Dear Ted,

Could you please clarify where, in anything I said, did I once imply, that anything you said was pathological, and where, apart from my general laconic statement with regard to the tone of this thread, which was not directed at you, I was pejorative?

Is it not possible that I was expressing a differing opinion, as is customary within civilised academic debate?
You are protesting that some people (apparently myself included) are reading a "pathology" into your question and misrepresenting it. But I am seeing you misreading what I wrote, and what Jason wrote, and we can't hold a civilised discussion like that.

You wrote: "Forgive me if I take this as an attack, but what would you call it?"

I would call it a series of miscommunications in which some people used overly charged language and other people went on the defensive, and despite a few voices calling for calm, it had the result of turning this into a circus. That's not personal, it's a general view of this whole thread. What is pathological is this constant defensiveness, from whichever quarters it appears.

Beyond interpreting what Jason or anyone else may or may not have meant, I am dealing with the point you raised. Please try to see that.

I am saying that from an academic viewpoint I think there is an inherent methodological flaw in Prof. Segal's approach, and I attempted, without turning it into a fullblown treatise, to explain why. This is not a personal attack, it is an intellectual disagreement, and such intellectual debates can (when removed from personal name-calling) be extremely fruitful.

I do believe, as do many colleagues, that the extant categorisation of disciplines and methodologies is flawed, and interdisciplinary methodologies such as those currently in use and development within the field of Western Esotericism, explain why that is the case.  I'm not accusing anyone of being pathological and I feel that as a term it is misplaced altogether in this argument.

One of the main reasons they are flawed is because they are based on a mechanistic view of what are living, human, traditions, and that mechanistic approach cannot do justice to its subject. I don't pretend to be an expert on current R.S. methodology, but as a scholar of esotericism I cannot accept that living traditions can be reduced to their component parts as can cells and molecules - and even that's debatable. I speak not as a relativist (apparently also pathological according to some views),  but as a historian of ideas who always has to keep culture and specific circumstances in mind, and I refer you to Arthur Versluis' excellent article on methodology: http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeIV/Methods.htm for an explanation of why this should be so. Yes, it belongs to a slightly different field. But don't all fields have things to learn from each other? Are these dividing lines between disciplines set in stone? If they are. can someone tell me why?

I am saying that I feel your and Prof. Segal's approaches to the concepts of both "belief" and "respect" are reflecting this mechanistic approach, and that it does not seem to be either accurate nor useful. That is an intellectual disagreement, not an attack, nor a "labelling" as a pathology.

I don't care if we're discussing Wicca vs. Christianity or Siberian shamanism vs. the Cthulu current. What I care about is that this seems to have been approached in a way not conducive to reaching any useful conclusions. You are perfectly welcome to disagree, but it would be nice to see some evidence and deductive reasoning rather than this ongoing backbiting (again, meant generally).

And with the best will in the world, this started with a throwaway remark followed by a snarky comment. You made an excellent effort to view it from another perspective, but are now becoming defensive without reason. Nobody's attacking you, but intellectual disagreement is necessary in any debate, IMHO. And when communicating in a medium where it's so easy to misunderstand one another, it's also good to give each other the benefit of the doubt before taking offence.

Other than that, yes, absolutely, we can agree to disagree. I can respect that.




 Sasha Chaitow
PhDc Western Esotericism
EXESESO University of Exeter

Phoenix Rising Academy Director

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