Tag Archives: scholarship

A Day and a Night in Occult Chicago

A statue of the goddess Ceres tops the Chicago Board of Trade building, as seen from a classroom building at DePaul University.

For the third time in four years, we had a pre-conference event that tied into Pagan studies somehow. (Previously: Montréal, San Francisco.)

This was the Occult Chicago conference organized by Jason Winslade at DePaul University—his take on “Chicago Quarter,” an urban orientation class that all first-year DePaul students must take.

Imagine a bright new student who, however, does not know a Theosophist from a Chicago Bear. Suddenly she (who maybe just took this section because it fit her schedule) finds herself immersed in a world yogis, magicians, witches, astrologers, hucksters, publishers, and — this being Chicago — architecture.

Jason Winslade (black cap) points out the location of the former Chicago Masonic Temple on State Street, accompanied by “Occult Chicago” blogger Rik Garrett, right.

Those of us who attended the one-day version (see also Jason Pitzl-Waters’ review) heard some of the students’ capstone presentations, learned that the first skyscraper in Chicago was built by the Freemasons, listened to representatives of contemporary magical groups, and visited sites and building associated with occult organizations, hauntings, violent deaths, and publishing houses.

Mural on the tenth floor of the Fine Arts Building, Michigan Avenue, Chicago.

One highlight was the Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave., where at one time the Thelemite Choronzon Club held its meetings and the Akbar Lodge of Theosophists had its office.

The Pookah (right)  and friends pursue the skeptical German professor in a Terra Mysterium skit.

Finally came a performance by the Terra Mysterium steampunk theatre troupe. You might think that a classroom would not make the best performance space, but the performance was laced with academic parody, so it worked.

Settling Publishing Issues at the AAR

Trudging through McCormick Place

To complete your quest, you need an elf, a dwarf, a hobbit …

I am sleeping a lot these days, recovering from this year’s American Academy of Religion meeting, held in Chicago’s monstrous McCormick Place convention center. Beware of any architect who designates parts of buildings as a “grand concourse.” That translates as “huge useless spaces that you have to walk back and forth through to get to the important stuff.”

This was the most “businesslike” of all AAR meetings that I have attended. I barely even saw the book exhibit—quite a change from years when I examined every publisher’s booth carefully (unless it was something like IVP or Zondervan) because I had no one to talk to. Now I have to write to all sorts of people with whom I should have liked to have a fuller conversation.

Important publishing news in Pagan studies and Western esotericism: the merger (which I had not discussed) here between Equinox Publishing and Acumen.

Now they are de-merged. It feels like a divorce, with the authors and series editors as the minor children who are assigned to the custody of one parent or the other.

As part of the agreement, certain religious-studies books that were already in production, including one that I spent all spring and summer on copyediting and typesetting, have been assigned to Acumen.

But a number of series editors — including Nikki Bado and me for the series originally called Equinox Studies in Historical and Contemporary Paganism — are moving their series back to Equinox as originally contracted. It’s as though the kid said, “No, I want to go live with Mom. And I will.”

As for The Pomegranate, the editorial pipeline is finally moving, and I anticipate another issue coming out soon. That has been on my mind a lot.

After being in editorial limbo for a few weeks, it was good to get these issues straightened out.

CFP: Culture and Cosmos

Call for papers . . .

CULTURE AND COSMOS

Vol. 17,  no. 1: Literature and the Stars

We are inviting submissions for Vol. 17 no 1 (Spring/Summer 2013) on Literature and the Stars. Papers may focus on any time period or culture, and should deal either with representations of astronomy or astrology in fiction, or studies of astronomical or astrological texts as literature. Contributions may focus on western or non-western culture, and on the ancient, medieval or modern worlds.

Papers should be submitted by NOVEMBER 15, 2012. They should typically not exceed 8000 words length and should be submitted to editors@cultureandcosmos.org. Shorter submissions and research notes are welcome.

Contributors should follow the style guide. 

Please include an abstract of c. 100-200 words.

All submissions will peer-reviewed for originality, timeliness, relevance, and readability. Authors will be notified as soon as possible of the acceptability of their submissions.

Culture and Cosmos is published in association with the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales, SA48 7ED, UK.

As from Vol. 17 no 1 Culture and Cosmos will be published open-access, on-line, in the interests of open scholarship. Hard copy will be available via print-on-demand.

First Impressions from EASR, Contemporary Esotericism Conferences

I did not attend these conference sessions  on the study of esotericism in Stockholm, alas, but several blogging friends did attend. One of them, Sasha Chaitow of the Phoenix Rising Academy, has already posted an initial report, so go read it.

