Hello everyone. I’m Dr Angela Puca and welcome to the livestream symposium. I’m a PhD and a Religious Studies scholar and today is my birthday. And this is your online resource for the academic study of Magick, Esotericism, Paganism, Shamanism and all things occult. And the information that you find in my videos is based on peer-reviewed scholarship. I really like to put that forward because, you know, for clarity and because I am proud of that, of using that kind of methodology.

So I am like super excited to be here with you guys and celebrate my birthday and at the same time, obviously take your questions about the academic study of Esotericism.

First of all, I have a small cake and a candle to (laughing) celebrate with you. And you know, do the little, you know, happy birthday with you guys. Because, you know, I feel like I am really affectionate about the Symposium and about you guys, the Symposiasts supporting my work. Either because you are Patrons and I can see some of them in the chat. Thank you Academic Police and Andrew and Edward and João for moderating the chat. It’s lovely to see some of my Patrons in the… and Travis, it’s lovely to see them in the chat. Obviously, this project can only really survive thanks to my Patrons, the PayPal donors, and all the people who support the work financially but also thanks to all of you who share my videos and like them and comment on them – everything really helps. So everybody, I think, can do something, if they want. to support my project – the academic study of Esotericism, free for all here on YouTube and other social platforms.

So yeah, before I start taking your questions, let’s blow out my birthday candle and I will have to reveal to the world that I am a very bad cook. (Laughter) All the Italian genes, you know, when it comes to cooking stuff, they all went to my Sister and I was left with none. But anyway, I make things that are ugly but they taste nice. This is a very small one for today but yeah, I just want to blow out the candle and say happy birthday to myself from all of you and with all of you and wish for the success of the Symposium both on YouTube and the other social platforms and to a great solar year ahead.

[Blows out candle and laughs]

So, yay, that’s done.

So I can see all the happy … oh hi, Hank.

Nice to see you in the chat. One of my lovely Patrons.

And I can see that some are also wishing me happy birthday in Italian. Which is Buon compleanno, in case you were wondering.

Oh, from Slovenia.

That’s cool. (laughs)

So thank you everybody for wishing me a happy birthday. It’s really lovely of you.

And it is also nice to see also Edward in the chat and João and some other Patrons.

And thank you also, Rachel, for the happy birthday.

Your video about Sufi philosophy and Western Esotericism was excellent. I believe most spiritual traditions share an underlying awareness of the deeper – truer nature of reality. Thanks for sharing.

Well, you know that this kind of view of sharing the same awareness and deep truth, this is a philosophical, religious sense that has a name and that name is perennialism. I think that both myself and Dr Sledge from Esoterica and Filip Holm from Let’s Talk Religion and Zevi from Seekers of Unity have all talked about perennialism and with these, I think they had a discussion about that. And it is an interesting philosophical and religious tenet that many contemporary practitioners or even people that consider themselves spiritual, as opposed to religious, tend to embrace. And that’s the idea, as you perfectly summarised, that all religions have, you know, the same underlying truth, they have a similar or even identical core. And it is somewhat layered by the cultural element and the specific religious dogmas or institutional elements but the core truth is the same. So that is an interesting take that has become very, very popular in the 20^th century onwards. Although it’s not … I don’t think it was born in the 20^th century – it has a very long history and it would be debatable when it started because I always tend to be very cautious about saying, oh this specific philosophical stance starts at a specific age and it is this many years or centuries old because sometimes we tend to … actually very often we tend to over-impose our conception of a specific idea or a specific religious concept over things that were not really conceptualised the same way at the time. So to me, it seems like a bit inaccurate to try to call something in a way that today is understood in a very different way. And I am a fan of the complexity and the nuances of things. But I think that perennialism has done a lot for practitioners. It has provided meaning, it has provided an understanding of different religions. So I’m not criticising it in the slightest. I’m just analysing it because I’m a Religious Studies scholar and that’s what I do. You know, we are boring like that.

So let me see if there are other questions.

(Laughter)

Edward says, what is the Platonic Ideal form of chocolate?

