Michael Granado MG: Hello everyone and welcome back today I have with me a very interesting guest Dr Angela Puca. I stumbled across their channel as I was doing some research for a class I was doing, actually on the second great awakening, I was trying to figure out magical practices in 19th century America and Dr Puca’s channel popped up. So Dr Angela Puca’s research focuses on Magick, Witchcraft, Paganism, Esotericism, Shamanism and related currents. The University of Leeds awarded her a PhD in Anthropology of Religion with the thesis on indigenous and transcultural Shamanism in Italy which is soon to be published with Brill. Dr Puca is the author of several peer-reviewed publications and editor of the forthcoming Pagan Religions in Five Minutes for Equinox. She hopes to bridge the gap between academia and the communities of Magick Practitioners by delivering related scholarly content on her YouTube channel and TikTok, Angela’s Symposium. Welcome and thanks for being here.

Dr Angela Puca AP: Thank you for inviting me, Michael.

MG: All right, so let’s jump straight into it and we were kind of talking about this a little bit before the video started. Let’s go ahead and make some qualifiers, right. So I experience this a lot when I teach world religions, the kind of distinction between studying a religion and practising a religion. How about you start off by telling us what exactly it is that you do with respect to studying Magick practices?

AP: Yeah and just, you know, when you said world religions it just rang a bell because among religious study circles it’s quite a debated term that some people argue should be discarded in order to be more inclusive but that’s a different matter. So when it comes to what I do, I study – well for my PhD, as you mentioned, I studied Shamanism. So it all started with studying Shamanism in Italy and when I started my PhD, my idea was that I would study transcultural Shamanism which is the form of Shamanism that is imported and reinterpreted in a different cultural context and that is not, as a consequence, linked to a specific culture. So for instance Andean Shamanism or Siberian Shamanism was imported into Italy and reinterpreted within the cultural fabric by Italians and I am Italian if you couldn’t tell by my accent. So then, while I was doing my fieldwork in Italy, I realized that there was a specific woman that claimed to be the last hereditary Shaman of an Italian shamanic tradition and that was quite interesting because I had never thought that you could find an Italian Shamanism.

My idea was that Shamanism comes from some other places, then it gets imported into western countries and it becomes something different. But then my research expanded to include practices that would be otherwise considered folk Magick practices. And I analysed and studied whether they could be considered the form of indigenous Shamanism. That’s a very big, big thing to say and I know that it would need a lot of premises and conceptualizing and problematising the terms that I’m using, like indigenous and Shamanism. But you find more detailed information on my YouTube channel if you’re interested. As for my research, when you approach religious phenomena and in my case, my interest has always been focused on religious practices that include some kind of Magick, so Shamanism would be one of them. But also you have Witchcraft and you have Ceremonial Traditions and you have Esotericism and the Occult. So my core interest, my core research interest is Magick and how it gets included in religious practices.

I even had a few years ago a course, that I was teaching at my university, where I’m still working, and it was on Magick across different religious practices like Yoga and Tantra and in Paganism and in Shamanism and how Magick gets embedded in the perception of religiosity. And in some cases the perception of a lack of religiosity because among contemporary Practitioners you have that there is, to a certain degree, although perhaps now it’s a bit waning, an aversion to the term religion because some religion is associated with world religions. And so, when you are part of a religious phenomenon that doesn’t quite resemble that specific structure, in terms of beliefs and practices, you may just assume that that is not a religion, that is something else, it is spirituality or this just your own worldview. Rather than thinking, perhaps, the term religion needs to be a bit more inclusive, in a way, but yeah in my case you can study religion from different points of view and you can study Magick and religion from different points of view so you can have you have different sort of sub-disciplines within religious studies; you have Sociology of Religion, you have Anthropology of Religion, History of Religion. So depending on the kind of discipline you are working within, you will have a different methodology. In my case, my research is primarily anthropological and so what I do is go and do fieldwork.

