Hello friends! Mad Doctor Abdullah is away on some secret
expedition that involves polar bears, a magic circle and a ridiculous amount of
entheogenic herbs and spices. When I inquired about his present whereabouts
there was a long pause followed by "Listen idiot, unless you can recite
the alphabet backwards in Swahili while fleeing a barrel of buckshot, I don't
really have time for your jabbering. Wise up, the dogs are rabid and
hungry." I hesitated. "Does that mean you'll meet the editorial deadline?"
There was another pause that was immediately followed by the sound of spitting
then dial tone. So as you can surmise, I've been preparing articles myself and hoping for a MDA miracle. This mishmash of thoughts and ideas are the
initial attempt at putting something on paper that discusses supernatural
folklore narratives with a Latourian methodology and utilizing an experiential
and phenomenological foundation. The idea is to show how chains of reference
provide meaning to a supernatural experience. Keep in mind that these thoughts
are largely incoherent, out of sequence and purely an attempt of organize my
craziness. In other words, should be a typical blog entry. :)
Social Theory and Mysticism: An-Other Paradigm
Many take the
occult very seriously and regard it as a real threat to the fabric of society.
Perhaps remnants of the reason-driven war on the occult arts during the
renaissance or the rumor-panic of Satan in our neighborhoods in the 1980s, the
occult is a very feared enterprise. Moreover, academia has trouble finding a
category in which to place the subject. The natural sciences back away slowly
at any mention of the word. The psychologists smirk and identify a dozen
neuroses that could explain any and all of the mystery of supernatural
processes. The psychiatrists simply get giddy. Only the anthropologists and
folklorists will explore the occult in situ and on its own terms. But even
then, the subject is a complicated matter. As Folklorist Gillian Bennett
remarks,
The main trouble for
folklorists is that we have got ourselves into not one, but no less than three
vicious circles. Firstly no one will take the subject because it is
disreputable, and it remains disreputable because no one will tackle it.
Secondly, because no one does any research into present day supernatural
beliefs, occult traditions are generally represented by old legends about
fairies, bogeys, and grey ladies. Furthermore, because published collections of
supernatural folklore are thus stuck forever in a time-warp, folklorists are
rightly wary of printing the modern beliefs they do not come across for fear of
offending their informants by appearing to put deeply felt beliefs on a par
with chain-rattling skeletons and other such absurdities. Thirdly, because no
one will talk about their experiences of the supernatural there is no evidence
for it and because there is no evidence for it no one talks about their
experiences of it. (1987 pp13 Gillian Bennett. Traditions of Belief:
Women, Folklore, and the Supernatural Today. London. Pelican Books.)
As Gillian has correctly surmised, the occult is in an academic
conundrum. Ironically, much of these questions of validity and reputability
have been grossly perpetuated by occultists themselves. Since antiquity, the
occult processes has been intertwined with advances in science. For example, as
astronomy and chemistry became more advanced, their occult counterparts in
alchemy and astrology lost favor and in turn, lost validity. But its been the
occultists themselves that have continued to try and make their arts a natural
science. For the most part, the scientific community has been content to leave
well enough alone. It s been practitioners of the occult that have continued to
be concerned with science. It’s no coincidence that famous magus
Aleister Crowley named his particular form of ceremonial magic: Scientific
Illuminism.
Perhaps it’s time to leave the never-ending subdivisions and
cul-de-sacs of the natural science community and venture into the small towns
and country of the social sciences. The occult can be right at home without
being concerned with the natural sciences. And that’s not to say that the
supernatural cannot be endowed with a robust philosophy or even dip its foot
into quantum theory and other like-minded scientific theories. It’s just time
for a change. Throughout this sojourn, we will be venturing into these uncharted
and unexpected places. We’re creating a trail that will be followed by any and
all who want a fresh approach to occult study. Instead of focusing on what can
be empirically proven, we will show why its unnecessary to validate in this
matter. Instead of trying to prove the logic and rationalism of the
supernatural, we will embrace a metaphysics based on experiential happenings.