I have the answer to that. So thinking about what applies to a Platonic idea, is that you know, you have the different chairs in the world but there is an ideal chair-ness that is in the world of ideal forms. Which is hyperuranion in ancient Greek. So, I would say, that considering all the different types of chocolate – the ideal form of chocolate-ness is me. (Laughing) Because considering the consumption of chocolate that I do I’m probably made 90% of chocolate. Maybe it is a bit too much to say that I am the chocolate-ness in the world of ideal forms. What can I say, it’s my birthday. Let me do that.

And then I have other super nice birthday wishes.

Thank you, everybody.

I’m sharing you on the screen to acknowledge …

Oh, Zevi, I just mentioned you actually. Happy birthday Angela. Awesome to be here with you.

Yeah, I just mentioned you, about perennialism. By the way, I really loved your… is it your latest video? One of your latest videos is about, how I lost my faith and found it again. And I still see some perennialist elements there. But that’s fine, it is not a criticism at all. I think that that video is beautiful. And I really like Zevi’s style, it is very, I would say heartfelt, but it is more spiritual-felt. But that doesn’t exist, does it?

So thank you again for the birthday wishes.

So Hank is asking, Is “Hotel Chocolat” still your favourite store? Do they have any under-the-counter “Mystic Blend” that you go for?

I don’t know what is Mystic Blend. I am not familiar. Maybe it is a chocolate place that I am not familiar with. But yeah, I really like Hotel Chocolat. I’m particularly fond of that one. And yeah, you know they have amazing chocolate and it is also quite a beautiful place. I am talking about the one in Leeds, obviously. Yeah, thank you for asking, Hank.

Oh, I can see that Hank is also a fan of Zevi’s channel.

So let me see if there are questions. And by the way, if I forget questions, I’m sorry. For some reason… because when I go back and I rewatch my videos, I watch the chat, sometimes I realise that there are some questions that, for some reason, I didn’t see and I don’t know why and if that happens to you I am really sorry but putting QUESTION in caps lock and obviously if you SuperChat your question it is impossible to miss.

So, do you know about the Femminiello? And if so could you do a video about it and if you know research about it?

Femminiello? I am not sure what you are asking here because that is a very offensive word in Italian. So please tell me what you are referring to. I’m hoping that it is not what I think it is because that is an offensive word referred to gay men and not one that I would use – definitely.

So thank you so much for the work you do. Really appreciate the academic point of view on this field. Oh, thank you so much and I really like your avatar.

Yeah, because when I started this channel because I thought that there is a lot of Esotericism online but very little, you know, that offers a more academic point of view on the subject. And I think it was sorely missed. I’m glad that now there are a few channels that cover that. You know that we have, kind of, little Religious Studies gang with Dr Sledge from Esoterica, and Zevi and Filip from Let’s Talk Religion and Andrew, Andrew Henry from Religion for Breakfast. And Seekers of Unity, that I mentioned earlier. It’s really nice because now we have an avenue on the internet and you have a place on the internet to find information that is more scholarly. And I think that Justin and I are the ones that focus more on esoteric topics, whereas the others tend to focus more on Religious Studies or certain religions, primarily or they have a specific focus on one religion. Whereas, when it comes to Esotericism I think that my channel and Dr Sledge’s are the ones that tend to focus more on that. And I tend to focus more on the contemporary stuff and he tends to focus more on the ancient, mediaeval. Although, I think we are both planning on doing things also in the, you know, across the board in terms of history.

And as for me, on the channel, I tend to focus more on the contemporary world because this is what I have been researching now. But I come from an academic background where I actually studied much more the historical side and my Master’s degree, my thesis for my Master’s degree was on Renaissance magic. So being Italian and having followed the classical path in education, you have different paths that you can follow when it comes to your education and mine was the classical one. You can call the kind of high school that I did classical lyceum or classical high school, so I do have a strong background in antiquity, ancient history, mediaeval, renaissance and modernity and the contemporary world. It’s just at the moment I am researching, as an academic, more the contemporary world. And it is more of a focus because of that. But I’m definitely interested in covering more of that as well. Especially, maybe more the reception of certain grimoires and the reception of certain texts from the past or certain ideas for instance. It’s just that I feel like more philosophical videos would be less popular than others. Like sometimes I get ideas but it’s like no, nobody’s going to watch that. You know, like Plato’s idea got embedded into the esoteric thought or something like that. Or videos that tend to be more philosophical. I’m really fascinated by the philosophy of magic. But I think that it is not particularly popular. Probably something that only I like. Well, not only myself of course but I’m exaggerating.

