Denis Poisson DP: Hello everyone. Welcome to a special Foolish Fish video where we’re actually meeting Dr Angela Puca thank you so much Dr Angela Puca a lot of your viewers will know Dr Puca from her own YouTube channel Angela’s Symposium a fantastic channel I can’t recommend it enough. Angela do you want to say hello?
Dr Anglea Puca AP: Hello. Hello to everybody at Foolish Fish and thank you so much for inviting me over Denis.
DP: It’s a great pleasure to have you on the platform. We’re doing a two-way interview. You’ll be able to see the interview where Angela is interviewing me at Angela’s Symposium and yeah, go and check that out for sure. The links are down below, as usual, as you can expect, so Dr Puca, Angela she holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Philosophy. In 2001 the University of Leeds awarded her PhD in Anthropology of Religion which will soon be published with Brill – very respectable publishers. I recommend checking them out. Her research focuses on Magick,
Witchcraft, Paganism, Esotericism, Shamanism and related currents. Author of several peer-reviewed publications and co-author 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.
AP: I have just to say that my PhD was actually awarded in 2021. I wish it was 2001 but maybe, I would have been very precocious.
DP: My apologies. It’s quite obvious. Yeah but it’s 2021. Yes, 2001 of course was when I was graduating. I’m so sorry. Good, good, good, good. Oh, wait well Angela I’ve got a couple of questions for you and so let’s get started with the very first one. This is where I was hoping that you might be able to tell us a little bit about your background and how to actually came to study the topic of your studies. Maybe you can tell us a little bit more about that altogether.
AP: Yeah, thank you. First of all for inviting me over. It’s a pleasure to be on your channel. I really like your videos, I find them quite interesting, especially, you know, your analysis of primary sources for practitioners. I think it’s quite interesting and fascinating. So as for my background. So, as you mentioned for my Bachelor’s and my Master’s, I majored in Philosophy, at least in Italy you don’t quite have Religious Studies. Maybe now they are starting to offer something similar to Religious Studies. I know that they’re done in Rome but a few years ago there wasn’t anything similar to what we have in the UK or in the US under the label of religious studies. In continental Europe, you have History of Religion but there’s also Religious Studies as well, the way it is understood here. And so what I did was I majored in Philosophy but I also did many exams, we would say in Italy, many exams on The History of Religion and I second majored in Asian Religions and Philosophies. And I learned Sanskrit and Tibetan because at first, I wanted to become a Buddhologist, so a specialist in Buddhism and so I learned Sanskrit and Tibetan and translated sources. And of course, I learned ancient Greek and Latin growing up because I did classical studies growing up and in Italian, it would be the classical lyceum and that’s the one that I did in place of high school, you know, it’s the kind of high school that I did was would be called classical lyceum in English.
DP: Sounds like a dream.
AP; Yeah, it was. You had to translate from Latin and ancient Greek every single day. So it was like half of the afternoon was just translating and then you had to do philosophy, literature, chemistry, biology and all the other disciplines that you had to study. But yeah there was a focus, of course, on classical studies. And so for one of my theses, because I had a thesis for my Bachelors and another for my Masters, I was working on the Latin work of Giambattista della Porta who’s one of the Renaissance Magicians and Philosophers and the book was “Magia Naturalis” which is the Natural Magic” basically.
DP: Yes, it got recently got republished by Black Letter Press, a very nice edition.
AP: Yeah, I think he’s not as known, I don’t think.
DP: He’s not, you’re quite right.
AP: Yeah, compared to Giordano Bruno and Tommaso Campanella, Marcello Ficino is very loved and known, I think. And Giordano Bruno as well but others I think are not as known. But yeah, Giambattista della Porta was also from Naples because I’m from Naples, Italy. So yeah, I was interested because I also got to see the manuscripts at the national library in Italy. You cannot touch them because they are very old, so you can only see them, you know, through the glass and but yeah, it’s still quite an experience to do that. But yeah, I studied Sanskrit and Tibetan at university but my main interest has always, always been Magick. So the thing is that while I was at university I had no idea, honestly, that it was possible to study academically Magick in the contemporary world among practitioners. It’s something that is still undeveloped in Italy.