Call for Submissions: Preternature

Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural

Volume 3:2. Old Gods and Ancient Ones

Call them pagan or ancient, earth-based or demonic, or by names like Hekate, Isis, Poseidon, Ereshkigal, Loki, and Anath, the Old Gods have  been topics of energetic scholarly discussion, literary recreation, and artistic depiction for decades. As supplanted as they might seem to historians, the Old Gods live on and capture our imagination.

Contextualized in archaeological study, sensationalized by filmmakers,   and rendered in new costumes and flesh by artists, Old Gods continue,   components of the flexible mythologies that make up shared cultural references. They are used across literature, graphic novels, television series, cinema, and MMORPGs to tell and enact narratives.  As they had in ancient landscapes, the Old Gods now make up part of a dynamic belief systems and figure in new forms of ritual invocations.

This issue of Preternature especially welcomes scholars whose work focuses on the new uses of ancient Asian, Babylonian, Canaanite, Egyptian, Greek, Mesoamerican, Norse, and Slavic Gods. It also welcomes contributions, from any discipline, that highlight the cultural, literary, dramatic, religious, magical, or historical  significance of any of the ancient gods in their own contexts, as a  part of “paganisms,” and as a part of contemporary popular cultures.

We welcome synthetic overviews of Sarapis veneration in Ephesus or the cult of Mithras as much as feminist critiques of  representations of goddesses in graphic novels. Analyses of new  ritualizations of Old Gods in specific neopaganism groups are welcome as well. Ultimately, we are interested in how the ancient gods are  maintained, in various media and inscholarly discussion, in this modern era.

Contributions should be roughly 8,000 – 12,000 words, including all documentation and critical apparatus, and adhere to the Chicago Manual  of Style, 15th edition (style 1, employing endnotes). Contributions mustbe submitted through the Preternature CMS. Final submissions are due March 31, 2013.

Queries about journal scope and submissions can be made to the editor, Dr. Kirsten C. Uszkalo. Queries concerning books to be reviewed can be  made to the book reviews editor, Dr. Richard Raiswell.

Preternature is a bi-annual publication, published through Penn State Press, and available in print or electronically through JSTOR, Project Muse, and as a Kindle e- book.

As always, I recommend reading an issue or two of the journal before submitting anything to it.

Pentagram Pizza: Academic Edition

• “Three Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know about Google Scholar” at GradHacker. I did not know about a couple of these features, like being able to track how often something you wrote has been cited, which can be either an ego boost or give you the feeling that you have been spitting into the Grand Canyon.

• The early issues of The Pomegranate, those edited and published by Fritz Muntean in Vancouver, BC., are now online. Go here and scroll down to the numbered issues 1–18 at the bottom. Yes, Equinox is (Brit. are) charging for articles, but book reviews and the readers’ forum downloads are free, and remember what I said about interlibrary loan.

• Egil Asprem reviews Stepchildren of Science, a book on the history of parapsychology in Germany. “In the fascinating last chapter Wolffram shows how the struggle between parapsychologists and academic psychologists also led to attempts, by both sides, to pathologise the other.” That sounds so familiar.

Critical Theory, Mere Description, and Pagan Studies

Some thoughts after reading Markus Davidsen’s review of the Handbook of Contemporary Paganism—and, by extension, of the entire field of Pagan studies.

Part of his critique does resonate with me. It raises an issue that I have thought about too.

When I saw that the first authority cited was Russ McCutcheon, I had a pretty good idea of where it was going.  McCutcheon is a former editor of the journal in which the essay appeared, among other things.

Davidsen himself identifies with the critical theorists such as McCutcheon who “no longer study religion or religious activity as such, but aim to analyze how people talk about religion, which social constructions people label religion, and how the resulting discourses serve to legitimate power structures.”

He stumbles in a couple of spots. For example, he seems to think that Unitarians, despite their name, are Christians, and therefore the Wiccans in Unitarian congregations must not be purely Pagan but somehow Christian as well. Yes, all of you in CUUPS are Christians—or so Markus Davidsen thinks.

Here we simply have a Danish scholar who does not know the history of an American religious denomination.

To move on to the substance, however—Davidsen regrets that so much study of religion takes place in by “religionists” who are “field-directed.” Of course, some of that is rooted in history and some is the job market: institutions often want someone to “teach Asian religions” or whatever.

Davidsen notes the absence of Ronald Hutton from the handbook, but given Hutton’s emphasis on the history of ideas and such chapters titles as “Finding a Goddess,” he would probably have dismissed him as a descriptive religionist as well.

But now the resonance. He faults much of the writing in that Brill Handbook (including mine) as being too “descriptive.” Nolo contendere.  I have often wondered if in Pagan studies (and in the study of new religious movements in general) we regard descriptive work as (a) necessary and (b) easier—or at least more obvious, easier to think about.