So let me see if there are questions.

Any thoughts on the traditions of The Magna Mater, Cybele, surviving through to the modern time in the form of worship of the Virgin Mary or other surviving traditions?

I’m not particularly familiar with this specific tradition because I think it’s always very complicated when it comes to pagan traditions and Christianity and how they got syncretised. It is always quite complicated. I think that the common belief, especially among magick practitioners, Pagans, is that the Christians have stolen their festivals and they have kind of hid their deities and their entities. There is some truth to that but it is not the whole of it because in some cases, also pagan beliefs have been influenced by Christianity. So it is not as clear cut as it would seem. Usually, a safe bet that you can take when it comes to understanding syncretism and how things evolve over history, you know, kind of a safe guess is to say that things are more complicated. It seems that it is easy like all deities in all traditions were concealed and stolen by Christianity – that’s probably incorrect. Religions just don’t work like that. If you look at the History of Religion it’s not as simple. There are some exceptions where that happens like with Santeria but those are very specific historical and religious occurrences. More generally I would say that things tend to be a bit more fluid and interact more than we would imagine. But about this specific tradition – I’m not familiar. So I apologise but I cannot really provide a proper response.

So…

Happy birthday. Thank you. Do you think that at this moment in time, interest in metaphysics is surging? Has it peaked? What are your observations?

By interest in metaphysics, I guess that you mean in Esotericism, spirituality and perhaps alternative forms of religiosity. I think that it is surging and I don’t think it has peaked. I think that as Berger, Peter Berger highlights, you know, there was the idea that we are entering or going towards a secular age. And Peter Berger, a Sociologist of Religion, argued that actually, we didn’t become secular, it wasn’t really a matter of becoming secular but we actually became pluralist. So we entered an age not of secularism but of pluralism where people can hold and endorse multiple ideas, multiple religious concepts and beliefs at the same time and it becomes more multi-layered. You know, as opposed to saying that people are not religious any more, they don’t believe in something that goes beyond the five senses anymore, and everything is becoming rational and secular and strongly based on empirical evidence. That happens to society after our modernity but that didn’t really bring about a secular age. It bought about, and I agree with Berger on that, it bought about a pluralist age.

So with that pluralism, what happens is, there is more of … people tend to lean more towards an individually tailored type of spirituality and something that is more self-empowering and something that you can experiment and that you can live. And there is also this idea of experimenting, you know, part of the religious endeavours of people is not just worshipping a god or two or a thousand, it is also experiencing the human potential. And by experiencing the human potential there is also the interest in exploring what you can do, you know, for instance, out-of-body experiences and other types of experiences that human beings who are within the practitioner communities, they believe it is possible to achieve. So, yeah, I think that there is a surging interest, I don’t think that it has peaked that terms of it’s going down from this moment onwards. I think it will continue and it is probably going to be a long-term change in the way we see things. It’s not even denying the rationalist side of our society, it’s actually working within that framework even if it seems like it’s at the fringes. But I think that, for instance, esoteric practitioners tend to be much more interested in what academics and science have to say about what they practice compared to people that follow Abrahamic religions, at least that’s my anecdotal perception. I grew up in an extremely Catholic country and it didn’t seem to me like Catholics were trying to research what the historians have said, at least the ones that I met. That is just my personal experience but my perception is that the interest in science is much higher among esoteric practitioners than it is within other religious groups. Tell me if you think that that is not the case because that would be an interesting conversation.

Are you a Witch? (Laughs)

I don’t really reveal whether I am a practitioner or not. So I will leave it to your imagination. So let me know you guys in the chat. Do you think that I am one? And if so, why?

So, let me…

Happy birthday, and thank you so much for mentioning Berger! His work and yours is fascinating. Does there currently exist a field of study committed to the Sociology of the Occult? Thank you.

