Angela Puca AP: Hello everyone, I’m Angela and welcome back to my channel. Today is a very special video for me because this is to celebrate the first thousand subscribers. So thank you very much to each and every one of you. I also want to thank wholeheartedly Jess.X.Kirby she made me or the symbolic version of me into a piece of art through her drawing. Go check her Instagram out and thank you again, Jess. And to thank you I decided to make a video with one of my Patrons the very lovely Andrew. Here is Andrew.

Andrew Reitemeyer AR: Hi.

Angela Puca AP: He’s my second Patron on Patreon and yeah we engage into excellent discussions. It’s always very nice to you to chat with you Andrew and to discuss all the topics that I address in my videos. So would you like to introduce yourself and tell our audience the other members of the Symposium why they should perhaps if they want, join the Patreon?

AR: Sure, well the thing about Angela’s videos is that one, they’re very informative; two, they are impartial and it’s very important these days. We want to learn about something like modern and esoteric religions is to, you know, get through the B******t. If I need information I just go straight to Angela because I know that I’m going to get researched and a fair view and if she doesn’t know something, she’s gonna tell me she doesn’t know. So the thing is if you were with somebody, you know, you’re like at a pub having a drink or something like that and someone gave you some really valuable information you’d be tempted to buy them a drink and thank them and that’s what Patreon does. It means you can just easily thank the person for the information you’ve got and I think it would be the best investment you’ve ever made because you get so much more than just watching videos.

AP: Oh that’s lovely Andrew and even if you can’t contribute that way even, if you like and comment on my video and share them around it’s gonna really, really help me and help our little community grow to celebrate the first thousand subscribers I thought of doing a Q&A with Andrew so that he can ask me all the questions he wants. So do you have anything for me Andrew? Is there anything you want to know?

AR: I do indeed. …. The video will go on forever but I’ll try and keep it sort of short. But in a recent video of yours, you actually mentioned how Esoteric religions are the outliers of our current culture and just studying those is a good way of actually getting to understand a culture. I just wonder if you could expand on that a bit.

AP: Yeah, because I think that normally, when you think about studying a culture, you think of what’s dominant in that culture. So, for example, if you want to study religions in Italy you would immediately think of Catholicism. But even though the dominant religious system of course tells you a lot of the story, of the cultural story, of the country, even the outliers, even the minority groups we may say, or the anomalies, hope that doesn’t sound judgemental or anything like that. They can also contribute to the understanding of the culture of that specific place. Because, you know, it’s like when you observe something, it’s not just made or what’s in front of you but also it’s made of all the shades and all the different aspects of its manifestation. And groups which belong to outliers or minority religious groups actually can tell you how it is possible that that specific minority religion took root into that place and especially since it’s not a dominant religious system, but it’s a minority religious system it’s still part of that culture. It means that there is something in that culture, embedded, ingrained in that culture that allowed for that manifestation to occur. It’s not like we have something inside the culture and something outside of it just because it’s not the most popular one, everything belongs to the context. So by understanding even those at the fringes you understand better all the aspects of and manifestations and shades that a culture has in its manifestation. Does it answer your question?

AR: Yes, yes it does. It’s something I’ve been thinking about it ever since I saw that video. It’s just something it’s gonna keep my mind ticking over for quite a while like I say. Thanks for that that makes it even, sort of, more relevant to what I’m thinking.

AP: yeah and also for example when you start something, an aspect which is important I think is, you know, when you try and have a portrait of something you also have to understand its boundaries. So if you can not really see the boundaries of something how can you tell what belongs to it and what doesn’t. So it’s not just what is in the middle or would it what constitutes the majority of it but even the boundaries, all these just apparently tiny and minute and minority aspects can actually be very, very important. I think essential to the understanding of a culture or a specific context.

