I’ve started reading Arthur Versluis’ book The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance. It’s clear that the author is going to bring to bear many of the magical strains that populate the early American mental landscape – alchemy, gnosticism, theosophy, Hermeticism and Swedenborgianism – on authors such as Emerson, Poe, Alcott, Whitman and Dickinson (can’t wait until I get to that chapter!).

In the introduction to the book Versluis remarks that until recently the currents of esotericism in American history have not been much researched. What he says is that “there was not much reliable scholarship on Western esotericism.” Delightful.

The subtext, of course, is that there is much unreliable scholarship on the subject. Hence, my difficulty when first contemplating graduate school. I wanted to study the practice of magic amongst white middle class people in North America and my faculty wouldn’t let me. They were doing it to protect me of course. It was not a respectable topic: it was one that would have ended my academic career before it began. I could study Indians (and did) because I had familial links to Indian Country and because everyone knows that Indian magic is something suitable for academic discourse. Sometimes!: What a silly world I live in: just sayin’.

Perhaps Verluis’ book marks a change? It was published by Oxford University Press afterall.

What fascinates me about the academic taboo is that it takes place in a world that is heavily into magical thinking. Think about the percentage of Americans that claim for themselves religiosity. Even more telling to me are the number of people deeply afraid of atheism – as if it were some kind of magically infectious understanding – as if being an atheist is the result of some kind of demonic possession that can spread like an air-borne virus. I can’t help but think that only someone who cannot break the back of magical thinking needs to be so afraid of someone else’s ability to do so.

So if Verluis’s book does indicate something about the mental state of academia then perhaps all the work done by “rabid” atheists is really having some effect. Interesting if so. Might explain some of the recent resurgence of the religious right – the traditional flailing of the drowning man. Then again the resurgence could just be another of America’s “Great Awakenings.” The only way to tell is time and rigorous study.

Maybe I’ll do a PhD afterall?