Then you have Anthropology of Religion which is what I do and that is doing fieldwork. So going on the field and being with practitioners, doing something called participant observation. Which means I participate in rituals, I get initiated depending on what it is I’m trying to do, what it is that I’m trying to research. Obviously for ethical reasons I always have to say that I am a researcher. You know, it’s not the 19^th century any more where Anthropologists go to places and they just infiltrate like spies or anything like that. Your research would be invalidated if you were to do something like that and for good reasons, I would say. So you have to say that you are there as a researcher, you do fieldwork, do participant observation and you take field notes and you are trying to understand how people construct their practices, how people construct their beliefs and what is that practice all about. So it is a study that is rightly called Anthropology, it is about the human side of it. It’s not really about the history of the tradition, that is what historians do. It is more about how practices happen, what happens, what people feel, how people construct meaning around that practice, what does it mean for that person to use a chalice as opposed to a sword, all these kinds of things. It is about the meaning, about the practice and about the human experience.

Then you have Ethnography. Ethnography is similar to Anthropology. You still do fieldwork and there is a mapping of the territory and what people do and how people do practices And then you have Sociology of Religion. Sociology of Religion studies more the impact on society. So for instance, they would do surveys, trying to understand how many people identify as Pagans, that would be a sociological question. And how being Pagan affects the way they are in their society. How being a Pagan influences their religious view – sorry, their political views – that is what I meant. I guess also a religious view. Their political views and their impact on society. Yeah, there are different fields that study religions and since the Occult or Esotericism is a part of Religious Studies then you will find scholars that study these things from all these different angles. Especially History of Religion, that tends to be, at least in Europe, it tends to be more, you know, highly appreciated. But obviously, in Esotericism there aren’t as many scholars as you will find in other types of Religious Studies. That is why we need to be out there on YouTube and allow people to know that we exist and this kind of study, this field of study exists and it needs funding and it needs attention because it is valuable to people and you guys here are showing that it is important. So I really, really appreciate that because it is not just important for me, I truly believe that it is important for the field at large.

And yes this is live. Somebody is asking if this is live – yes, we are still live.

I was referring to Wikipedia. Femminiello is said to be a third gender of Neapolitan culture linked to the cult of Cybele. So I was asking if you know research about it.

So OK, that’s nice that it is not what I thought it was. I am not familiar with that. As I said that is a derogatory term to insult gay men. So I’m not familiar with any of what Wikipedia says. Does it have a source? Because Wikipedia … this is something that I used to say to my students as well, still do, that Wikipedia can be a good tool or a bad tool depending on how you use it. Like with everything you just need to understand the nuances. So Wikipedia is a good tool when you have the references mentioned and when you can check references and the quality of the references. So some, actually a lot of Wikipedia pages are pretty good and they list the references and they are usually good references, good sources. So when you have the source and you can check whether it is a reliable source then it is a good page. But I have never heard of that. As I said, I know that term very well and I am glad that it is, you know, its use is getting … it’s disappearing. Or I hope it is. But I’m not familiar with it being linked to the worship of Cybele or Sybel. I’m not sure how you would say that in English. In Italian we say Chibele.

So let me see if there are other questions.

Angela, how do I become the greatest of all time?

The greatest what? The greatest of everything? (laughter) Well, my first answer would be you can’t. My second answer is to get close to that – to have a community and help people. Maybe that is a shamanistic question. I have spent too much time with Shamans. There is a lot of focus on the community and the importance of the community.

Happy birthday. You’re birthday twins with Angela.

Do you mean you are? Is it your birthday? Then happy birthday.

Let me see if there are other questions.

Happy Birthday. I love the progress your channel has made from your first year. I agree, us all being here live to support you and send well wishes proves that there are people willing to invest time.

Yeah, I really believe that the academic study of these matters is important. And there tends to be more of a focus on natural sciences and proving that Magick exists or, you know psi-phenomena exists and is not what we do in Religious Studies. In Religious Studies, we focus on the religious experience and on the religion from the different fields that I have described. Then you also have Psychology of Religion which is for some reason not part of Religious Studies – it is part of Psychology in terms of the academic categorisation and what kind of research and what type of scholars you will find at conferences under a certain label. So at religious studies conferences, you don’t usually find Psychologists of Religion which is too bad because I think that it would be great to have more Psychologists.

