just a quick reply but I'll try to get back to this

Great discussion everybody,

Ana dismisses the relevance of the Da Vinci code, but I think this is exactly what we should be looking at. The Da Vinci Code does not get a pass for being "fiction" because it presents itself as relying on factual history (see the foreword from the author if you haven't read it.) It relies on Holy Blood Holy Grail which also attempts to pass itself off as nonfiction. But in this case there's no alternative gnostic epistemology underlying the claim. The Priory of Sion thing is simply a hoax with plenty of esoteric apologists either pretending it's not a hoax or hoodwinked.
It's perfectly understandable that academics are worried that the Da Vinci Code is a symptom of this problem in popular notions of what academic writing is about.

Now, I'm doing graduate philosophy work on post-Parmenidean traditions and I'm sympathetic to what Peter Kingsley is doing, but I don't think it's correct to oppose what he's doing with academia. He's simply offering reasonable approaches that any academic philosopher should be able to understand. When I hear about how academic philosophers respond to him I am often appalled at their irrational responses. We can compare the current debate over Zeke Mazur's work on the Neoplatonism e-list. What I think is going on isn't an example of academic being epistemologically flawed, but a few conservative professors who should really know better not taking a better academic approach seriously.

Ana brings up the idea of magicians working with a kind of knowledge that academics supposedly can't understand. This is clearly an example of what Caroline is talking about. There is no reason why academics can't understand experiential forms of knowledge. But when practitioners make a historical argument without any basis in historical evidence, what we are not seeing is a problem with incompatible interfaces of historical vs. experiential claims. I have no problem allowing that witchcraft practitioners are tapping into some legitimate, primordial magical power, while still disagreeing with them about the interpretation of the historical evidence. It seems clear to me that Gardner made the whole Wicca thing up, however legitimate the magic being practiced by anybody who uses the word he made up for such practices.

I don't see how academics are somehow incapable of understanding what non-academics do. Academics aren't necessarily always making the kind of judgements that are being assumed by non-academic critics. An academic studying gnostic approaches to knowledge has to take seriously that it is an alternative approach to knowledge, and must always afford it the respect of attempting an objective description. There is no need for an academic to agree (or to disagree) with whatever alternative epistemology we're talking about.

Angela's on the right track referencing the work of Jeffrey Kripal whose work is an awesome resource from both an academic-theoretical and a practitioner-pragmatic point of view.
But I worry about these appeals to terms like "holistic." In the context of a well grounded alternative epistemology, we can raise legitimate problems with the standard ways academic epistomology is practiced. But too often we see folks appealing to "holistic" approaches when they don't really understand the philosophical problems involved, aren't really offering a sophisticated epistemological critique, and in many cases seem to be using "holism" as a smokescreen for intellectual laziness. I don't think we need to justify interest in writers like Kingsley by appealing to anti-academic discourses at all. The problem is that some academics are stuck in scientistic "dogmatic slumbers," not that academic epistemology is rotten from the ground up.

I share Amy's concern about the anti-intellectualism.
I don't see that there is an authentic alternatice epistemology grounding it.
It's interesting (and surely troubling) that very often, when I ask practitioners who disagree with academic interpretations of the evidence what alternative evidence or methodology they are relying on, I rarely get much of a coherent approach. I suspect that in many cases there isn't really a well-grounded set of assumptions behind whatever problem they have with academia.


and Dave is absolutely right that we need a nice clear explanation of what academia is and isn't. What we also need is a point by point list of non-academic problems with academic writing, so we can explain why we think they aren't fair criticisms (when they are!)

best
Ted

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 1:49 PM, toyin adepoju <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

The quote from Jeffrey Kripal is sublime. It is a wonderful ideal. Sabina Magliocco sums up  this ideal more concisely in terms of the harmony of "intuition and gnosis [and a] scholarly, analytical and fact-based stance."

What scholars could represent this ideal?  Mircea Eliade? Carl Jung?

It seems the very powerful scholarship coming  out of the Hindu and Buddhist Tantric  traditions demonstrates a multilayered depth along with scholarly rigour that  inspires practitioners in those traditions, so much so that some of these scholars, known to have studied closely with adepts in those disciplines, are also teachers to practitioners, some of these scholars doing this teaching in both Asia and the West.

