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Hello Jake. I must admit I am a bit confused as to which posts you are addressing with your latest mails - I subscribe to other message boards and mailing lists with purely academic participants, so I am definitely for a list that is open for discussion between academic and practitioner approaches; I have a feeling this is the general sentiment? But when you say "So I propose, thinking like an occultist is not out of place on this list. Occultism has theoretical and practical considerations which academics should be able to address via the empathic method", my answer as an academic would be yes, "emic" thinking and empathic re-reading is important (which is why I subscribe to the list, for ex.), but it is not an answer in itself, hence the "etic" theoretical reframing of a given study (when I write articles). And if "thinking like an occultist" means reproducing biased dichotomies as academic analysis, I hope other scholars will point out that something is missing. Best, Jesper. -----Original Message----- From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jake Stratton-Kent Sent: Friday, March 26, 2010 12:46 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Religious Topics and Personal Judgements On 26 March 2010 09:01, Jake Stratton-Kent <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > On the other hand, sorry folks, I'm not an academic, I will never > behave or - apparently - think like an academic. Not that I haven't > tried, I did well enough on a part time ancient history course to have > a thesis adopted for the next years course. But rather than > anthropology or sociology as it relates to belief systems etc. I put > my brain into understanding elements of Neoplatonism, Astrology > ancient and modern, and so on. > > Appreciating cultural differences and the origins of particular themes > does play a role, but my emphasis is completely separate from some of > the stuff you guys appear to focus on. I'm far more a magician > accessing academia than an academic studying magic. answering myself may have to be the way of things for the present, but there is an important point about empathic approaches in the above. My thesis answered a question about the Punic Wars; why didn't Hannibal attack Rome when he supposedly had the opportunity? My argument made use of evidence like a good history student, but I also attempted to think like a general and politician of the period. Perhaps he appreciated better than his lieutenants the strengths and weaknesses of both sides, and was not eager to attempt a siege, rather than 'rural ambushes'. In this case, I reasoned, he may well have been seeking an alliance with Macedonia to facilitate shifting the campaign to the urban environment. Livy was eager to implicate the Macedonians in Carthaginian endeavours, and there may have been some basis in fact for his accusations. That answer is not, of course, sociological, psychological or anthropological, but then those disciplines were not part of Hannibal's mindset and cannot alone explain his actions. It is a legitimate, indeed a sensible approach to a historical conundrum. So I propose, thinking like an occultist is not out of place on this list. Occultism has theoretical and practical considerations which academics should be able to address via the empathic method. It is these that primarily supply an arena for discussion between academics and occultists, where the willingness exists. ALWays Jake