But then I came across, on YouTube – so see, YouTube is important, can be important – I came across a video, a presentation by Dr Jenny Butler – now she’s a friend of mine and she’s an Irish scholar and it was a presentation on her PhD. And it was on contemporary pagan Witchcraft in Ireland. And for me, that was kind of an epiphany. It’s like what? It’s possible to study Magick in the contemporary world from an academic point of view? So that was a big revelation for me. And so that’s how the shift kind of happened. Partly because Buddhist studies, at least in continental Europe, tend to be heavily philological and that was not my interest. So I find it fascinating to learn new languages. I’m speaking in a second language now. I find it fascinating to learn new languages but for me, the focus is not the language in and of itself. I like to go to the meaning and the philosophy and explore the meaning-making that is behind the religious experience and the religious experience of the practice so those are the things that interest me and I realised that in Buddhist studies you had to be heavily focused on philology which was not, particularly, my interest.
So I kind of shifted my research interest towards more the contemporary side of studies on Magick and so my PhD is in Anthropology of Religion. And so now I work more on the contemporary world and I find I’m still extremely fascinated by the history of Magick and Esotericism, so this is also part of my research interest but it’s really fun to do field work with practitioners and with people. It can be also quite challenging. It is extremely tiring and trying and can be challenging because people are unreliable. So sometimes, you know, you have to deal with that as well but I don’t know, I just find it so captivating to just study with people, and do fieldwork and be immersed in the community and having to deal with the dual side of you doing participant observations. So you participate in rituals but at the same time you’re there as a researcher and because of the ethical approval, that you have to go through as an academic researcher, you have to always say that you are a scholar and that you are there doing field work and that you are collecting data from the experience. And that obviously affects the way people see you and that’s also interesting. And I included part of that in my PhD as well, you know the reactions that people had when I introduced myself as a researcher. And the reactions would vary quite significantly sometimes.
DP: I can imagine. I can imagine it having a direct effect on the feeling of the ritual itself. This additional component, right?
AP: Yeah, I always try to be extremely respectful. So my impression has always been that practitioners, people participating, tend to be more affected at the very beginning so as soon as they know that I’m a researcher but then, when they get comfortable with me and around me, they just forget that I’m a researcher and they start telling me all sorts of things and of course, even in that case I’m always respectful of my informants and when I have to share sensitive information that I think it’s important to the understanding of the religious phenomenon but it could be sensitive for the person I always tend to anonymise my informants anyway. But I’m very careful in terms of how I deal with data and academia tends to be extremely careful anyway, it’s not the 19th century anymore when Anthropologists would just say all sorts of things about people that would practice Magick. Now whatever the practice I appreciate that, especially in the UK, because that’s the academic system that I’m most familiar with at the moment because I’m working here at the moment. But they are definitely extremely careful when it comes to protecting the informants.
DP: That’s good to know isn’t it? That’s nice.
AP: It can also happen that during rituals and participant observation they might want you to prove that you’re one of them in one way or another.
DP: Oh boy.
AP: I remember this one occurrence when there was I was doing shamanic training with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies in Italy. So the Core Shamanism tradition and there was a doctor, a medical doctor, I think, but he didn’t quite like the fact that I was a researcher there doing field work and so he complained to the teacher that, oh so we are being observed today and then the teacher said nobody here is observing, everybody’s participating and so she just called me to the centre and said Angela you will do the ritual first.
DP: Oh wow!
AP: I was just placed at the centre and I just had to show everybody how to do something that everybody was learning there. So that was embarrassing.
DP: Interesting times. Yes, yes.
AP: But then it was funny because then, by the second day, that man the doctor actually started to like me and he felt very comfortable around me we even had you know we sat next to each other during lunch and dinner. So he became extremely comfortable with me being there. So I think that it is mostly at first that people may have a reaction of some kind but then when you are there and they feel like you’re part of the community then they feel comfortable around you and they don’t have the perception of being upset which is obviously not what I want them to feel even though it is kind of true.
