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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