So I go to people I stay with people, I see what they do I participate in rituals I can even participate in initiations and in magical practices and then I have my field notes and I have interviews as well and then I analyse the data collected from my fieldwork to get an understanding of how people create meaning, the process of belief making and even how they form the religiosity, how that it gets embedded in their worldview, how that changes or affects in any way the way they stay in the world. in this society and in how they interact with other people. Whereas, for instance, the Sociologists of Religion might be more interested in how that specific religious phenomenon would be affecting society at large. The Anthropologist of Religion tends to focus more on the practice and more on the local area and more on how the religious practice affects the individual, you know, the person rather than the society. And then the History of Religion tends to have a focus more on the historical developments and how, you know, what happened in terms of how a specific religious movement could develop and all the historical aspects.

I think that History of Religion tends to be the most the best known, I’m not sure but maybe. I can tell you that as a researcher it’s difficult to… well of course it’s difficult if you study Witchcraft but it’s even more difficult if you do that from an anthropological point of view because the History of Religion tends to create a kind of distance. So, for instance, you may study the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the early 20th century, which creates a distance, whereas if you are now in the contemporary world and you do Magick with them it makes it more difficult perhaps for people to accept your research and understand that it is something just equally worthy of academic attention. But that’s one of the reasons why I have my YouTube channel, and I’m definitely interested in the perspective of Practitioners and I don’t think that the academic perspective on things is superior in any way. I think it’s just a different perspective and it’s a different way, a different methodology that gives you a different kind of knowledge that even Practitioners can use or not use – to their discretion. But on my YouTube channel, I tend to focus only on academic scholarship just to provide that kind of angle because I thought it was missing, especially since Witchcraft is quite popular and the practice of Magick is also quite popular.

You find that you don’t quite have it as much on YouTube. Now there is a bit more, perhaps. There’s my friend Dr Justin’s Sledge with his channel Esoterica. He also provides similar content to mine but otherwise, I’d say, that it’s quite rare to have this kind of perspective on YouTube.

MG: Yeah it’s really interesting the perspective that you’re coming from because most of my background is in History. My formal education’s in history and you’re right, there is you read about practices but you’d be hard-pressed to catch a historian that goes out in the field and actually does the stuff right. That’s kind of off the table for us. So I was wondering if you could tell me, I want to talk more about the relationship between Magick and religion. The relationship between magical practices and how they are incorporated into religion you said how magical practices create meaning and how they function in belief making, I want to talk about that but first, can we talk about what you mean when you talk about Magick. What are we referring to here? What are we attempting to describe?

AP: Yeah, it is difficult to describe what Magick is, in a way that has an agreed-upon meaning. I think that the only scholar, I’m familiar with, that has tried to describe the term Magick is Bernd Christian Otto. And he actually has done an entire PhD on the history of Magick and he describes Magick as a floating signifier. And he says that when we talk about Magick in Religious Studies, you know, when we do research we usually mean Western Learned Magick. So the kind of Magick that you learn for rituals to affect, with the belief that those kinds of rituals will affect reality. And it is something that you learn, or that you can develop, or that you may have innate abilities to perform those kinds of rituals that affect your reality. You will have a lot of different definitions from Practitioners but as I said, I tend to focus more on what the scholarship says. And I find it interesting to see Magick as a floating signifier which has a Foucaultian undertone – for those who are not familiar with Foucaultian methodology it is quite prevalent in Religious Studies especially when it is anthropological when it has some kind of anthropological or ethnographic elements as opposed to being History of Religion. Because the Foucaultian methodology, that I was mentioning, is called “discourse analysis” and it means that you sort of analyse, instead of superimposing a definition that sounds like it could be accurate, you would identify patterns of meaning created by the community to infer a definition.

So it is sort of a bottom-up approach where instead of focusing on what each individual says you focus on the patterns of meaning that are created and this is what people do in these personalities and it is linked to discourse because it is linked to how people talk about their practices and how people talk about the meaning-making and belief-making. Now when it comes to Magick within the practising community you have that how Magick is perceived changes, depending on the tradition and depending on the practitioner. More generally Magick is understood as a set of practices or rituals or abilities that are able to affect one’s reality. So that can affect the things that happen in your life basically and in the life of others. So this is what is normally understood as Magick.

MG: You’ve given me a lot. I have a lot of questions I want to ask you right now. You explained that really well. So it seems to me, as somebody who is not embedded in this area, that there’s what most people would consider religion kind of contains Magick but at the same time they seem to be not happy with one another, to put it simply.