DP: But it makes very good sense. So Angela to that point, maybe, could you give us a little bit of an explanation of the difference between primary and secondary sources? I think that in the academic environment the difference is quite important and yeah maybe you could give us some ideas about the difference between those. I think our viewers could probably find that interesting.
AP: Yes, so in terms of how academics in the field, studying Esotericism, magick-practices and similar topics. So the way we talk about primary sources and secondary sources is: primary sources are the books written by practitioners for practitioners. Secondary sources are academic analysis, academic studies on what practitioners do. So, for instance, my PhD would be a secondary source. But I’m also utilizing primary sources because among the various books and texts and of course, experiences and fieldwork that I’ve done for my PhD, there were books written by practitioners for practitioners and there were also peer-reviewed publications done by other scholars that came before me or that are publishing now on a similar topic that might elucidate certain aspects that I might need. Generally speaking, even when I teach my students a primary source, when you are studying something, a primary source is written by the practitioner or the author or the poet or the philosopher and the secondary source is an academic analysis of what the author or philosopher has said. So for instance, if you are studying Frederick Nietzsche the philosopher, the primary sources would be his books like “Beyond Good and Evil,” that’s a primary source whereas an academic study on the philosophy of Frederick Nietzsche would be a secondary source an academic study. Now what I do on my YouTube channel is to offer my viewers academic scholarship on the matter. So usually I don’t analyse primary sources myself because I’m trying to use an academic methodology on my YouTube channel. So the kind of information that I offer comes from peer-reviewed scholarship and the difference between an academic book and a non-academic book is that an academic book is peer-reviewed. The peer review is the most important thing, which means that when you produce a study when it has to go for publication, it goes to the publisher and then the editor will send it to two anonymous experts in your field. They will not know who you are, so they will anonymously review your study, see whether it reflects, you know, whether the methodology was correct, the data collection, the data analysis whether all the methodological things are in place and whether there are incongruities with respect to other scholarship or other studies in the field. If there are things of this sort they will be highlighted in the reviews that you get back because you will get the reviews back and then you have to amend your work and then it goes back again. So you can describe the peer review process as entering into a dialogue with the scientific community.
So your study is not just an island, it’s not in isolation, it enters the scholarly debates in a way and even if it is innovative and nobody has ever studied that before, like for my PhD, nobody has
ever studied systematically Italian Witchcraft before I did for my PhD. But a more experienced scholar would still be able to say whether your methodology is correct whether your data collection, data analysis, the theoretical framework that you use to analyse the data, all the methodological elements are, you know, another experienced scholar would be able to say whether everything is in place, so that you can gather the most accurate knowledge, that you can get at that specific moment in time. Because I would say that knowledge is a moving target. So that even when you use the best kind of methodology to gather the most accurate knowledge you would still have to keep in mind that knowledge is a moving target and that’s why science over time will give different results. Because that would be a whole conversational objectivity.
DP: That was very very clear Dr Puca. Thank you so much. So for my next question as a scholar, I was wondering if maybe you’d come up against any interesting prime resource materials that you think could be at least surprising for a practitioner, a non-scholar practitioner?
AP: Yeah sure, I think many. What we mean by surprising can vary. So, for instance, the first book that comes to mind is “Magick in Theory and Practice” by Aleister Crowley and I think that many practitioners have at least heard of this book but the surprise would lie in actually reading it, I think because I think that a lot of practitioners have not read it. And the surprise here would be to find to sort of discovering how much the contemporary Magick practices have been influenced by Aleister Crowley and how much influence in that book there is from previous traditions, especially the Golden Dawn, for instance. So I think that Magick by Aleister Crowley is definitely one of those essential readings for practitioners. And I especially like Liber IV and all the philosophical aspects within Magick by Crowley. I particularly like the fact that, and this is something that Professor Pasi and I talked about in an interview. I have an interview on my YouTube channel with Professor Marco Pasi from the University of Amsterdam and one of the questions that I asked is, why do you think that Crowley was so influential compared to other Esoterics that were less influential and he thought that one of the reasons is that he democratised Magick and you can read that quite clearly in Magick by Crowley. So when he says Magick is for all and that he’s writing that book for everybody. So, in a way, it is opening up the practice to everybody, to the fact that everybody can practice Magick. And before him, I think that that was not particularly the case. I think that Crowley was one of the first ones who tried to give the sense that everybody can practice Magick and it was also a very specific kind of Magick because he was so heavily influenced by Ceremonial Magick. At the same time, it had a focus on the will, it would also include women as well and there was the heavy component of sex Magick which becomes more relevant even with the OTO and with Jack Parsons. So yeah, I think that Magick by Crowley is something that would actually surprise practitioners if they read it and there’s also…
DP: I think you are quite right.
