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jason said: My friend is pretty amazing. If you met him, you'd never imagine he was a magician at all, let alone one who had completed the Abramelin. He's not an academic. He's completely unpretentious and has this kind of Chicago working class demeanor. I really hope he does publish his book Well, I know a couple of real good magicians which match your description. Please, let me know if he publish his book. I am really interested in that experience. ________________________________ De: jason winslade <[log in to unmask]> Para: [log in to unmask] Enviado: lun,28 marzo, 2011 22:40 Asunto: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] FORTHCOMING: WHO IS THIS PERSON WRITING MY PHD? Well it wasn't easy at NU. I had to make a case for performance studies to the religion/esotericism side of my committee and continually explain esotericism to the performance studies side of my committee. Finding that crossover is difficult, which is why I'm grateful for Sabina's work and Nikki Bado's work. My friend is pretty amazing. If you met him, you'd never imagine he was a magician at all, let alone one who had completed the Abramelin. He's not an academic. He's completely unpretentious and has this kind of Chicago working class demeanor. I really hope he does publish his book. ________________________________ From: Odrade Atreed <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Sent: Mon, March 28, 2011 2:59:07 PM Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] FORTHCOMING: WHO IS THIS PERSON WRITING MY PHD? It seems to me I chosed the wrong university and subject. ;) I didnīt know there was an alive person who has completed the Abramelin ritual. That is really interesting. I was looking for that kind of information. Thanks. ________________________________ De: jason winslade <[log in to unmask]> Para: [log in to unmask] Enviado: lun,28 marzo, 2011 21:44 Asunto: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] FORTHCOMING: WHO IS THIS PERSON WRITING MY PHD? This all puts me in mind of my dissertative work that was a long journey culminating in the PhD in 2008. Within Northwestern's Performance Studies program (and also working with Richard Kieckhefer in Religious Studies), I was writing on occultism through the lens of performance theory and I had tracked my own intiations into various Wiccan and Hermetic groups (to be clear, I wasn't 'pulling a Tanya' - this was already something I was doing and I decided to make it a major aspect of my dissertation). I had already been writing about ethnography as both initiation and performance when I read Sabina's work, and was already conceiving of academia as an occult society when I read Hutton's piece, so these works just confirmed the sense I already had. Though it was only a minor aspect of the final version of my initiation, I was constantly able to track my academic work in terms of my magical development at the time, starting with a performance recital at the end of my first year of coursework, one that I conceived as a magical working that would establish myself as a viable player within a department that I felt quite a bit lost in. Conversely, the magical work that I did with the groups that initiated me was ostensibly to help me complete my degree, even down to one of the members creating for me a talisman-like Tarot card painting with me in the magician position, with the title, Jason Winslade, PhD. One of my mentors was probably one of the only people I've ever heard of who's done the full extended Abramelin working (and I'm hoping to help him get his book published about it). So we all took these initiatory journeys pretty seriously. Nowadays, I don't put so much emphasis personally on the staged initiatory process, favoring the spontaneous improvisation of fire work and ecstatic ritual. But one of these days, I'll go back and publish some version of the dissertation, and if I do, I'll probably concentrate more on that performance/magic/scholarship parallel. ________________________________ From: Odrade Atreed <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Sent: Mon, March 28, 2011 2:14:48 PM Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] FORTHCOMING: WHO IS THIS PERSON WRITING MY PHD? Hello All, Very interesting discussion, indeed. And very deep humour, Pitch. You shoudnīt walk so much through the tunnels. I agree with Sabina that scholarship can be a meditation path. I remember the insights, very inspiring and disturbing at the same time, I received when I read Giordano Bruno, for example. But I donīt think when an scholar tries to write a paper or develop an argument is looking for his Guardian Angel. In my case I was looking for my True Will wherever it were. It was not scholarship which conducted me to magic. It were magician which used theories or novels to communicate there discoveries who were talking to me through the excesive rationalist Academia. I remember those first years of insights very contradictories because all the research I did to support those insights were a waste of time. Perhaps I was very young... Of course scholarship uses the magical tools which are language and thought, and, in ultimate instance, the creativity. But the goal of Scholarship is the mastering of research in your area and the quest for truth of documents, of phisical things. The success is not inner, but outer. The goal of Magick is the development of the human Self. And this development, depending of the person, can be attained without writing a word or publishing a paper. About familiars and Guardian Angel, I thanks Professor Segal for his clariffication. I have fount some comments about the familiar by Kenneth Grant in Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God. He affirms that Familiars are the subconscious powers which are part of the Gods. According to this idea, they could act as entities capable of giving ideas. And the Daimon as the Good Fairy, as P. Segal mention is very akin to the idea of the Guardian Angel, so I am starting to consider that different experiences I had are related to different entities and some of the could be related to familiars. Yours, Ana. ________________________________ De: Pitch <[log in to unmask]> Para: [log in to unmask] Enviado: lun,28 marzo, 2011 20:39 Asunto: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] FORTHCOMING: WHO IS THIS PERSON WRITING MY PHD? Aloha, On 3/28/2011 10:34 AM, Magliocco, Sabina wrote: Wait a second Pitch. I agree with all you say, except for when you write that "scholarship is not an Order, Lodge, Temple, Trad or Path." Well, not in the literal sense. But the argument has been made (By Ronald Hutton, in "Living With Witchcraft" in WDaKA, 2003) that academia is the one public institution with an initiatory three-degree system. Anyone who has got even one academic degree can attest to the fact that academia has its own initiatory rituals and rites of passage, complete with exotic-looking ceremonial robes and arcane color associations. >Yes, academic institutions may preserve those (and maybe other) attributes. But I'd insist, even against the likes of Hutton, that academic institutions are secular and secularized institutions. They may offer a comfortable habitat for a few magicians and magical enterprises, yes. But they are not themselves magical institutions or institutions focused on the doing of magic. Secular. Let me put this another way--Imagine if academic Deans and Chancellors could don those robes and deck themselves in those meaning-laden colors--and do magic! Would I be the only one hotfootin' as fast as my feets could run away from that ivory tower of learning and hellish terror? [All credit to you, Sabina, I'm having a Lovecraftian vision of my alma mater right now...Arrggghh!!! The demonic flutes piping the school's abyssal fight song!!!...The un-human faculty whirling and slithering, raising claws and tentacles high, screeching their invocations to the awakening Cthulhu!!!...Wearing the school Colors Out of Space...!!!! My little remaining sanity draining away into the whirlpools of unspeakable academic magic...!!!] Musing All In All, I'm Glad Michigan State Was A Secular Public University & Not Hogwarts! Rose, Pitch who does acknowledge that there's something twisted about a "Big Ten" consisting of 12 schools...