AP: Yeah, of course, we’re asking about Magick and religion. I would say that every religion has some kind of Magick but I know it’s quite controversial, especially for certain religions. But so to stay safe, what I can tell you is that even the meaning of Witchcraft and demons and Magick, these things tend to be always terms of othering. So the Gods of the others are demons, the religions of the others are Witchcraft and you know the religious practice of the others is Magick. So you know, Magick Witchcraft and demons are terms that have been used throughout history to others, what is considered to be, not you, not your community, not your group. So it is a way of othering people that you want to distance yourself from. And so as a consequence of being a term of othering it has a negative connotation because I guess now we are a bit better in terms of inclusivity and accepting different cultures and different ways of seeing the world but in the past, it was less so the case. And so you have the kind of connotation that derives from othering, you know, the very term Magick stems from, you know, it starts to be used in Greece and it was meant to refer to these Persian religious Practitioners that were shady and they were pronouncing their prayers in this strange language, exotic language and so it started with a negative connotation. Sometimes, even with Paganism, you have that there are some Pagans that say, oh but Paganism started out as a derogatory term. Why should we use it? You have the kind of conversation among Pagans but that happens with Witchcraft and with Magick as well, because these are controversial practices.

So I think that when it comes to institutionalized religion Magick has often been in opposition with institutionalised religion but when it comes to the lived religious practices then you quite often, including the world religions, have practices of Magick, including Catholicism. And I know it’s controversial but I did my fieldwork in Italy and I can tell you that there are lots and lots of vernacular healers and Folk Witches that use the Trinity or Jesus and the Saints, oh my God, the Saints. It’s like the use of the Saints in Magick is very prevalent. So I’d say that rather than seeing Magick in opposition to religion I see Magick in opposition to institutionalised religion. And I think that Magick has been practised throughout the history of religion and across religions, within the lived religious sphere. So sometimes you have that religious study scholars distinguish between institutionalised religion and lived religions. The lived religions are very often, if not always, different from the institutionalized religions. So you have the set of rules and the set of dogmas and these, of course, are even more prevalent in non-dogmatic religions like Paganism but even within dogmatic religions like Christianity, for instance, you will have it that Christians will create their own way of living Christianity. Of course, I refer mostly to Italy because my fieldwork is in Italy. So when, you know, wanting to be academic here I mainly refer to Italy but Italy is a strong Catholic country and if you talk to Catholics, that are extremely devout Catholics, they will still have their own way of perceiving Catholicism which in a lot of cases, that I’ve come across, it is in stark contrast with what the Church says.

So it doesn’t mean that they are not Catholics or doesn’t mean that, you know, it is just as a scholar you are not of course evaluating what a true Catholic is as a scholar you are just you are trying to understand the religious phenomena. And you see that the lived religious practice is different from the institutionalised religion and the dogmatic aspects of religion. So having that in mind, I would say that Magick is only in contrast with the institutionalised religions but it but the lived religious experience, on the part of people that are part of that religion, people still find a way to include Magick within the religious framework and I think that that happens across the board with all religions.

MG: Yeah, when you were talking about that. So my father’s side of my family is from Puerto Rico in Mexico and my grandmother was a good Catholic but she incorporated aspects of what I would call Santería into her Catholicism. So there was a lot of like you know pouring out little offerings of tequila to the Saints and you put some money on their little altars, that’s not really like Catholicism proper but it was a part of her like Catholicism.

AP: Yeah, it was part of her way of living Catholicism. That’s why I was saying and it’s not my definition but it’s something that you find a scholarship. That’s why I think it’s interesting to highlight the difference between lived religions and institutionalised religions because it was her way of being a Catholic. It’s not like she was not a Catholic, I imagine that she strongly believes she was Catholic and that happens even within my family and with people that have been my informants in my research. So this is something that you find across the board, I would say. That’s why Magick is so fascinating because you really find it you know everywhere.

MG: Yeah, it’s all over the place. And speaking of that, you brought up this term folk magic or folk religion and I know this kind of varies from culture to culture but in the United States, in the Southern United States, which is where I’m from, it’s often called the Bible Belt. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that before.

AP: Yeah, I have I know what it is.