AP: I think there’s also a lot from Indian traditions. For instance, the first part is all about yogic practices, and yogic stages in the practice. And Yoga is very interesting because both Yoga and Tantra have an element of Magick. And I had a course at my university about Magick across different religious traditions and I had lectures specifically on Yoga and Tantra highlighting these aspects. And in Yoga, you have a lot of focus on control, on controlling and that’s one of the aspects that Crowley picked up in Magick. So the idea is that when you control you do the Ekāgratā in Sanskrit. So, when you have a focused mind then your mind becomes much more powerful and then you have the retreat of the senses the Pratyahara, he also uses the Sanskrit term in Magick. So all these stages that a yogin or a yogini, if it’s a female, goes through the stages towards the Samadhi which is this stage of, not really enlightenment in the way that is perceived by the Buddhists but it is a stage where you have a pure contact with the higher self. You go beyond the perception of the self. And these are all stages that, for Crowley, could be employed in the practice of Magick and that’s also the belief that they had in Yoga and Tantra. The difference is that in Yoga they would think that if you move forward towards your path, your spiritual path, you will automatically develop the sídhe, so the superhuman superpowers. Whereas in Tantra they would intentionally seek to achieve this kind of Magick powers. And well in Tantra you don’t have that kind of control, it’s very different but it’s interesting how he employs these yogic techniques in the practice of Magick. And they have been then, after Crowley, you will find many books where you have similar kinds of practices that have become more westernised but they still aim at controlling the mind and allowing for a more focused mental focus that allows you to gather all your energy in a way that it is laser-focused and more powerful instead of just dispersing your mental energy.
DP: I think it was Raja Yoga that Crowley specifically practised but I completely agree with you that the eastern traditions are certainly at the origin of a lot of modern western practices and very influential on both the Golden Dawn and definitely on Aleister Crowley there’s no question. Yeah, nice.
AP: Yeah I think it all started with Theosophy but that’s completely different.
DP: Oh yes, certainly, quite right. Any other interesting ones?
So this gives me an opportunity to talk about primary sources which are the sources written by practitioners as I just explained because I don’t normally do that in this way on my YouTube channel, I focus on the scholarship and the academic scholarship. So another book that may interest people and surprise them is “The Way of the Shaman” by Michael Harner. So I have studied Shamanism for my PhD and I’ve also undertaken training by the Foundation for Shamanic Studies in Italy. I think “The Way of the Shaman” could surprise practitioners that have not yet come across Shamanism and they want to learn techniques. Because I think Core Shamanism really focuses on the techniques and everybody can practice it and get in touch with their allied spirits and as more recent practitioners have shown and even in Chaos Magick and in other more contemporary practices, this form of Shamanism, transcultural Shamanism has been utilized in Magick to, in a way, expand the toolkit of the Magick practitioner. So I think “The Way of the Shaman” could give some interesting tools and interesting techniques for practitioners.
Then we have the works by Jason Miller and I’ve never talked about him on my YouTube channel. Well, I mentioned him in the paper that I gave at the European Conference for the Study of Religions because I gave a paper on Hecate and Contemporary Perceptions of the Greek goddess and I also mentioned Jason Miller because he has written and has “The Sorcery of Hekate.” So, Jason Miller, I find him to be an interesting author and as a scholar, perhaps, what I notice about him is that he tries to create a new form of eclecticism that is less a pure bricolage and has more of a rationale behind it. So that’s my perception. You know, when I read his works I get interested in how he employs eclecticism in a way that is different from a more New Age kind of approach. So yeah, I think that people might like his work and also the way he talks about communing with spirits. I think it’s very interesting, very practical and very to the point.