AR: Right context that’s the word that was going in my mind right now. It’s sort of having… without it if you if you’ve got, as you say an image, without the background, there’s no context at all and you can’t understand what the relevance is. So, you know, esoteric religions in the context of say Christianity or another faith like Islam or Buddhism, whatever, it helps you to understand the larger from the smaller. Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, okay, we’ll get to the next question and there’s do with the persistence of Magick. The thing that I find remarkable is that how Magick survives or belief in Magick, should we say, survives, through scepticism and persecution. you know, or in ridiculed by church and science. And, as you know, people are willing to even risk their lives, become sort of martyrs for their beliefs, they hold them strongly and yet, even so, they survive, they change and evolve but they survive through millennia. From the early Sumerians. We’ve got like the works of Enheduanna, the priestess and her writings and along with that there are sort of spells and divinations and things like that and it comes through Roman times, early Christianity they talk there about faith being able to move mountains. Well if that’s not Magic, I don’t know what is and then right through the modern-day you’ve got things like “The Secret” which there’s a book that sort of says if you believe something it will happen. And even modern Christians will open a Bible and close their eyes and put their finger on a verse – there’s a sort of form of different divination. I just sort of wonder what your feeling is on why and how Magick has survived, you know that’s so strong throughout the ages? Is it filling some sort of fundamental need in human beings?

AP: Of course, in replying to this question I’m, yeah, I’m basing it on my opinion. Because normally in my videos I always tend to have, you know, references to backup everything. So in this video, we will be mainly basing my replies on my personal views and my takes of course as an academic in the field. So my feeling regarding that is that yes, Magick is sort of satisfying a need that, perhaps, human beings have. I don’t think it’s just one specific need, it can be multiple ones. So for example, with Shamanism and earth-based religions, I think that they are really rooted in the need that humans have to feel connected, connected to nature primarily but connected even in general because, especially in our day and age, you go to a supermarket and you buy an apple, you do not see the tree from which that Apple was taken. So a sort of disconnection between your life and the origin of, the source of everything that is in your life – source from which everything in your life comes from. So I feel that for certain kinds of Magick or magical practices they fulfil the need for connection, whether it be a connection with nature or a connection, yeah, in general, like with the universe, even with the spiritual world, a connection with something that goes beyond just yourself. Also, in the occult and in esotericism I think that they sort of fulfil the needs were discovering the hidden world, the mysterious because as human beings we are freely aware that we do not know everything that is out there and that our perception, even the fact that we can only perceive the world through our five senses, we cannot see or touch or hear everything that is in front of us. We can only perceive the small amount that our senses will allow us to. So this awareness makes us acknowledge, basically, that there’s a whole occult world of things that we cannot know. And so the mysterious tends to be appealing to us because it’s an exploration into the unknown and even an exploration of the boundaries and possibilities that us as human beings can reach. So yeah I guess if I had to narrow it down to two strands these strands would be a connection, feeling connected beyond yourself and expansion so it’s like seeing how far you can go in your knowledge in your agency. So yeah, I guess that this would be the two trends that come to mind when I have to think of why do people have belief in Magick. Even in yeah, in times where it was dangerous.

AR: Great, thanks. Yes, I’ve been learning the local indigenous language, Te Reo Māori.

AP: Oh yeah, Andrew is from New Zealand. You didn’t say that in the introduction.

AR: Yes we didn’t say that in the introduction but well with citizens of the world as well I suppose. But just the way they think, you know, you can see in the language. It’s interesting with they believe in a sort of form of, we could call energy, its called Mauri, different from Māori but anyway. And this energy imbues all living things and the land and things like that and that gives its own respect and it’s what they call Mana. Yeah, but it’s hard to sort of get that across. But even though most of them have now become Christians, there’s still that belief system is so important that it just survived straight into modern times.

AP: That’s very fascinating.

AR: Yeah, so we’ll come to the next questions and I’m going to, sort of, get into it and into academia itself because I’m from a Western tradition and I think most academics are and I wonder, especially with English philosophy in the study of religion, which is sort of started in the 19th century, I believe. Do you think there’s an actual bias that’s coming through in academia when it’s comparing esoteric religions to the Abrahamic faiths, sort of, Christianity, Judaism and Islam? Using terms that are not, they don’t sort of fit into the way of thinking of other faiths. The world mind comes to mind. I know German and there’s no real equivalent to the word mind in German, there is Geist but that’s not mind and spirit is something else, again and the soul is something else again. So it’s this, is there a cultural bias in academia, as we see it at the moment?

AP: Do you think, do you mean a cultural bias against these kinds of religious movements?

AR: Not necessarily against but just in the way of seeing them. It’s sort of, I was talking to a young lady about Animism and she didn’t like the idea of Animism being about souls or spirits.

