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.

I think Simon Bronner also makes reference to this fact, in _Piled Higher and Deeper: the Folklore of Academia_.  That's BS (Bull****), MS (More ****) and Ph.D. (Piled Higher and Deeper), for the uninitiated. ;-)

BB,
Sabina


Sabina Magliocco
Professor
Department of Anthropology
California State University - Northridge
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________________________________________
From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Pitch [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, March 28, 2011 10:11 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] FORTHCOMING: WHO IS THIS PERSON WRITING MY PHD?

Aloha,

On 3/27/2011 7:29 AM, toyin adepoju wrote:
Can scholarship be one method of pursuing this relationship with an exalted inner self?
Yes.

We experience dynamic constellations of relationship
between skill sets, world views, and the integration of
self with fuller and more fulfilling participation in the
world as we live in it.

Scholarship constitutes a high order skill set that takes
years to acquire and put into practice with some proficiency.
It is, in other words, a discipline or a path or a way
that offers at least some guidance toward self actualization
which transcends the specific boundaries of scholarship.
[Humanistic and flow psychology may offer some clues
about how and why this happens.]

Let's say that scholarship in the sense that I'm talking
about it here offers certain avenues of pattern recognition
and pattern making that carry the scholar into a sense
of unity and energetic refreshment which vitalizes her or
his whole world and being. Scholarship may offer magical
or spiritual outcomes, as well as knowledge outcomes.
[Think--scholarship as improvisational ritual, as spiritual
quest, as experiments in consciousness, for instance.]

At the same time, I'd say that magical and spiritual outcomes
via scholarship are secondary. Scholars may experience them
and realize that they have and do. Or not.

The primary goals of scholarship have to do with some
knowledge outcomes orbiting some gravity wells and black
holes of knowledge. Announcing to a dissertation committee
that the sum of one's work brought one to knowledge and
conversation with one's Holy Guardian Angel as described by
Frater Perdurabo might not be the best tactic to get that doctorate.
[Harking back to my own days in graduate education,
I'd abandon the endeavor in frustration long before my
committee members would ever learn what I was trying to
teach them so that they could understand why that HGA
was crucial to the dissertation. Although in my case it was
actually chronobiology.]

Even if true.

Let me add that, the way I see it, scholarship is not, in
itself, a magical system or magical world view. Scholarship
may influence or shape magical systems and world views.
And scholarship may lead a scholar into more or less "raw"
magical experiences.

But scholarship is not an Order, a Lodge, a Temple, a Trad,
or a Path.

Musing For Nearly All Of My Bookish Life, I Have Enjoyed
A Torrid Affair With A Muse! Her Kiss Is All-Knowing! Rose,

Pitch