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I do at least try to live by the Law of Thelema including the instructions of the Third Chapter and find that this system of ethics is almost always at odds with the western mindset which is very Christian. An academic will be the product of this western mindset and so even comprehending the truths of the Third Chapter may prove impossible. And, if someone was to use the instructions for calling beetles that are in that chapter even as an experiment, perhaps just to see if it works, then is that still an academic investigation? Can an act of devotion be studied from the outside with any hope of genuine comprehension?
Most practicing magicians that I am acquainted with won't even talk about their magick with someone like myself, a fellow magician, so what hope have academic students of magick got of getting a straight answer anyway?

Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:35:20 +1000
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] FW: [JFRR] Fairy Tales: A New History (Bottigheimer, Ruth B.)
To: [log in to unmask]

And also, might we consider the possibility that the system of ethics of a magician might be different to that of an academic researcher?

 

Would an academic use, say, the Third Chapter of The Book of the Law as a guide to their behavior? Would someone, like, say Jesper Petersen who studies modern Satanism, approve or live by LaVeyean Satanism’s Nine Satanic Statements? (Sorry Jesper, for dragging you in here).

 

Can magickal practitioners and academics ever see eye to eye? (I know the Church of Satan is very anti-academic scholarship).

 

The Nine Satanic Statements
from The Satanic Bible, ©1969
by Anton Szandor LaVey
1. Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!
2. Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams!
3. Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self-deceit!
4. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates!
5. Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek!
6. Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires!
7. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all!
8. Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!  
9. Satan has been the best friend the Church has ever had, as He has kept it in business all these years!

 

 

From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Mattichak
Sent: Thursday, 22 September 2011 11:47 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] FW: [JFRR] Fairy Tales: A New History (Bottigheimer, Ruth B.)

 

Hi Caroline;

A very interesting question- but when it comes to magic, who is the laity and who are the experts?

I would imagine that of all subjects magick would be the most difficult to study as a purely academic pursuit. The instructional books of magick tend to equip the novice magician with the skills to go about the practice of learning magick and the results are usually subjective. My magick won't be the same as yours and neither magicks will be the same as another person's experience. Without practice an academic may learn a myriad of facts about magick but will never be more than a layman unless they submit to the ordeals of learning through experience. This in no way devalues the knowledge that is accumulated about magick by academic methods, after all most of modern Hermetic styled magick was created by scholars but it was only by the trial and error methods of practicing adepts that a real magickal practice has been established.

A magician makes magick his life. Can the same be said of an academic that studies magick? Do academics live magickal lives or do they close their books at the end of the day and that's the end of it. Anyone that has submitted to the ordeals of learning to do magick will agree that the experience of magick doesn't stop at the end of a working day but consumes all of the time and effort that it takes to become a magician. Do academic students of magick make that kind of commitment to their study? Can anyone become an expert at magick without any practical experiments and if they do experiments does their study remain in the realm of academia?

David G Mattichak