That’s interesting because there is a book called “Talking To Virgil” - Talking to Virgil : a miscellany / T. P. Wiseman. Exeter : University of Exeter Press, 1992 - in which an eminent Classicist whilst visiting a medium asked Virgil to clarify some of his poetry and then presented the dialogue to his academic peers. I’m not sure that it went down that well with them, but I thought it was a fascinating example of filling in the gaps, as people like members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn were wont to do when trying to [re]construct rituals. I believe Moina Mathers and Yeats did this with Celtic rituals.

~Caroline Tully.

From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of A Clanton
Sent: Saturday, 23 January 2010 10:47 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] USING MAGIC IN DOING ACADEMIC WORK

When writing a paper on Yeats (which I now use as a basis for a lecture in my courses), I asked him for some insight into his poetry. While I didn't use any particular ritual, I do feel this excursion into spiritualism had positive results. And I believe the technique was particularly apt, considering my subject. I'm considering contacting him again for help with my dissertation. :)

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.

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