┌─╷─┐ ╵┌┼┐╵ polyphanes.smol.pub ╷└┼┘╷ by polyphanes └─╵─┘
return to homepage
return to post index
───╢※╟───
It boggles me how so many people don't realize that so much of what we get into as occultists is only possible due to the work of academics and researchers, not just for source material availability but the very models that underlie all the hot takes of folks who bias themselves against "academia". Sure, academics *don't* have all the answers, nor do they operate with the same purpose or goals as people engaged in these traditions and systems; it's the etic/emic divide in another way. At the same time, knowing *about* a thing helps us to *know* the thing itself more, and vice versa!
Wouter Hanegraaff's paper "Beyond the Yates Paradigm: The Study of Western Esotericism Between Counterculture and New Complexity" has a great perspective on this that deserves to be borne in mind:
I began this article by contrasting the sexual taboos demolished in the wake of the counterculture of the 1960s, and the persistence of the academic taboo on studying western esotericism. The comparison provides me with a suitable closing metaphor. Sex may no longer be a taboo in academic discussion, but this does not mean that a professor of gender studies is expected to consider the practice of sex as part of his or her professional duty. Practicing sex is one thing while studying it is another; and neither of the two is expected to take the place of the other. Esotericism has remained a taboo in academic discussion because its countercultural-religionist representatives have too frequently refused to draw such distinctions, and insisted that only practitioners—people personally engaged in an esoteric quest—are able to adequately study esotericism. Accordingly, they held that the very nature of the academy needed to change, in order to make the study of esotericism possible. The religionist assumption underlying such a viewpoint is that the study of western esotericism should elucidate and explain the "real nature" and essence sui generis of esotericism, and that it falls short of its mission if it does not evoke and transmit the very experiential knowledge claimed by esotericists themselves. This is equivalent to saying that an academic study of sexual symbolism should cause the reader to experience sexual bliss. Obviously academic research has another mission. Whether we are speaking of sex or of esotericism: those who wish to experience "the real thing" are well advised not to turn to academics but to practitioners. But those who want to understand how and why these important domains of human experience and expression have played—and are still playing—a significant role in western culture are well advised not to ask the practitioners but turn to academics.
While so much of what we might do as individual practitioners might make sense for us and "work" (however you might mean that word) regardless of what academia might say about it, we so rarely come up with this stuff from whole cloth on our own out of nowhere. All this stuff comes from *somewhere*, and that "somewhere" is generally going to be the work of historians, archaeologists, researchers, and other scholars in academia who provide sources, analyses, and models to understand what's out there, how we got it, what it impacts, and why it matters. It's only once that sort of research is done that other people can take that work up and make use of it—but also, all too often, some also market it as something novel or pure apart from the stodgy stains of "academic bias", or otherwise encourage a perception towards that end. Like...bruh.
It is not elitist to provide or ask for sources, nor to demand more intellectual rigor than just going on vibes alone to discuss matters of esotericism or the occult beyond just the practical aspect of it. These are good things that we should encourage and expect from others in our work! I'm tired of people trying to be lazy about discussing, teaching, and learning about these matters while also denigrating the good academic work that academic research produces and facilitates. Way more often than not, we wouldn't have this stuff without it; we should remember and respect that.
Besides, the "research" that so many people do online is little more than just looking at a soundbite and AI slop-filled YouTube video or TikTok for a minute or two, and think that that's anywhere near on the same level as the years of labor that goes into producing a scientific article. It's not! The same intellectual problems that plague discussions about vaccines, climate change, and the like also riddle discussions about esotericism, the occult, and paganism, and we should all be on guard against that sort of intellectual decrepitude to help ourselves and each other in the work we all do.
Also, when online occultists rail against the "dogma" of "what the academics tell us"? Remember that scientific models are under constant scrutiny and testing, and when tests and experiments show that a model doesn't hold, work is done to understand why so that a newer and better model comes about. While there may be schools of thought that guide such models and which provide an interpretive framework and agenda to such a work that might be harder to break from, to treat "what the academics tell us" as both fixed and monolithic does a disservice to what those academics are doing. Besides, let's be honest: it's not like so many occultists out there aren't at least as dogmatic about the models they push while still railing against the perceived "dogmatism" of academia, even in the face of competing models of other occultists, and often with a whole lot less intellectual rigor.