terror after me!
BB,
Sabina
Sabina Magliocco
Professor
Department of Anthropology
California State University - Northridge
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________________________________________
From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Pitch [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, March 28, 2011 11:39 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] FORTHCOMING: WHO IS THIS PERSON WRITING MY PHD?
Aloha,
On 3/28/2011 10:34 AM, Magliocco, Sabina wrote:
Wait a second Pitch. I agree with all you say, except for when you write that "scholarship is not an Order, Lodge, Temple, Trad or Path." Well, not in the literal sense. But the argument has been made (By Ronald Hutton, in "Living With Witchcraft" in WDaKA, 2003) that academia is the one public institution with an initiatory three-degree system. Anyone who has got even one academic degree can attest to the fact that academia has its own initiatory rituals and rites of passage, complete with exotic-looking ceremonial robes and arcane color associations.
Yes, academic institutions may preserve those (and maybe other)
attributes.
But I'd insist, even against the likes of Hutton, that academic
institutions are secular and secularized institutions. They may
offer a comfortable habitat for a few magicians and magical
enterprises, yes. But they are not themselves magical institutions
or institutions focused on the doing of magic. Secular.
Let me put this another way--Imagine if academic Deans and
Chancellors could don those robes and deck themselves in
those meaning-laden colors--and do magic! Would I be the only
one hotfootin' as fast as my feets could run away from that
ivory tower of learning and hellish terror?
[All credit to you, Sabina, I'm having a Lovecraftian vision of
my alma mater right now...Arrggghh!!! The demonic flutes piping
the school's abyssal fight song!!!...The un-human faculty whirling
and slithering, raising claws and tentacles high, screeching their
invocations to the awakening Cthulhu!!!...Wearing the school
Colors Out of Space...!!!! My little remaining sanity draining
away into the whirlpools of unspeakable academic magic...!!!]
Musing All In All, I'm Glad Michigan State Was A Secular
Public University & Not Hogwarts! Rose,
Pitch
who does acknowledge that there's something twisted
about a "Big Ten" consisting of 12 schools...
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