One of the earlier examples of a related figure  is  Evans-Wentz, in his work on Tibetan Buddhism, of which Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa is particularly remarkable,  being a translation made vivid in terms of ideas and images by his fantastic footnotes, bursting with his gushing demonstration of the visionary concreteness of the tradition  he discusses.

More recent examples are in Hinduism, such as in the work of Mark Dyczkowski, whose translation and editing of the Aphorisms of Siva shocked me into a broader appreciation of  myself as both spiritual practitioner and scholar and whose Doctrine of Vibration is woven out of ideas both lucid and luminous. I have had to incorporate some of them into a poem I am composing on the tradition  he is writing on . The constellation of contemporary scholars on Tantrism who are prominent in India, Europe and the US bring alive the ideas they work with in ways  that for me, enable one to realise the possibilities of practice even outside the enablement of the direct bearers of the tradition.


Sanjukta Gupta's essay on Kali and that of  Paul Muller-Ortega in Tantra in Practice , of  Douglas Renfrew Brooks in Auspicious Wisdom on Hindu Sakta Tantrism and that of David Kingsley on Hindu goddesses ( The Sword and the Flute; Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine) have proven vital to me in that regard.


Along with being a US university academic, working as the editor of  the State University of New York Press series on Tantric studies, Ortega  has developed his own  Tantric teaching  practice, Blue Throat Yoga.  Brooks, while teaching at a US university and publishing with academic presses texts that are uncompromising in their rigour while demonstrating ideational and imagistic wealth that take one far towards a construction of his beloved Hindu Sakta traditions, has developed a practice he calls  Rajanaka Yoga and the Facebook group of his admirers testifies  to his reach as academic scholar and practitioner/teacher.  Dyczkowski's site has the ambience of a person who is both scholar and immersive in relation to the tradition he studies. Yet, they are all hard core scholars, as evident from their books.


On scholars whose works evoke the magic of the religions they discuss, one could add Henry Corbin ( Alone with the Alone) and William Chittick ( The Self Disclosure of God;The Sufi Path of Knowledge) on the Islamic mystic and philosopher Ibn -Arabi; Laura Marks (Enfoldment and Infinity)  and Samer Akkach ( Cosmology and Architecture in Pre-Modern Islam)  on Islamic art and architecture, among others.

These scholars are working within traditions  that have a longer history of textual canonisation and scholarship than Paganism. Within that context, with many of the canonical ancient texts in the Asian traditions being in Sanskrit, a language no longer used in daily discourse, these scholars, many Western, provide bridges to these texts for both those who are natives of those countries in which the texts were written, as Indians in India and others. I expect many Indians cannot read Sanskrit and would  have to rely on translations of such works into English by scholars like Ortega and Dyczkowki. Indian institutions also work with Western and Indian scholars, many writing in English while being grounded in Sanskrit and other Indian languages and have such scholars ( such as Bettina Bauer and Madhu Khanna at the Indira Gandhi National Centre  for the Arts; Ortega,Dyczkowki and others at the Indological Research Institute ) as leaders in those institutions.

Perhaps as Paganism grows, closer interaction between scholars and practitioners might emerge.

thanks
toyin




On 16 September 2011 13:32, Angela Voss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Dear Ana
 
I understand exactly what you are saying. Peter Kingsley is an old friend of mine, and he represents that rare breed, the gnostic scholar.  I would like to share with this list a paragraph in Jeffrey Kripal's book 'Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom', where he outlines the kind of perspective I think you are talking about.  It is certainly the perspective I try to cultivate. In the metaphor established so thoroughly by Iain McGilchrist, it 'has a foot in both brain hemispheres' and is therefore unitive, holistic and transformative:
 