Necessary because, after all, don’t we have to adequately describe something before we can theorize about it? Of course, the horizon of the perfect description is always receding before us. 🙂

But how would the sort of critical theory that Davidsen calls for be applied to Pagan studies, and who is doing it? Certainly I would never say that Pagan studies should be immune to critical theory. Yes, talk and write about “which social constructions people label [Pagan] religion, and how the resulting discourses serve to legitimate power structures,” or whatever you like. But it won’t be the only way that people do Pagan studies.

Call For Papers, Presentations, Workshops, Rituals and Performances Mapping the Occult City: Exploring Magick and Esotericism in the Urban Utopia

A pre-conference for the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religions in Chicago, on Friday November 16, 2012, presented by Phoenix Rising Academy and DePaul University.

In his classic essay, “Walking in the City,” ethnologist and historian Michel de Certeau distinguished between the “exaltation of a scopic and gnostic drive” that comes from viewing the city from a high vantage point and the quotidian negotiations of the walker at street level, who creates his or her own map, takes shortcuts and resists the strategies of typical urban planning.

One perspective is totalizing and distancing, constructing an illusory, unified view of the metropolis, while the other seeks out hidden avenues of knowledge and intersections of stories, myths, and happenings. The occultist tends to shift between both views, sometimes spinning grand narratives of the city as a New Atlantis, a utopian civilization of knowledge and wonder, other times imagining a secret world of dark mysteries, unknown to most passersby, that lay just beyond the twilight of the streetlamps.

Many esotericists, conspiracy theorists, and urban fantasy authors have speculated on the occult meaning of symbols, monuments, and architecture in major cities, from Cleopatra’s Needle in London to the Washington Monument in Washington D.C. Or they see powerful sigils in the neon signs, building facades and billboards. Some speak of urban ley lines and “energy centers” that bubble with occult power ready to be tapped into by those with the right sense and ability. These energy centers are focused on geometric street patterns or the lines created by the placement of sacred sites in the city, such as churches, temples, and cemeteries. Others speak of haunted places, charged with story and legend, often full of the sense of violence, trauma and the urgency of events that occurred there.

Historically, cities have been home to countless esoteric groups who have met, planned, and conducted ritual within the towering buildings that glitter the metropolitan skyline.

For instance, Chicago, the location of this year’s AAR conference, was once the home of the 32 floor Masonic Building, owned by the Illinois Freemasons, and the tallest building in the world in 1892. Prominent figures in the esoteric world have spoken, performed and offered their wisdom to the masses through the many salons, lectures, performances, congregations, conferences, and world’s fairs that have been either publicly advertised or available only to those with the right password and invitation.

Cities are where the ideas of Western esotericism spread to the masses through these public events and the many urban publishing houses. Cities are also home to public events and happenings that connect the esoteric, the theatrical and the political world through protest and public actions and happenings, such as the W.I.T.C.H. protests at Chicago’s Federal Building on Halloween 1969.

Finally, cities are centers of diversity and diaspora and often become hothouses for the development of hybrid traditions based on immigrant cultures, such as Santeria and Vodun. For scholars of magick and esotericism, cities like Chicago can offer up rich resources for tracking group activities and events through library archives and public records.

Understanding occult life in the city, in both its historical and contemporary contexts, is crucial in mapping the proliferation of ideas and connections between practitioners and traditions. Popular practical texts have addressed how the practice of magick changes in an urban setting, especially when the magician or witch must adapt a nature-centered practice to a city-based practice.

nvestigating esoteric actions in the city can reveal the ways in which the practitioner is caught up and complicit with strategic structures of power while also offering possibilities for the occultist to resist those structures through the kind of tactical, magical moves described by de Certeau. As the Occupy movement and other political protests proliferate, especially in America’s election year, what are the possibilities for harnessing and directing the energy of the occult city?

Phoenix Rising Academy would like to explore these intersections of the esoteric and the urban, focusing on the city as a locus for power and knowledge, both hidden and revealed. Are cities oppressive entities that stifle creative and esoteric drives or do they hold in their structures the potential for powerful action? To this end, we invite scholars and practitioners to submit proposals for papers, presentations, rituals and performances that address these questions pertaining to the occult city.

Though our focus is primarily on American cities, particularly Chicago, we welcome explorations in other prominent global metropolitan centers. For this pre-conference, we plan on creating 2-3 panels of papers, presentations, performances, rituals, workshops, roundtables, or discussion groups.

Possible topics may include (but are not limited to)

• The activities of certain groups, traditions, and communities, both historical and contemporary, in particular cities.

• The city life of prominent esoteric figures and how that city life shaped their ideas and practices. · Particular events, meetings, lectures, performances, happenings, protests whose urban setting featured prominently in their execution and influence.

• The mythology of the occult city, based on legend, occult symbolism, and esoteric symbolism of architecture and urban planning.