So I think that there tends to be more of a focus on, you know, interest in proving that these things are real. But I think that also the kind of study that we do in religious studies is very valuable for people and we have seen how influential it was even in the creation of contemporary religious traditions like Wicca. I mean Wicca was clearly influenced by scholars or, you know, even though it was not very good scholarship but they were, especially Margaret Murry, she was an academic. And the same goes for Shamanism, the interest in Shamanism in the Western world with Carlos Castaneda and Michael Harner you can see that Carlos Castaneda was a PhD from, I think, UCLA. And Michael Harner, he continued after his PhD to teach in universities and do research. So Michael Harner was definitely an academic I know that some people challenged the idea that Carlos Castaneda was an academic because he only got a PhD. But I think that the public perception was that they were academics and their work has massively influenced the, you know, I wouldn’t say the birth or the revival but the popularisation of Shamanism in the western world and the creation of transcultural Shamanism.

So I think that we have plenty of proof that academia influences massively religious experiences and I think that that is even more the case with esoteric practices. There is an interesting book by Kocku von Stuckrad, that I’ve mentioned a few times, called “The Scientification of Religion” and there are a couple of chapters that are about that, about how modern Paganism and Shamanism were influenced by science, by academic works. So I think that that’s worth noting.

So do you think there is a meaningful parallel between the law of correspondence as in Hermeticism and Eastern understandings of non-duality? Is this a westernised conception of non-duality?

Interesting question. So I’ve studied both things, so I feel like I can provide an answer. Not that I think that my answers are definite answers but I would say no. The idea of correspondences that you find in Hermeticism, the idea that as above so below, is absolutely not the same as the Eastern idea of non-duality. And when we talk about Eastern – I want to be specific – and we are talking about Advaita Vedanta which is a form of Vedanta, the non-dual Vedanta, they are the ones that tend to talk specifically about the concept of non-duality and I would say that it’s not the same at all. In Hermeticism there’s the idea that things correspond to each other and things are connected. There is this perception, you know, it has been interpreted also by esoteric practitioners as to mean that everything is interconnected – but not exactly in the same way as it is in Buddhism. And again Buddhism is not the same as Advaita Vedanta. In Buddhism, that’s the idea that the reason why things exist is because they are in a state of interconnectedness. That’s why in Buddhism they don’t believe in the self, in the identity. It’s not a form of nihilism, it doesn’t mean that nothing exists. It means that nothing exists in a solid, permanent and separate state but everything exists in a state of codependency and the Pratītyasamutpāda, which in Sanskrit is a Buddhist concept that means codependent arising, that’s how they explain how reality happens to manifest with Advaita Vedanta you have a different idea still, compared to Buddhism, because the idea is that all the duality that you see in reality is an illusion.

Now in Hermeticism, you don’t have that perception of illusion that, you know, everything that is dualistic, that we perceive as dualistic because that is the way we perceive the world – that is an illusion. Because ultimately the truth, the reality is that everything that truly exists goes beyond duality, it is utterly non-dual it is pure unity and even though, you know, with some creative application of theology you could extrapolate that from some hermetic text, I would argue that it is not the same. No, because Hermeticism and here again it depends on the hermetic text that we are talking about as well. But the type of Hermeticism that has been employed by, understood and employed by esoteric practitioners tends to focus more on the human being and the microcosm mirroring the macrocosm, the universe and the idea that everything corresponds to each other. And as a consequence, even though you are very small in a big, big world you can affect the stars, the stars can affect you even though you cannot touch each other, and even though you are at a very long distance you can influence each other because there are correspondences that are hidden ties between things. I don’t see that as similar to the non-dual concept in Advaita Vedanta, to be fair but it is an interesting question. So thank you for asking.

[Laughter]

I don’t know why I started laughing because I read a comment saying be more like DiCaprio. I’m not sure what that means.

Oh, Nadia. Nice to see you again. Of course, I remember you.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve popped in, but truly love your work and I tell every practitioner and those curious.

Thank you so much, Nadia. I totally remember you from my Patreon community.

Could you suggest any scholar publication or book regarding the thought or philosophy of Crowley?