AP: Oh, I see what you mean.

AR: Yeah, it contaminates thinking.

AP: I don’t think there is, to be honest. Well, I guess mmm, there’s there is more funding devoted to what are called world religions but when it comes to scholars studying these religious movements, like Magick-practising, religious movements where Western Esotericism or the Occult, I think that, especially here in Britain and even in the US, in the field of Religious Studies, they tend to be very accurate. I think the trend now is to be very respectful of your informants and of the community and the religious movement you’re studying. I think that in the past that wasn’t the case. bIn the past, even if you’ll read Fraser or Evans-Pritchard or other Anthropologists of the past they had this sort of assumption that the people they were studying were sort of backwardly or something. Or they, kind of, were mirroring a more primitive state of humankind. Whereas now I think that Religious Studies scholars are very, very much aware that they shouldn’t really make any of these assumptions. Not that the belief in Magic is backwardly or primitive thinking or anything like that. They just, yeah, normally Religious Studies scholars sent to you address that kind of belief and that kind of practice and understand how that is embedded, rooted and stems from one specific cultural context. Or they try to understand how that belief is connected to a specific community. Yeah like, for example, Witchcraft at the moment, especially in the United States, is very much linked with Feminism and even the LGBTQ+ community. So, for example in that case it’s really interesting to study how come the practice of Witchcraft has become so linked to that other kind of movement. So no. My answer is no, I don’t think there is a bias among Religious Studies scholars. Of course, I cannot speak for other fields but in Religious Studies, I think that scholars tend to be very mindful and very respectful. Which was one of the difficulties I encountered in my research to be honest because, since I’m doing Anthropology of Religion in Italy, sometimes my informants, sort of, had this sort of assumption that I was there judging them. So when I was doing participant observation and I was there and there were, you know, people doing certain things they were scared that I might be judging them or alternatively they were scared that I might decide… I mean it was like since I’m studying Shamanism in Italy some of them were concerned that I was there to say this is actual Shamanism or this is fake Shamanism or something like that, this is not real Shamanism. So they thought of me either as a judge, well in both cases the yeah, the most popular assumption was that I was judging them, in some kind of way, whether as lunatics or as fake Shamans and of course, I was not doing any of that because in Anthropology you study people’s behaviour, you don’t judge them in any of those manners.

AR: Good now we come to a question that’s a bit, I don’t want to be judgemental but it’s sort of because I’m talking about superstition and to me, superstition is the remnants of old religions. Things that just, sort of, carry on down through the ages and I just wonder if there’s an interplay between modern esoteric religions and superstitions? You know, that sort of thing I’m talking about is, sort of, touching wood for luck or throwing salt over your shoulder, if you spill it, to protect yourself. And also I’m wondering if modern religions are creating their own sort of micro rituals that would be like superstitions, in other words, a quick little ritual for luck or for to protect yourself or you know something like that is there an interplay between these things?

AP: I think that contemporary practitioners of Witchcraft, Esotericism, normally practitioners of Magick really want to say, what I do is not superstition and there is actually a section in my a PhD thesis about superstition in Folkmagic in Italy and a sort of re-evaluation of superstition if you like. I think that superstition is a form of Magick which lacks awareness and that, you may say when somebody performs an act of Magick not only are they aware of what they’re doing and they are doing it with the purpose but everything is sort of connected to a specific meaning. Every aspect of it and there’s also depth in the connection between the movement and the things they do and the meaning they carry with them. Whereas with superstition it’s just an act which has been repeated over and over again until the meaning behind it has been lost and so what remains is just the act, in and of itself rather than the meaning that was originally behind it. So it’s like saying, you know, the words that you use in a sentence can carry a lot of meaning when you purposely pronounce them but if you have something that you repeat over and over, like I do, with so and basically so and basically there are some things that you just repeat because it’s a habit, it becomes like a mindless habit, we may say and when something is mindless it loses its purpose perhaps. But yeah that’s sort of my interpretation of superstition. They maybe were originally magical or Magic-like acts but over time, when something gets repeated without a purpose and awareness and an acknowledgement of the depth of meaning behind it loses its meaning, I think. As for the perspective of practitioners, to them, it’s a reference trope. So when they say this is superstition, normally they are telling you that it is outside what they do. So it is like the benchmark of the outsider, the outsider practice. So what I do is Magick or what I do is Shamanism or however they label it, this is not superstition. For example when somebody asked them, oh do you do this as a magical practice or as a practice or as a ritual they would say no this is superstition. It is a way of basically setting out something as not belonging to what they do. So it does have a negative connotation of something which is not. Yeah, it does not carry as much value and as much power as what they do in their own actual practice. So I don’t think that they do have small rituals as superstitious rituals. I don’t think I came across any of them because even things which are repeated, I wouldn’t say they are superstitious in nature if we decide if we agree on the superstition being something that has been repeated and is repeated in a sort of mindless fashion. Does it answer your question? Am I rambling too much?