MG: Around my house, there’s what that means practically is there’s a church on every corner of the road that I’m on. But you have these folk practices, especially medicine. For when I would get hurt as a little kid they would take me to my aunt who would put tobacco on my wounds and pray over it or there’s a bunch of stuff that’s kind of like that would that be considered in by your perspective is like Magick or with that is kind of folk practices – something separate or different?

AP: That’s a good question. I’d say that it depends on how it was articulated. Whether they were using tobacco because of the properties, the biological properties of the tobacco or because there was some hidden property in tobacco that would heal them. Is it just related to the plant that was applied on your skin or was it also related to some spiritual element or some hidden ability that the plant retains? You know in the Renaissance they would talk about reading the book of nature, the hidden book of nature. So the idea was that you have some properties that are out in the open about things and there are other properties of any single object that are occult. They will still affect you but you cannot see them, they just escape and elude the five senses and the kind of analysis that we are able to do, as human beings. So this idea of things bearing occult properties, whether it be through the interception of spirits or because of their own property because one of the beliefs in Magick is the idea of correspondences, that everything is connected to the fabric of reality in one way. So a walnut that resembles a brain could be used to affect one’s brain. So you have sort of occult correspondences among things. So you have the idea of the spirit interceding, you have the idea of occult properties of things and you have the idea of correspondences – that everything is connected to other things in ways that you are not able to perceive for the five senses and your reason. So if you have any of these three I would say it is folk magic. If they were only applying tobacco on your wound because tobacco has healing properties then I wouldn’t classify it as folk magic.

GM: So magical practices then are kind of inherently tied in with spiritual implications or a spiritual understanding of reality or drawing upon some sort of spiritual power?

AP: So they are linked to spiritual, religious understandings of that specific practice, or the specific act but also to occult properties that that thing might have. So it is based on the idea that you that we, as human beings, are not able to perceive everything that is. So we are only able to see a certain spectrum of visible light, we are only able to touch what our hands and how our tactile senses allow us to feel. So we are limited in what we can perceive and also in our understanding, in the way our reason is able to process information. We are, as Kant highlighted, Emmanuel Kant, we can process things only through time and space. So if something occurs that escapes time and space, that escapes, that goes beyond the limitations of our senses, it might be that case, in a magic-oriented worldview that that thing is there, it is happening, it is existent but you are not able to perceive it. It escapes you and since it does exist with or without you perceiving it, then it will keep affecting your reality in ways that are somehow hidden or occult. So I’d say that it’s not solely about a spiritual element or religious element or spirits intervening. But also about this idea of a hidden part of our reality that is still very material but we are just not able to perceive it because of our limitation as human beings and the idea of correspondences, the idea that things are interconnected, everything is connected by invisible ties. And so every single movement affects the world’s reality, everything in ways that you are not able to perceive and Magick is able to leverage those correspondences.

MG: That makes sense, yeah that makes a lot of sense.

AP: I’m glad.

MG: So you mentioned Foucault. I’m working on a separate issue but I’m researching the history of alchemy and so alchemy, I guess, would be considered an occult practice. But I wanted to ask you about your perspective on the modern day and I’m not sure how to classify these, so feel free to interject with the proper terminology. I’ve heard them called new religious movements, basically 20th and 21st-century emergent kinds of religious practices. I think Paganism would fall under this, Witchcraft would fall under this, maybe. How would you classify those movements would you call them magical practices or would you call them. Would it be fair to call them new religious movements even though they’re old?

AP: Yeah at this point they are old. I think it’s difficult. I don’t usually classify them under one umbrella but I’m trying to think what scholars would say. You know I think that usually, they tend to be seen as new religious movements or yeah, I think that tends to be the most common classification, although I might call them Magick-practising traditions, which is a term that I have used in my YouTube channel as well but that is because that is the focus of my research. So there are other researchers that would focus on practices in Western Esotericism but not necessarily Magick. They could focus on the history of a specific order or how it links to another religious practice, whereas in my case my main interest is Magick and so I sometimes call them Magick-practising traditions because you have numerous traditions and they can be religious or less religious, depending on how they define themselves and how scholars define them and that, of course, depends on the definition of religion that we have, which is becoming more inclusive now than it used to be. So I think that is also having an impact on the community of Practitioners. So yeah, I guess that I would personally define them as Magick-practising traditions when they do include some kind of Magick.