Instead of trying to convince the academic community of the occult’s relevance,
we will let anomalous entities be their own informants and inquire into how
these creatures re-present themselves continuously. And in so doing, we will
re-discover what it means to be an occultist in the modern world. Like the
black hole in the center of a galaxy or the spider at the center of its web, we
will explore the series of connections and correspondences that make this world
and showcase its place in the center of a truly intricate and delicate network
of the numinous.
In ‘Religion, Philosophy, and Psychical Research’, Charles
Dunbar Broad introduced a theory for God’s existence that had anthropological
connotations. In essence, it stated:
1) People cross-culturally have reported
experiences in which it was seemed to them that they experienced God.
2) If people cross-culturally have reported
experiences in which it seemed to them that they experienced God, then people
cross-culturally have seemed to experience God.
3) People cross-culturally have seemed to
experience God.
4) If people cross-culturally have seemed to
experience God, then there is experiential evidence that God exists.
5) There is experiential evidence that God
exists.
This theory is remarkable cogent and fits well into
anthropological discourse. It is especially good for occult studies. In fact,
if we replace the word God for Old Hag, or Demon, or Extraterrestrial, we have
a workable theory of occult experience. And the fact that it accentuates
‘cross-cultural’ experience gives it multiple avenues for social scientific
research. It at once gives credence to narratives of the supernatural while it
simultaneously suggests that this sort of phenomenon is experiential and found
in a multitude of cultural scenarios.
What makes this form of occult study particularly exciting is
that it asks us to question what is real based upon what we
can empirically verify. And that’s the rub isn’t it? It’s also the main
criticism of Broad’s theory. If people are seeming to experience God or the
Occult, then there must be some way to test these experiences. In true
Popperian fashion, we must find way s to falsify or verify the experience in
the same way sensory input can be falsified or verified. If we subject the
experience to ‘checking’, then what people seem to experience is not evidence
of the reality presented.
Perhaps an elegant way to resolve this conundrum is through the
‘inferences’. We can accept the validity of occult experience by inferring
their non-causal properties while carefully recording the causal properties and
sensory data that accompany the event.
We should probably explicate exactly what we mean by folklore of
the occult and supernatural. Typically lore is transmitted verbally and passed
on from person to person via stories. Telling stories is the perfect
conduit to disseminate folklore – especially of the supernatural variety. They
provide a suspense that can’t be matched by reading the account or watching it
on television or at the movies. The face to face interaction requires a
personal exchange. It’s much easier to relay ‘how something seemed’ by being
able to tell it how it happened. And we all love a good story. Whether it be a
ghost story, UFO experience, or banishing ritual, supernatural stories are the
best stories. And we’ll be exploring these various forms of folk belief
throughout this book.
The supernatural is also, more often than not, believed
narratives. There is something about believing the unbelievable that is
attractive to both the storyteller and his audience. Perhaps due to the exotic nature
of supernatural belief, we want to include these experiences into our
worldview. Anybody who has claimed to be a UFO abductee or seen a ghostly
visitor will swear absolutely and without reservation that what they
experienced was real. Most have no doubt as to the ontological relevancy of
these entities. The “I have seen it with my own eyes” is a popular catchphrase
for this type of contemporary legend.
As well as believability, these narratives also hold structural
similarities that make them especially easy to group together. There are
motifs, and morphology that capture what I call likeminded essences in
the narratives. Moreover, not only are these various contemporary legends
similar but they also echo traditional supernatural assault traditions of the
past. In the stories of fairies, angels, changeling, gnomes and other creatures
of the past are the prototypes of modern myths and monsters. It’s no surprise
that the modern UFO movement is so full of religious imagery. These
re-presentations of the numinous follow society and take on new meaning as
times change. But even though their faces may change or the narratives many
show variations in plot or action, the terror that is evoked surpasses time and
space.
No comments:
Post a Comment