AR: No, no, no, no, it’s because part of that question is how do superstitions come to be established and probably the modern esoteric religions are too new to have that so probably needs several generations to entrain it sort of like with Catholics, we Catholics cross ourselves and that is a sort of ritual but it’s not as a superstition because it’s part of an act of religion. And I’m just, you know, I wonder sort, of if some academic at some time will go look at all superstitions around say Europe, in various countries and then try and take them back in history to see what sort of rituals they came from.

AP: Yeah I think I came across a couple of papers on superstition but they were pretty outdated. So there’s not, as far as I know, at least, there’s not much research being done on superstition. So yeah that could be a very interesting topic to explore in further details and especially in a contemporary context.

AR: Right, now we get to the personal questions. Okay, so the most fundamental one is how did you become interested in modern esoteric religions as a subject of study?

AP: Well I kind of address a bit of my journey in a specific video on how did I become a scholar or something like that but yeah I’d say that I became interested in this because well, at first I was studying Buddhism and I was specifically fascinated by the idea of the self or the lack thereof in Buddhism and I really found that Eastern religions or I should say Asian religions were extremely fascinating. Well, actually yeah, I know how it started because my degrees are actually in Philosophy. And I since I studied Asian philosophies, when it comes to Asia, philosophies and religions are sort of intertwined. So in my module on Eastern Philosophy, the first thing I say is that in Asia, in Asian Philosophies, Philosophies and religions sort of mingles together so you cannot really separate one from the other. If you think about a Western Philosophy you think about, for example, Kant or the Empiricists, whereas in Asia you would think about Buddhism and even when there’s Indian logic it’s very intertwined with some of the Buddhist schools of thought. So yeah, it tends to be much more linked to religion. So by studying Asian Philosophies / Religions, I got interested in the Philosophys like in Tibetan Buddhism because I learned Tibetan and Sanskrit, so it was mainly specialized in Tibetan and Indian philosophies and religions. And with Tibet, in Tibet there’s a form of Shamanism called Bön and also there’s the Tantric Buddhism, which includes aspects of Magic and in India, there’s Tantrism which has strong magical components and the same goes for the Yoga tradition. So from that point I started to become interested in how those kind of practices and whether those kind of practices were being practised in Europe as well. So at first, I was interested in it from a historical point of view, especially because in Italy they tend to favour historical studies. So I did a study on a text from the Renaissance on natural Magick from a Neapolitan philosopher. I’m from Naples. So yeah, I got to access, you know, to the original text in Latin and it was extremely interesting. And then I got interested in the contemporary world. I went to a pagan gathering once and I saw all the connections between what I had studied in the Renaissance and in the natural, especially in the natural Magic from the Renaissance and what people were practising in the contemporary world. And so I thought of moving forward in my studies and exploring more that kind of field from an anthropological point of view because before that I was doing it more from a philosophical point of view.