DP: Yes, Jason’s very knowledgeable about a very wide range of practices. I think he’s spent quite a lot of time in Nepal.
AP: Yeah, he also has knowledge of tantric traditions.
DP: That’s right.
AP: Then another author that I’m not sure your viewers may be familiar with is Judika Illes. I’m not sure how it’s pronounced.
DP: I’m not familiar.
AP: She has written “Encyclopedia of Spells and Witchcraft” and spirits, entities and I find it interesting because there’s one called the “Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells.”
DP: Of course, I am familiar, yes.
AP: So you know that one.
DP: Of course, I do, yes.
AP: Yeah, so maybe I was not pronouncing the name correctly.
DP: No, it’s just me being ignorant of the author, I’ve seen it on shelves. I don’t have it.
AP: Yeah, I think that I find interesting, that kind of book, because for practitioners that are particularly interested in the practice, you know, you really find all sorts of things in that book. And you have everything from Hoodoo and even Roman traditions. So there are some things that she has collected over ages and there were even a few things about Italian traditions that I found to be accurate. So the things that I was familiar with already, in terms of the traditions like from Roman times were from the Italian folk tradition. I think that she did quite an interesting and must have taken ages to collect all those kinds of spells from all over the world, all different traditions. So that’s, I think, my favourite of hers just because of the extent of knowledge, especially practical knowledge that people can get from it. But then also I think that her other books are also particularly interesting. Also, “The Encyclopedia of Spirits” gives a list of all sorts of entities, spirits, Gods, and Goddesses and what are the correspondences the practitioners tend to associate with them, and the kind of offerings that have been given to them to those spirits. So I think that that could be useful for practitioners that are particularly interested in practice.
DP: Fantastic.
AP: And then the last one would be “Many Lives, Many Masters” by Brian Weiss. I’m not sure if you’re familiar.
DP: I don’t know this one, no.
AP: So this was written by a psychotherapist who had this very enlightening experience because he had this patient who had a lot of mental health issues and physical issues. And then during hypnosis, when he asked her to go back to the time when the problem first occurred, she starts talking about a previous life and so then there is an exploration of how she heals through remembering past lives. And how it works, this concept of past lives because with this. She’s kind of his scarlet woman in a way because then at one point she starts talking about these entities, these masters that are in between lives, in this bardo state, in between lives. So for people that are interested in the concept of past lives and reincarnation, perhaps, that could be a good read.
DP: Fantastic, fantastic. Yes, the idea of past lives. It’s not that easy to find quality information on it. There’s a lot written on it but, of course, not all of it is of great quality. So that’s a great recommendation to have, thank you. Thank you so much, Angela, that’s awesome. So that all sounds great. Do you have anything that you could share with us that maybe you’ve seen just an object some kind of, maybe, ritual paraphernalia that you have had the chance to interact with that you wouldn’t mind sharing with us?
AP: So doing Anthropology as I mentioned earlier I have participated in many rituals. For my PhD, I participated in many shamanic rituals or shamanistic rituals and so obviously drums and rattles were the main paraphernalia. But also when I participated in contemporary pagan rituals, you find many of them. So, for instance, I’ve seen and participated in rituals, for instance, in Naples. You would have that there was this public association, this public pagan group that would organize rituals for the solstices and the equinoxes and the midpoints, so the eight Sabbaths that were systematized by the Wiccan tradition. And they would have that the Priest, the Priestess and the Priest would wear symbols that were very Wiccan inspired – the triple moon and the Priest would wear other things that would resemble the sun or the horned God. So you would have the classical symbols, you know, the Horned God on the priest and the triple moon on the Priestess, and because during the ritual, they would embody the Goddess and the God. And then he would have that there were four people that would call upon the four elements and they would have cloaks in the colour of the element, so yellow for air, green for earth, red for fire and which one am I forgetting?
DP: Blue for water.