“[These] scholars ... possess unusual powers of imagination, receptivity, discipline, and experience that allow them to enter religious worlds in a different way. For these scholars, academic method and personal experience cannot be so easily separated. “Objectivity” is transcended not in a shallow subjectivism that yields little more than private experience (however profound and personally meaningful), but in an interpersonal communion with the object of their study that produces, among other things, powerful insights into the nature of religion that stand the test of time and withstand the criticisms and researches of the larger academic community. There is something genuinely mystical about the work of such scholars, for their interpretations and writings issue from a peculiar kind of “hermeneutical union”. They do not so much process religious data as unite with sacred realities, whether in the imagination, the hidden depths of the soul, or the very fabric of the psychophysical selves. Here in such moments, the hermeneutical understandings and insights of such scholars clearly transgress the boundaries of academic study or speculation. In their subjective poles, these understandings become personally transformative; in their objecti ve poles, they produce genuine insights into the nature of the phenomena under study. These are types of understanding that are at once passionate and critical, personal and objective, religious and academic. Such forms of knowledge are not simply academic, although they are that as well, and rigorously so. But they are also transformative, and sometimes sotierological. In a word, the knowledge of such a historian of religions approaches a kind of gnosis.”

 

bw

Angela

 
Dr Angela Voss
10 Arnold Road
Chartham
Canterbury CT4 7QL
 
 
From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Odrade Atreed [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, September 16, 2011 12:59 PMSubject: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Rv: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Academic Writing 2

Dear caroline and kaostar,
 
I am sorry, but I disagree. Perhaps the problem is not that pagans do not understand the way of academic research. Perhaps is the way back.
 
I will try to explain my position.
 
First of all, you talk about the success of Da Vinci Code and Holy Grail´s novels. I don´t think it is relevant here. Every writer knows, as Sol Stein has explained really well, that to attract the mass attention you have to
write something which is different from reality, more desirable or terrible, but something which the reader want to be into. You create fantasy, because reality is more plain, but from a "realistical point of view".
 
Now, about why pagans prefer Whitmore to Hutton. I cannot explain this particular point, because I am not pagan but I think my case is not very different from pagans, so I will explain myself to ilustrate the point. I am philosopher, five years degree and two years master and doing a thesis about pragmatism. But, primary, I am a magician and astrologer, with ten years practice on my back. And I prefer Reality from Peter Kignsley, an unofficial vision of Parmenides to the official philosophical theories about Parmenides. And, I have to say in my own discredit that I haven´t confirmed the afirmations of Kingsley, although I subscribe his vision. I suspect if I were a Pagan I would prefer Whitmore to Hutton.
 
So, what is happening to a pragmatic philosopher educated in the Academic Language to prefer a not academic text to an academic one?
 
Well, is part of the training we receive. There are different resources to understand the world. One of them is reason, other is the written texts. These are very well used by academics and I wouldn´t deny it.
 
But, as a magician, I have been trained to use imagination to achieve vision and to follow intuition to get knowledge. Most of the time this is nonsense, specially at the beginning of the training. You have a lot of visions which express what you want to get, or the self illusions about yourself. As time pass you are more prepared to appart those things and try to get the knowledge that trascends what you, as an individual person, are or need. Those visions give knowledge, and a kind of knowledge it is impossible to deny. You don´t get to this point because you are a believer, but because you have checked it in ways which are very difficult and extensive to explain now. At certain point you are sure of the epistemological value of this bit of knowledge. I suspect the deep roots of Witchcraft  in the past of humanity is part of this revelation, so if there is no written proofs of this, then Witches will wait until it appeares. If an academic study reveals this, then they will be very proud of academic research.
 
What is the problem with my assumption, that If academic world does not understand what kind of knowledge I am talking about, then you, as academic, will think I am talking about religion and faith. So, in my opinion, if you get to this conclussion, you are misunderstanding me.
 
I wait this will be clear. Thank you for helping me to clarify my possition.
 
Ana B. González.
 
 
 

De: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Para: [log in to unmask]
Enviado: viernes 16 de septiembre de 2011 12:40
Asunto: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Academic Writing 2

Thanks Caroline. Maybe that is something constructive the list members could do from this? Devise a one or two page document under creative commons to clarify how we do research and what makes it academic. Then post it everywhere. Send it to pagan magazines blog it etc and do what we can to make it go viral.

Dave E
Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange
From: Caroline Tully <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Society for The Academic Study of Magic <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2011 20:19:33 +1000
ReplyTo: Society for The Academic Study of Magic <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Academic Writing 2

But then again.. I am not saying that non-academics can’t possibly do research or write good books.... No. I guess my interest is in what_passes_ for history, or archaeology, amidst the general public and how they often do not have the knowledge to know how to question such material, or even that they should.
 
~Caroline.