So I think that Crowley and Wicca were very influential in the dissemination of Witchcraft and making it popular but also social media. So I think that Crowley was important in bridging the gap between the closed secret societies and Ceremonial Magic and opening up these practices to the public. Because he published a few things from the Golden Dawn and so on. Then you have Wicca which, you know, clearly tried to be open. Well, it was originally an esoteric religion and it still is, you know, the Gardnerian and Alexandrian traditions. But you also have other forms of Wicca that develop, especially in the United States that are very open and eclectic and you don’t have to be part of a specific coven or a specific tradition to be deemed a Wiccan you can have a sort of self-initiation to be part of it. And due to the Wiccan Rede and the idea that everything that you do will come back to you three-fold. That sort of created… it became quite popular and it gave us an idea of Witchcraft that was not evil, that it was not aimed at harming people and drinking the blood of babies and virgins and things like that, you know, things that you see in movies.

So I think that Wicca helped dispel that kind of perception of Witchcraft as being necessarily evil and also social media. I think social media and how Witchcraft has become a spiritual or religious practice for people and how that has helped people in their lives, dealing with mental health issues and just going about living their lives in a more meaningful way. Because, as we said, religion is about belief making and meaning making and human beings like to create meaning and the lack of meaning and purpose is something that tends to be detrimental for a lot of human beings. And Witchcraft is, it seems, to be helpful for a lot of people to create meaning. And it is also a way of re-enchanting the world. This is a buzzword in academia and it comes from Max Weber and the idea of the disenchantment of the world. Max Weber thought that modernity would bring about the disenchantment of the world which means that things are not magical, enchanted anymore. So you have the things outside of you, they are just inanimate objects and you are a person who interacts with inanimate things around you and other people and animals and so on. Whereas the re-enchantment of the world that happens with Witchcraft and other Magick practising traditions re-enchants everything surrounding you so you have that idea that was found in the Renaissance, that everything is sentient and everything is connected. And so, when you touch a desk or a laptop or everything, really, you are interacting with a sentient entity, it’s not just an inanimate object. And this obviously creates… sometimes people think that Witchcraft is just about gaining stuff in your life or getting a job but it’s much much more than that for people who practice it.

It is a different way of seeing the world and creating meaning in their world. So some Practitioners are Animists which means that they see a soul or a spirit in everything that exists and other people are Pantheists which means that they see the divine in everything. That leaves a quite prevalent view of the divine that you find among Magick-practising traditions is something called immanence. So you have the idea of transcendence of the divine so that the divine is outside of the natural world, you have in the Monotheisms, you have the God that’s created the world and stays outside of the world and then you have an immanent perception of the divine which means that the divine is imbued in nature, is within everything that you see and touch and exists. So clearly I would say that when you have Magick, it’s not just Magick, it’s never just Magick, it’s embedded in a very specific way of seeing the world and creating meaning around things that sees the divine imbued in everything. And of course, God is perceived in a very different way than you find in Monotheisms but there is still a sense of something sacred and divine that goes beyond the mundane understanding and the mundane perception of the world and of things.

MG: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because I think part of the reason why it’s difficult for people kind of coming into it to get a grasp on a tradition like Wicca or Witchcraft, in general, is that it’s such a fluid concept. But maybe that’s the strength of your approach. What did you call it? Discourse methodology pattern analysis?

AP: Discourse analysis. It’s not the only method I use but it’s one of them.

MG: Right but that way you approach the subject by allowing the practitioner and how they use the concept on a regular kind of down-to-earth basis to define it for you. Kind of building off of that can we talk about the general characteristics of Wicca? Are there certain defining ideas or beliefs of these new religious movements or do you kind of have to take a bottom-up approach?

AP: Do you mean all the Magick-practising traditions or one specifically?

MG: Okay, maybe talk about it within the context of the older Magick-practising traditions.

