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Hello all,

In response to Kathryn's statement below, I would argue that geological
space and chronological time would change the experience in ways that should
not be glossed over in an effort to attain what could be easily be an
illusory universal experiential model.  As in the nature/nurture model,
nurture seems to override the nature predispositions quite a bit of the
time, so with the experience of the same phenomenon.

Imagine an American Indian woman around 1880 living in Mexico, let's say she
happens to be a medicine woman or shamanic in practice who embarks upon a
vision quest in a sweat lodge.  Now take a woman living in 2009, let's say
in New York.  She is a professor of anthropology at a university there.  She
has grown up as a typical middle-class woman, has two kids, drives an SUV
(god forbid!) and she decides she has read up enough on vision quests to try
one herself.  She sets up her guest bedroom as the ceremonial 'sweat lodge'
and goes to it.  Can we imagine they would experience the same type of
shamanic ecstasy?

My point is that geological space and chronological time as well as culture
and Nurture's individual experiences will most likely make an enormous
difference in the experience of an individual in 'magical' ceremonies.
That is not to say that the woman in 2009 cannot experience ecstasy and
possibly even the same exact visual phenomena, but the processing of the
information could also be enormously different due to our individual lenses
of perception.  Oneness or duality may be one person's experience or not
enter the experience of either individual.

Academic disciplines would not be so if there is no attempt to be
objective.  To equate the model of an academic approach to understanding and
presenting the subject material with the internal representative's view
of the material would be to remove the academic discipline altogether.  That
said, without the internal representative's view of the material the
academic study would be incomplete.

What say you?