Yes, if you look at my video on Crowley, Aleister Crowley. I have an introductory video, I will definitely make more videos on Crowley. If you look at the info box of all of my videos you will find references. Lately, I’ve been also adding recommended readings. So I have recommended readings and those are readings that I recommend so that people can better understand the topic that I’m talking about and references. And those are the sources of the information that you will find in the video. If you look at my video on Alistair Crowley in the info box you will have the references and those are the books that I recommend that are academic books. And there is an edited volume by Henrik Bogdan called I think “Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism,” that’s a good one. There is also Marco Parsi’s work (“Aleister Crowley and) the Temptation of Politics” that’s one that I always think that I’d like to make a video on. And then there are several papers articles on Aleister Crowley. In terms of books, you know, academic books, of course, I’m talking about peer-reviewed academic books – there aren’t many. There are a few and those are listed in the info box to that video but you find many articles and papers.

So I would highly recommend looking up via Google Scholar and searching for Aleister Crowley and maybe the specific element that you’re interested in because you also find book chapters. For instance, what is that book that I came across? There was a chapter, the interesting chapter on Crowley. Was it one on occulture by Christopher Partridge? That’s also another one that I recommend. There’s also “The Re-Enchantment of the West,” it’s in two volumes and there are chapters on Crowley if I recall correctly. But the thing is that you don’t really find many academic underlying that because there are plenty of books on Aleister Crowley, I’m talking about academic books. there aren’t many academic books on Aleister Crowley but there are many articles and book chapters. So that’s a bit more difficult to cite, you know, very quickly. So I would recommend doing a search on Google Scholar and I always recommend you guys, I know that academic articles and papers are behind a paywall but look on academia.edu because there are many scholars, including myself, that will upload the preprint, because that’s what we are allowed to upload publicly, but it’s basically the same in terms of content. That will upload for free for everybody to read their work because, you know, I think that knowledge should be available to everybody. So that’s something that I would definitely recommend you do. And if there is something that you very much want to read and it’s not on academia.edu, if it is a book chapter or an article I would also suggest that you would try and very kindly email the scholar and ask them whether it’s possible for you to read it, to have a copy. I don’t think that would work with books but with articles and book chapters, conference papers – usually scholars are, at least the ones that I know, are very keen on sharing those with you, I would say.

So a different Berger book, sorry.

So let me see if there are other questions.

Oh hi, Filip. Filip from Let’s Talk Religion.

Thank you so much for wishing me happy birthday I was just talking about your channel earlier but yeah nice to see you in the chat.

Oh, it’s your birthday too? Happy birthday, Vishudda.

Have you ever studied Eastern or Chinese Alchemy and or mysticism? How does it parallel Western alchemical practice?

I have marginally because if you’ve been following my channel for some time you will know that I have a second major in Eastern Philosophy for my Bachelor’s and Master’s and I studied Sanskrit and Tibetan for years but my speciality was more India and Tibet. I also had to study, of course, Chinese and Japanese and Nepalese and other types of Asian philosophies and religions but I’m not super knowledgeable about Chinese Alchemy. So that’s quite interesting. I think that perhaps the one educated guest that I can take, based on my knowledge of Chinese religions and Western esoteric thought, is that probably in Western Esotericism there was more of a focus on the material change – the, you know, altering the material side of things. It is an educated guess, I need to be more knowledgeable on that. But thanks for the question because that’s an interesting one.

I think that parallels between Western and Eastern philosophy are very popular and people are interested in that. Comparative studies in Academia are a bit of a walking on eggshells because they are not considered… no it’s not they are not considered rigorous because they can be rigorous but it takes a lot for them to be rigorous because you cannot really compare – as they usually say you cannot compare apples with oranges – you can compare apples with apples. So if you have to compare from an academic point of view and not from a practitioner’s point of view. But you can also do it from a practitioner’s point of view and just try and see what fits better your belief system, that’s totally fine. But from an academic point of view, you need to be very precise. So for instance, if I’m comparing Western Alchemy, it needs to be Alchemy from a specific place and a specific time and needs to be compared to a Chinese form of Alchemy from a specific place and a specific time. And there needs to be a very strong reason as to why you are comparing those so that there must be some kind of connection or link, to begin with, otherwise, you know, you kind of go beyond the field of academic methodology to scrutinize things from in a rigorous way.

Did I say, Margot? Well yeah, Margaret Adler “Drawing Down The Moon” for me as a budding teen practitioner, raised Lutheran in the late ‘90s, her work and Buckland, Ravenwolf and Gardner was my only source.