AP: Water, yes. And there were different paraphernalia used depending on the time of the year. So for instance during the spring equinox the Priestess representing the Goddess, representing earth, would move past the four elements and they would put something onto her, dress her with something that represented the element like, for instance, the water had a necklace made of seashells and the earth would give her flowers and that was a symbolic representation that after the spring equinox and around that time the earth was sort of dressing herself up for the new season.
DP: Oh, how wonderful.
AP: And it was thanks to the element that so yeah I really find fascinating how in contemporary pagan rituals there is this very symbolic representation of what is happening and a sacralisation of all the things that happen on the earth. So I really find Paganism a wonderful religious tradition to explore because of how there isn’t a search for the divine outside of nature, there’s more an acknowledgement of all the divine aspects that you find just in front of your eyes and there is a re-sacralisation of that in symbolic terms and I really adore it.
DP: Wonderful, thank you. Okay, maybe for our next question you could share with us any kind of thoughts that you have on mistaken tropes or mistaken ideas that you regularly see. Just people who don’t know any better. Sharing right is just a trope in the esoteric community that as a scholar you’ve learned about the background and you know that it’s not quite that way.
AP: That’s a very good question and there could be so many answers. But yeah, there are many things. So one thing is obvious as an academic I tend to have that kind of mindset. So one thing that I notice is that people tend to want to find antiquity in their practices or find value in how old a practice is, as opposed to finding value in a practice because it brings them value because it brings meaning and it is effective for whatever they are seeking, whether it is something spiritual or practical Magick or whatever it is. Because I think that religion is extremely important, and spirituality, both are extremely important for people.
And so I think that in the esoteric community you find a lot the search for validation and that can go many ways. So, for instance, and this is something that I also wrote about in my PhD because one of the things that I found when doing fieldwork, is that people wanted me to validate their practice or inappropriately used me to validate their practice. For instance, there is this particular informant, that I’m not mentioning, but she basically wrote on her website that her tradition was being preserved through me as a scholar which was obviously not was I what I was doing at all. Of course, you do find that kind of thing or that you know there are some practitioners that the very fact that you are researching the practice means that, oh now science is finally acknowledging the fact that this is real. But you know, it is real because it is real for you. And then the method of Natural Science is not the same as the method of Anthropology and the method of Social Sciences. So there’s a lot of confusion on what science is and there is a search for an academic or scientific validation and it is understandable because obviously Magick and the practice of Esotericism are not accepted by the mainstream.
The definition that professor Woulter Hanegraaff gave of Esotericism was ‘rejected knowledge’ – the wastebasket of history. So you find that Newton is famous for his studies in Physics but nobody, well now people studying Esotericism would acknowledge it, but he was also very interested in Alchemy and in the Emerald Tablet and in all sorts of Esoteric things. But that’s something that just gets discarded. It’s like okay, that’s not important because it doesn’t fit the narrative that we have constructed as the dominant culture.
So I understand, I totally understand why Magick practitioners would want validation. The thing is that I think that that’s not the best way to go about it. I think that because in some cases you find the practitioners would completely misinterpret science, Physics and just to fit their own narrative. So they are doing the same thing but the opposite way. Whereas I think that it’d be more interesting to acknowledge the fact that a practice is important not because it’s scientifically validated or because it is super ancient and it is the most ancient of all the ancient religions but because it brings value to you and it’s important to you, it gives meaning to your life, it provides practices that work for you and for your practice.
DP: And such an important message Dr Puca, such an important message. I see it as well all the time. Of course, you know, yes my practice is older than yours. It’s the origin of yours so it must be better or precisely, as you say, yes my practice, I’ve just found out that that it works scientifically so it must be this is something wonderful. Thank you for putting out that very important message, that’s what’s most important about a practice, of course, is that it works, that it’s got value for you.
AP: For instance, you have an exception with some traditions like Chaos Magick that tends to focus on the techniques but then if you read Peter Carroll he still says yeah but Chaos Magick actually comes back to the ancient time and to Shamanism. There’s a map on the one. I think it’s on Liber Null.
DP: Yeah. I think I’ve got it right here.