-Marc
On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 2:39 PM, Kathryn <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> These threads have been most helpful to me in clarifying the formulation of
> my work in terms of phenomenology. The specific human (shamanic if you
> will)
> experiences/phenomenon can be argued as "universal" in the sense that
> humans, regardless of their position in chronological time or geological
> space, practicing shamanic techniques can experience the same phenomenon.
> From one phenomenological worldview they would describe or depict their
> experience as duality; from another phenomenological worldview they would
> describe or depict their experience as unity. Neither is an absolute
> universal phenomenon, but both are true phenomenon experienced from a
> worldview or as an experiential phenomenon.
>
> My original angst in the objectivity-subjectivity debate is that some
> insist
> their disciplinary presentation genre is more objective than another's
> chosen "voice." The voice or disciplinary genre is put on by both
> presenters
> for the purpose of making an academic argument in their own favor, yet
> allowing for other voices to "legitimately" join the argument. When an
> Academic School claims otherwise, they are practicing a tautological
> elitism
> that renders their own work a "Huis Clos." The Academy is about opening
> doors for the students and inviting them to join in the ongoing process of
> opening doors. The Academy is not about closed doors.
>
> However, it does behoove the scholar to position themselves within an
> Academic field of discourse that welcomes their own phenomenological
> worldview, as embodied/argued in their own works. Again, I seriously doubt
> a
> School that purports to be presenting only a historical figure's
> phenomenological worldview and not their own concurrently as well. In
> Academia there is always a point being made. For readers or students, that
> point-argument-angle answers the "so what?" and hopefully elicits an
> interactive response from the reader-student. The whole purpose of writing
> a
> disciplinary Academic "story" about a historical figure, which begins with
> the "who, what, why, when, and where," is the "so what?" or "who cares?"
>
> Kathryn
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "steve ash" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 4:57 PM
> Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC Digest - 31 Dec
> 2008 to 1 Jan 2009 (#2009-2)
>
>
> >Hi Steve/Kao,
>
> >Have you thought of contacting Robert Place through his website >below?
> He's
> >very down-to-earth, and would offer sound wisdom as Tarot is his
> >expertise.
>
> >http://thealchemicalegg.com/
>
> >Are you an "Independent Scholar" as well?
>
> >Kathryn LaFevers Evans
> >Independent Scholar
> >Chickasaw Nation
>
> Yes I certainly am, independent scholar, researcher, magician  :)
>
> Thanks for the link, I'll flesh out my research a bit more and put him on
> my
> mailing list.
>
>
> >re:
> >Well that's the question - opinions vary as we know : )
>
> They certainly do!
>
> >An important thread within magick is surely that there is some separation
> between mind and body -
> and that the mind, soul, atman (whatever you want to call it) is a
> spiritual
> substance that can return to the source etc.
> I'm not sure how Pagan theology/cosmology etc can work otherwise and all
> the
> techniques of "astral projection"; "path working", >"dream incubation" etc
> etc.
>
> Quite, I think that's the dominant historical paradigm and the popular
> explanatory model (often matched by experiential evidence). My problem with
> it is its impossible, given the modern breakthroughs in science and
> philosophy. On the other hand I've first hand experience of it, so I
> conclude the model must be a delusion, and a hallucination generated by the
> unconscious to mask what's really happening (either that or its all
> nonsense
> and the phenomena itself is a delusion). I guess an explanatory fiction is
> fine instrumentally, but I suspect if taken literally as 'otherworldly'
> evidence in support world rejecting forms of religion it could cause all
> sorts of harmful psychological and social problems. As we already know
> repression of the libido is one of the main causes of our social problems.
> So I'm looking for a wiser alternative. My current one is identical to
> Blake
> 's vision that spirit is unmanifest body and body manifest spirit, i.e. the
>  Spinozan thesis that its all one substance. All those interesting 'astral'
> experiences are thus explicable as experiences of non physical extensions
> of
> a single body (even if we shed a few skins on death). As for experiencing
> separate 'astral bodies', the brain plays funny tricks when it tries to
> rationalise using physical categories.
>
>
> >But even if these questions don't both you - from a purely naturalistic
> perspective - we can do things with our bodies and we can do things that
> are
> more mentalistic -
> thus we can practice yoga (physical postures) on the basis that they have a
> special impact on thinking (they calm the mind etc) .
> There are probable other examples of physical practices that can have some
> sort of gnostic effect -
> so-called "sexual magick" for example - or "Tantra"
> isn't that about using the physical as a tool to liberate the >mental??
>
> I'd say that's proof mind and body were the same 'thing'. I would suppose
> Tantra may be about regaining contact with our total body, especially the
> non-physical bits. To liberate our full mental powers while remaining
> physical as long as possible.
>
> Part of the issues here may be semantic of course.
>
>
> >PS: As to Tarot another possible origin for Tarot images is the
> Renaissance
> carnival (see J Burckhardt "Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy") -
> Don't know the Parzival myth enough to say whether it is crucial -
> according
> to Wiccan tradition the Tarot represents the journey of Horus - from "Fool"
> >(disenfranchised) to "Kingship".
>
> There are several sources of course, the Carnival is also central, not sure
> about Horus, was he even known in the Rennaissance? They seem mostly
> Christian then. And the Bible is another major source for Tarot imagery of
> course.
>
>
>
> >I am really interested in the mind-body thread and it has moved me to
> de-lurking.
>
> Yay!
>
> >Without claiming to a particularly informed view on this I wonder if
> whether the difficulty in thinking about this issue is how we conceptualise
> the boundary between spiritual and material reality.  I agree with Mogg
> that
> from an observable and logical perspective a level of decoupling is
> evident,
> but is it a decoupling from all kinds and levels of physical substance or
> could we think of it as at a far more subtle level, molecular to use
> Deleuzian terms?  In this sense we would have to think of the body as less
> boundaried and connectivity and modulation as the fundamental aspects that
> allow such practices and events.  In this sense there is no separation of
> tool and body, body and world, just more or less permeable spheres of
> influence >and influencing.
>
> I think that's interesting, but I'm still studying Delueze, so only have an
> intuitive attraction to his ideas. I know he was very influenced by
> Spinoza.
>
> I agree with the decoupling evident from a logical and observable
> perspective. But I suspect logic doesn't apply to reality only our possible
> description of it, and perception if appearance is conditioned by our
> conceptual categories.
>
> Mogg, as for Indian Philosophy I'd say all the cool stuff is in the
> non-dualistic philosophies.
>
> Steve
>