Yeah, I think that a lot of people can relate to that and I think that in Italy that happened even in the 2000s and probably up until the 2010s. But obviously, since these books are originally written in English they arrived in Italy much later.

Oh, thank you so much. That’s really lovely.

Hank says academics are like miners that dig out the ore practitioners pick out the gems and create things with the gems. Thank you to all the academics.

Oh, that’s very lovely. Hank is a super valuable member of my Patreon community and a lovely great supporter of the project. So I always value greatly what you say in our community.

[Laughter]

And that’s funny, will cheese and mayonnaise ever learn to coexist?

I hope not.

Oh, there’s there are lots of people that were born on the 28th of January. Happy Birthday, Rebecca.

Oh hi, Marco. I Ioved your conversation with Dr Sledge on Esoterica the other day. Let’s make more videos on Crowley.

Yes, we shall because there are definitely interesting academic sources, as I said. The thing is that there aren’t many academic books but you have many papers and you know when you go to conferences… there’s one coming up in June which is the big European conference. We call it the ESSWE Conference because it’s The European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism. I’m so used to using the acronym but it’s going to be in Sweden. And usually at the ESSWE conferences the panels on Thelema are always, you know, very well attended. And there are quite a few scholars that study different aspects, like Manon Hedenborg White. She’s on the organizing committee of the conference this year and she teaches at Malmö University. She focuses on the women in Thelema and her work is very interesting. So that’s another one that is not specifically on Crowley as a book but I would highly recommend it it’s called The Eloquent Blood. I like the title and yeah and it focuses more on the evolution of the Thelema and Sex Magic and women of Thelema. So I find it very interesting and also Kenneth Grant and how the evolution in Sex Magic. I referenced some of that material in my video on Sex Magic but Crowley and Thelema or Thelema are endlessly fascinating.

So, MysticDeanna says I’m fairly new to your channel. Do you earn a decent living? (Laughter) Oh, where did you get your PhD?

I got my PhD from the University of Leeds and I taught for quite a few years at Leeds Trinity University. I’m still there sporadically but at the moment I’m focusing more on this project and also there’s another academic project. Actually, a project that is academic but is trying to bridge the gap between academia and the practitioners, just as my channel is hoping to do. So I think that you will be very excited to hear about it and it will be launched at the ESSWE Conference in Sweden that I mentioned earlier. But at the moment I cannot tell you more but I definitely look forward to going public with what this is about and I’ve been working with that as well. And as for making a living, it’s always complicated too, I think, to find funding to study these kinds of things. But I have hope in my project and I really owe a lot to my Patrons. So I definitely have to thank my Patreon community for keeping the project alive and the light – on literally and metaphorically.

Question, can you please elaborate on how Carlos Castañeda influenced modern thoughts? Buon cumpleanno Maestra.

Are you Italian? Or maybe oh cumpleanno. So I think that you must be a Spanish speaker. So Carlos Castañeda, I think, has influenced

more the interest in Shamanism in that he popularised it, meaning that his books were very popular like “The Teachings of Don Juan” and “A Separate Reality” and I think also “Journey to Ixtlan.” They became very popular and so they started people getting interested in Shamanism and also in using psychotropic drugs. So what is his impact? I think that his impact obviously, from an academic point of view, I have studied more of these in Italy. Italy was my fieldwork because my PhD was on Shamanism and folk Italian Witchcraft. So in Italy, for instance, and I’m not sure if that is true also for the Us and other countries but it’s possible. But in Italy Carlos Castaneda was a road opener for people that could be categorised as in the New Age movement. So the New Age movement in the ‘70s ‘80s ‘90s was very much influenced by Carlos Castaneda. For lots of people, it was kind of the gateway for people in that generation to getting interested in a separate reality and shamanic journey and trying psychotropic drugs. Not necessarily the psychotropic drugs but definitely a shamanistic experience of some sort. And then Michael Harner also, you know, was kind of a follow-up to that.