AP: Yeah and the genealogy of Chaos Magick. And of course, it goes back to before every religion was ever invented. So even for a tradition that is self-professed as focusing on the techniques and not on the theoretical side, they still do that. So and even with Wicca, Wicca is obviously a new religious movement.
DP: I found the page although we’re not going to get a good picture of it but yes, the genealogy of Magick, where it all comes from, yeah.
AP: Again I’m not trying to offend anyone. I think it’s totally understandable but I also think that I’m also trying to invite people to see things also in a different way, to approach these things
from a different perspective. Rather than validating it by utilizing something that is outside of the practice to find validation and to find value in the practice itself and what it brings to you as a practitioner.
DP: Absolutely right, thank you and maybe finally if you don’t mind what advice might you have for any young practitioners, watching us today, who might dream of following in the same academic footsteps as yours?
AP: Oh, first of all, arm yourself with a lot of patience. You must really love to read and to study because it never ends, which is one of the appeals for me because I remember when I was a child I would cry on Sunday because I couldn’t go to school. So obviously I was a freak. Yeah, I think the advice in the case you want to become a scholar in Esotericism, an academic scholar: well you would need to have a Bachelors and a Masters and in a subject that is somewhat related to Esotericism because you can study Esotericism from many points of view; from a philosophical point of view, from a sociological point of view, from a historical point of view, from an anthropological point of view, from a philological point of view if you want to look at the text. So there are many disciplines and many disciplinary perspectives whereby you could study Esotericism. So once you understand what is your main interest whether it’s philosophical or contemporary practices and then you follow that kind of route and you get a Bachelors and a Masters in that kind of discipline. I think it’s extremely unlikely that you will have in your country, you know, a dedicated program of study in Esotericism unless you are in Amsterdam.
But sometimes you will find that religious studies programs have a module or two on Esotericism but it’s very rare. In Sweden they study and teach Esotericism at an academic level and in some places in Germany and the University of Amsterdam, of course, is the most famous because they have an entire department on that. So, but yeah, if you don’t have any of that you can still do your Bachelor’s and your Master’s in Philosophy, History of Religion, Sociology of Religion, Literature and specialised in Philology, depending on your interests. And then you would do your thesis for your Bachelor’s and your Master’s, if that’s what happens in your country as it happens in Italy and in the UK, then you would do your thesis on something on some esoteric topics so you start specializing yourself in that. And you would do a PhD on Esotericism and something that has never been researched before because that’s how the PhD works. You can only study something that no one has ever studied before because the idea of the PhD is to contribute to the body of knowledge with something that has never been studied before and once you do your PhD – good luck with that. And then it really depends – you may find a lectureship and start teaching at the university or you might want to pursue research more and do a post-doc, it really depends on the kind of… but first of all get your PhD and then we will talk again.
DP: Okay, it sounds good. Is there anything that you wish you’d known… Sorry, I interrupted you.
AP: Yeah, I was saying, I think that I’ve scared everybody from pursuing an academic career in Esotericism but hopefully not.
DP: I’m sure you haven’t I’m sure you haven’t. Is there anything that you wish that you’d known as you got started on this route? Is there anything that you think to yourself, maybe if I’d known this I’d have done things differently.
AP: No, I think the only thing would be just to follow your passion and never think that something is impossible. But also put in the hard work, yeah follow your passion. That’s something that I have always done and yeah, maybe if I could talk to younger Angela I would say, do that, yes, follow your passion.
DP: Nice, nice. Dr Angela Puca thank you so so much for spending some time with us today and sharing your expertise with us and your thoughts, and your whole story has been absolutely wonderful and a real pleasure and a real honour. I hope we can do this again at some point in the near future. Yeah, so everyone watching please remember to check out the links down below. Go and check out Dr Angela Puca’s Angela’s Symposium YouTube website with the links that I’ve provided down below. And yeah, we’ll see you very soon with another video.
AP: Thank you very much Denis for inviting me and thank you to all the Foolish Fish viewers that are that have watched up until this point.
DP: Outstanding, take care everyone don’t forget to leave a thumbs up, subscribe down below if you haven’t done so already. See you soon. Bye-bye.
AP: Bye.