• A practical approach to working magick and ritual in the city, perhaps based on Urban Shamanism or Chaos Magick.

• Interpretations of the city and its occult power by urban fantasy authors.

• The intersections of the occult and the political through the use of ritualized protest actions, focusing on setting and urban scene.

• Though not focusing on hauntings per se, an investigation of spiritualism, mysticism and psychic practices prominent in urban settings.

• A study of how hereditary or hybridized indigenous practices survive, evolve and adapt in an urban setting.

With your submission, please include the following: Presenter information (name, mailing and email addresses, phone number) Type of presentation (paper, non-paper presentation, workshop, performance, roundtable).

Note: if you are proposing a roundtable discussion, please submit info for all participants. Title and affiliation (institution, organization, independent scholar, or practitioner). Proposal or abstract (not to exceed 250 words). Should include title of presentation and a clear description of the presentation’s intent, plus any audio/visual needs. Biographical data (not to exceed 200 words).

Please email all submissions by August 20th to Dr. Jason L. Winslade, DePaul University, jwinslad@depaul.edu. Please include “PRA Pre-Conference” in the subject line. All submissions will be reviewed and you will be notified of a decision one week after the deadline

Currents in Esoteric Studies

The current newsletter of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism is available for download. In it, some of the members discuss their current doctoral work. It is always interesting to see how new scholars are formulating just exactly what “esoteric studies” covers.

Like Pagan studies — there is some degree of overlap — esoteric studies (if I may personify it) struggles to find out who it is. Egil Asprem, doctoral candidate and blogger, writes,

On the one hand, you often hear that the field has now matured, but when you look for some of the signs that characterise a mature academic field it is hard to see them in practice. I am particularly thinking of the lack of agreement on fundamental issues, such as ”what is it”, ”how do we study it”, ”what’s its importance”, and ”how is it related to the broad spectrum of human activity”. If you pick up the three most popular introduction books to the field, you’ll find three very different ways of handling these fundamental questions.

Kocku von Stuckrad, an established scholar but still “younger” in academic terms, makes the comparison:

It is a kind of identity work that I perceive in the study of esotericism, but also in ”pagan studies” and related fields of research. This identity work often leads to a neglect of critical methodological reflection, which I find problematic. What we need is an active collaboration with as many colleagues as possible, no matter whether or not we like their definitions of esotericism, in order to build up networks that can make research into these historical and cultural dynamics sustainable for the future. If we study these phenomena as part of the cultural history of Europe and North America, in an increasingly globalized perspective, we will be able to integrate the field of Western esotericism” in larger research structures and critical scholarship. This will also help students who enroll in our programs to find a job after their studies.

More resources in the newsletter about courses and research opportunities, chiefly in Britain and the Netherlands.

Critiquing Pagan Studies

Several friends mentioned today an essay based on the Handbook of Contemporary Paganism   (Leiden: Brill, 2009) which in its abstract makes this critique:

[The essay] demonstrates that pagan studies is dominated by the methodological principles of essentialism, exclusivism, loyalism and supernaturalism, and shows how these principles promote normative constructions of ‘pure’ paganism, insider interpretations of the data, and theological speculations about gods, powers, and a special “magical consciousness.” It seems thus that the methodological discussions in MTSR have little effect on pagan scholars. In the concluding discussion, I raise the questions why this is so, and how we might do better in promoting a naturalist and theoretically oriented approach to studying religion.

I made an interlibrary-loan request for the article — or extended book review, whichever it is— and will read it with interest. Off-hand, I see a couple of issues. First, the one source is a reference book, one that sells for a high price and will be available in limited places.

In my experience, contributors (and I was one) to such books tend to summarize their work but not to break new ground. The new thinking appears in conference papers, in journals such as The Pomegranate, in monographs, and in more focused edited collections, as opposed to reference books.

Second, Pagan studies includes more than potential readership of Method & Theory in the Study of Religion. In  Pomegranate alone you will find anthropologists, sociologists, folklorists, scholars of Western esotericism, and historians publishing as well as religious-studies scholars of various sorts. Their methodologies and theoretical perspectives are going to be different as well.

Nevertheless, Markus Altena Davidsen‘s  accusations of essentialism, exclusivism, loyalism, and supernaturalism are calculated to discredit the field by suggesting that its practitioners lack (from his perspective) theoretical rigor.

Ironically, those are the qualities that critics such as Ben Whitmore want to accuse scholars of Paganism of failing to display in sufficient quantity.

Without having yet read the article, I would say that Davidsen identifies a possible cliff that Pagan studies could go over. That it has indeed gone over such a cliff, I dispute.

To switch metaphors, I would not want to see scholars of Paganism build the walls of their own ghetto, and as much as I can, I will struggle against that impulse when it arises.