AP: Well I interviewed one of them which is Jenny, Jenny Butler. Yeah, as I explained in the video where I interviewed her she was really important in my journey because, as I said, in Italy, they tend to study these kinds of topics, well they don’t study them as much and also from a historical or philosophical point of view, whereas while I was finishing my master’s degree I came across Jenny’s video on Irish paganism and Witchcraft and to me it was a very enlightening moment because was like wow! There are people who study these kind of things from an academic point of view? I want to do that. So yeah and there was a moment when I realized that it was actually a thing, it was possible to study those contemporary religious movements from an academic point of view because up until then I thought you could only study them from a historical or philosophical point of view. So it was not a possibility in my mind but it became one when I saw her video. And I also really liked her both as a person and as a scholar. Then the second one would be Ronald Hutton. I had known Ronald Hutton for much longer than I have Jenny because I read the “Triumph The Moon” when I barely knew any English. So it was quite challenging for me. Yeah what I admired of Ronald Hutton which I got to meet at a conference, actually and we spent an entire day together and I realized wow, how he’s also an amazing human being, not just a brilliant scholar. I really liked his study and even in that case, I was amazed by the fact that you could study magical practices from an academic point of view but also, I really liked the fact that he was really loved within the pagan communities. I mean I can speak about everywhere else in the world but pagan communities in Italy, at least, the most educated pagans, they loved Ronald Hutton and they tend to love academic works as well. So I thought that I would have really liked to become a Ronald Hutton, somebody who tackles this topic from an academic point of view but is also known and acknowledged in the community. So he’s another hero of mine. And a third one would be my supervisor, Suzanne Owen, who I also interviewed on my channel. She’s very lovely and I will always be grateful to her because she didn’t know me at all but she trusted me with my skills and with my research project. So yeah, and also when I got to know her as a scholar and as a person I really admire, she taught me everything about anthropological research and I really loved that even when she teaches and she is in a class she is always able to learn something from what this student or this other and her openness and the fact that she is always, I don’t know, sort o learning from the world and from people. The way she interacts with the thoughts of other people is really inspiring to me because it sort of teaches me how to stay open-minded and how to yeah, be really open and being able to see brightness where sometimes it might be difficult and not, never think of yourself as the supreme minds but always being yeah, just open to understanding and learning from others regardless of you know their status or their education or anything like that. So yeah I really admire her for that.

AR: You talk about writing. Would you write academic books or would you also write fiction?

AP: Well, I can say this I guess. There have been two Shamans who foretold me that I would have written a novel based on yeah, you know, do you know Carlos Castaneda?

AR: No.

AP: He’s a novelist, basically he was doing his PhD in California and he had this encounter with a Mexican Shaman and then he wrote a novel based, allegedly based on his experiences with Don Juan, this Shaman. And I was foretold by a couple of Shamans that I would have written a novel based on things, experience on the field as an anthropologist. So I’d like to, I mean I’ve always liked to write, yeah, I was foretold that. We will see whether that comes true or not. As of now I’m finishing up my thesis so that’s a book in itself, which I will be publishing, of course, and that’s gonna be an academic book and I do plan on writing more academic books. But yeah, I’d also like to write novels because I think that there are certain things that you cannot really say or convey in academic studies which might still be meaningful and useful for people to know. So yeah, perhaps in the future I will also get on with a novel.

AR: Yeah, that’s great because yeah, I love reading novels which I learn from. So you were entertained on one side and you’re adding to your store of knowledge on the other. So if you write those novels I’ll certainly buy them.

AP: Yeah, I totally agree because I think the way, the best way we learn is through stories. So yeah, stories are really important and storytelling is really important. Yeah, and my supervisor also is a novelist and yeah, she has written a novel, a fantasy novel. So it seems to be very popular among academics, especially in my field.

AR: Excellent right, well thanks for that, that’s my last question. So thanks and I just like to sort of point out to the viewers if you’d like to ask these sorts of questions to Angela then become a Patron. It’s one of the really good, great advantages.

AP: Yeah and also that way we can grow our community and we will have lots and lots of questions and we so I can make like videos with Q&As from yeah, based on your questions and also I can make videos based on your suggestions, as I often do and following Andrew’s suggestions, you also have very brilliant ideas I think. I mean when I get it yeah, because every time I post a video, I mean, I really look forward to your comments because they are, you know, just oh it’s good. You always you’re always able to catch something from the video and from what I say, which is yeah, not banal and it’s always very insightful. And it makes me, yeah, it makes me wonder how to improve on my skills and how to yeah, get better with my content. So yeah, it’s really thought-provoking. So I do thank you for that.

AR: You’re welcome.

AP: So this is it for today’s video. Hope you enjoyed it and if you had fun with me and Andrew. So if you like this video, SMASH the like button, subscribe to the channel, activate the notification bell and as always, stay tuned for all the Academic fun.

Bye for now.