So I think that Carlos Castaneda was like Scott Cunningham and Buckland and Gardner were for the Pagans who grew up in the 2000s. So for the Pagans who grew up in the 2000s, you couldn’t find many things in the bookstores. What you would find were those Wiccan books and you started getting interested in that because it sparked your interest, it sparked something inside of you. A lot of people sadly felt like going back home and then from there you start and learn more and more and perhaps you would discover that Wicca is not exactly the right tradition for you but that helps you enter that world, enter a different world. And Castañeda had a similar role for people of previous generations. It was a bit of a gateway. People started reading Castaneda and they got interested in, you can call it Esotericism or the Occult or spirituality, but it was particularly popular within the New Age movement. And I think it was essential to popularise Shamanism in the Western world and especially transcultural Shamanism, even though he was linked to a specific type of Shamanism but he still, you know, the way he came across to people was still transcultural. So it means a form of Shamanism that is not linked to initiation within a tradition in a certain location but it is more transcultural. You kind of grab the essence of the tradition and the core techniques and you apply them, you know, whether you are in Mexico or in the US or in Italy, what matters is that you learn the technique and you enter the non-ordinary reality. So yeah, that’s the thing, you know, the idea of the ordinary and the non-ordinary reality that Castaneda disseminated. And then it became the ordinary and non-ordinary state of consciousness in Michael Harner. So there was more of a focus on the consciousness in Michael Harner but definitely, the two of them and Castañeda was the first one, they popularised Shamanism in the Western world and especially, basically started transcultural Shamanism.

Sorry, maybe I went too long on that one. You cannot ask a lecturer a question and expect a quick answer.

Happy birthday! Thank you so much for all you do here.

Oh thank you Vonin, I hope that I’m pronouncing your name correctly.

Let me see if there are the questions.

What’s the best popular cultural representation of Shamanism? Any good movies or novels?

Wow! Good question. I’m blanking, my mind is kind of… I don’t think that there are any movies that come to mind at the moment. I’m sure that I will, you know, that will haunt me through the night and I will dream about, oh you should have said this movie but no, I don’t think that there are… I like the novels by Castañeda to be fair. Oh yes, yes I have one. Do you know… what’s his name? I cannot remember the name because I’ve read it in Italian and so… Oh just leave me a comment and I will and I will reply. But it was about Peruvian Shamanism and it was a novel and he described really, I think described nicely the type of Shamanism and a form of indigenous Shamanism. I cannot remember the name. I hate myself. I have to find it.

Oh, it’s Hernán Huarache Mamani and I have to find the name of the book. It’s, in original it’s Kantu, El Poder De La Mujer that’s the original title how will it be translated into English? Prophecy of the Shaman or of the Qurandera? I cannot find it in English at the moment but the name of the author is Hernán Huarache Mamani. So I’m not sure if there is a movie of that but that’s a novel that I would recommend, and also there is another novel by him where he talks about his experience becoming a Shaman that I would also recommend.

Oh hi, Craig. Happy birthday. Thank you so much.

So let me see if there are other questions.

So I think that we can wrap it up here. I hope that you had a nice time conversing with me here and celebrating my birthday and apparently also the birth dates of many others. I didn’t know that the 28th of January was that popular but glad to hear that. So thank you everybody for coming over and asking your questions, I really appreciate that. And I would love to remind you that this project, as I said, can only really exist thanks to your support. So if you have the means and can help, I would really appreciate it if you entered my Inner Symposium, my Patreon community. I’m very, very proud of my Patreon community because we have the most amazing conversations and there is tomorrow, actually, there’s our monthly gathering for all Patrons so all tiers are invited to join this Zoom gathering and we always have, you know, such intense conversations. So I really, I really adore my Patreon community and you know it would be amazing to have you in there if you can and want to join. Otherwise, you can join Memberships on YouTube or you can send one-off PayPal donations and if not, you know even if you like, subscribe and share any of my videos or all of my videos, if you are really committed, that will also really help the channel stay alive and would help me keep doing this work for you guys and delivering academic, peer-reviewed scholarship in hopefully a fun and entertaining way. And yeah, I think that I said it all.

So thank you all for being here and it was lovely celebrating my birthday with all of you Symposiasts – that’s how I decided to call you. I think one of my Patrons came up with that. I think it was Edward. Edward, it was you wasn’t it? So thank you so much for being here and obviously SMASH the Like Button and stay tuned for all the Academic Fun.

Bye for now.