AP: I’d say that, of course, it’s not going to be true for every single one but it’s more about trends that you find across Magick-practising traditions and I have discussed some of them already. So, for instance, the idea of the re-enchantment of the word the idea the divine is immanent or perceived as imminent, the idea that there are spirits populating the world of gods or demons. This may depend on the practitioner and on the tradition. Then you have Perennialism, which is a philosophical stance that tends to be prevalent among Practitioners. The idea that you will find that a lot of Practitioners tend to want to find a link you could say between deities or entities from different pantheons and different cultures and different periods in time because the idea that a Perennialist holds is that there is an underlying truth across all traditions and all ages so when you are able to remove all the embellishments and the structures and that are created by specific cultures and specific times and ages, you will find that all religions have the same truth, the same core truth, the same core message that all Goddesses are one Goddess or even that a few specific Goddesses have as a core essence that links them even if they come from different cultures or different periods in time.

So this kind of perennialist approach that wants to find a core underlying truth that goes beyond the cultural differences, that goes beyond the contextual elements, that goes beyond the time, you know, there is this kind of sense that everything else there is a truth and that is unchanging, it’s always been there, it will always be there, it has been present across the religions and across spiritual practices. You have to find it, that is the truth and this is, of course, very different from the academic approach that tends to value, a lot, the context and time and place. But you do have this perennialist approach among Magick-practising traditions. So the idea of finding and in a way, it can have its benefits in terms of… I think it started with the Theosophical Society and the Golden Dawn, maybe even earlier maybe even in the 18th century. But I guess in the 20th century when it became a bit more prevalent, it may have its benefits. Because I guess it started at a time where you would have that in the United Kingdom., they had colonies in India and you would have these exchanges and that’s why, for instance, in the Theosophical Society you have all those elements from Indian traditions. I think that that perennialist approach tends to, perhaps, see that somebody or a culture that seems different is actually the same as you in a way.

So I think that it has a connotation that could be perceived as inclusive in a way. So it’s like the perception of the difference, sometimes it’s scary to people, so if you adopt the idea that you know even if somebody else’s practice seems to look very different it is all about love and it is all about community. That means that it has the same core values as mine. So we are kind of the same and it is a way of uniting people rather than dividing them. So it could be also linked historically to that, that is a bit more of my speculation. But yeah, to answer your question, Perennialism is an element that you find across Magick-practising traditions. And then a Neoplatonic perspective, I think that Platonism and Neoplatonism are also philosophical and of course Hermetic Philosophy from the Renaissance. These are three philosophical strands that are quite prevalent among Magick-practising traditions.

MG: Okay, I didn’t know that, that’s really interesting. To close this out here, what resources would you suggest to a student or just somebody who’s interested in this area to get started in exploring and understanding these different Magick-practising traditions or even to understand what Magick is in the first place?

AP: Well, I would always recommend to students, that if they want to get an academic perspective on things, you may find a few papers on academia.edu because scholars often upload the research papers over there. In terms of books; there are two good introductions to Western Esotericism by Kocku von Stuckrad and Woulter Hanegraaff and there is also one by Antoine Faivre, who was also a pioneer along with Hanegraaff in the study of Western Esotericism. So I would recommend those three books. I can’t remember the exact name but it’s like The Introduction to Western Esotericism or something like that. (Western Esotericism: A Concise History) It is a textbook kind of title that includes Western Esotericism. So if you look up the scholars and Western Esotericism and we will definitely find them.

Yeah, I think those are good ways to start because they also talk about New Age movements and how those developed and you know the secret and the law of attraction and along with Paganism and Wicca. I’m not saying that those are linked because I said academics are not Perennialists, we like our context and our cultural differences. Not because we want to divide and despise the other but because there is a value attributed to the nuances that specific complex cultures and time give to the practice and academics are obsessed with accurate knowledge. So we don’t discard any element but I think those books would be a good way to start. And of course my YouTube channel always and in the info box of each of my videos, there are academic references so, for instance, if one of your students is particularly interested in one of the topics that I address on my YouTube channel they will find the references in the info box of each one of my videos.

MG: And of course, I will link your YouTube channel in the description of this video. So, by all means, go and check out Angela’s Symposium. Yeah, well I really appreciate it. Thank you for taking time out of your day to come to talk to me, I’ve learned a lot. I’m sure other people who watch us will learn a lot, thank you.

AP: Thank you, Michael, for inviting me and being patient with me and my mistaking times.

MG: No worries, no worries, thank you.

Uploaded 1 May 2022