Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Occult

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New article possibilities

The following list contains the names of people with entries in the "Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism" who don't appear to have Wikipedia entries yet:

• Adam Haslmayr
• Alice Ann Bailey
• Allen Kardec
• Arturo Reghini
• Franz Xaver von Baader
• Boris Mouravieff
• Bô-Yin-Râ
• Christian Heinrich Haugwitz - not Christian Graf von Haugwitz?
• Clovis Hesteau de Nuysement
• Edouard Schuré
• Élus Coëns
• Elxai
• Eugène Léon Canseliet
• Fedeli d’Amore
• François Foix-Candale
• François-Charles Barlet
• Frédérick-Rodolphe Saltzmann
• Gérard Dorn
• Giovanni da Correggio
• Guillaume Sedacer
• Gurdjieff tradition
• Hermann Fictuld
• Jacques François Etienne le Boys des Guays
• Jacques Gohory
• Jacques-Étienne Marconis de Nègre
• Jean-Marie Ragon de Bettignies
• Jean-Philippe Dutoit-Membrini
• Johann Friedrich von Meyer
• Joseph-Aimé Péladan
• Justin the Gnostic
• Karlfried Dürckheim
• Leopold Ziegler
• Louis Charbonneau-Lassay
• Louise Marie Thérèse Bathilde d’ Orléans
• Marcus the Magician
• Melchior Douzetemps
• Niklaus Anton Kirchberger
• Oscar Rudolf Schlag
• Paul Sédir
• Paul-François-Gaspard Lacuria
• Raimondo di Sangro di San Severo
• Satornilus
• Sincerus Renatus
• Stanislas de Guaïta

Progress

So I've gone through the whole list and discovered that many of the subjects have corresponding articles under slightly different titles. I've created redirects for most of those (given the likelihood of people searching for the same title as the Dictionary) and will have a look and creating some new articles. Stalwart111 11:20, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

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Is the Paranormal pseudoscience

A discussion has been started at Wikipedia_talk:Categorization#Is_the_paranormal_pseudoscience.3F. Unomi (talk) 05:52, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Abrahamic Religion and Magic

This section of the Religion and Magic article needs help. There is enough information about the intersection between "Abrahamic" religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) to write several books (and the evidence is that several books have been written on these subjects). But the article is so poorly sourced and poorly organized that it literally gives almost zero practical information. No offense to anybody here who has participated in that section's development. I'd be happy to help, but I'd rather do this in tandem. Most of the articles that address these matters end up quoting Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (by the way, for anybody interested in the Occult, this is a must-read). But articles abound. I will list a few in time. Right now, I have no time. :-D --Kabir Talat (talk) 16:41, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Just for fun, http://www.gnosis.org/ahp.htm and http://www.gnosis.org/jskabb1.htm are good links that are well-sourced (and soundly denounced by BYU's Prof. Hamblin, for whom I have a good deal of respect). I'm not suggesting that these links form the lion's share of the info in the referenced section - that would be POV in the extreme. I just remembered the links as I was typing the above. At most, Mormonism's treatment of magic/Gnosticism/Hermeticism should take up a paragraph or less. --Kabir Talat (talk) 17:19, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Occult articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Occult articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Grace Sherwood, Witch of Pungo FAC

This article is here as a FA candidate. Would appreciate commentary to help improve the article. Thank you. — Rlevse • Talk • 13:24, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Now it's in Featured article review, I had to do it, can any editor fix this mess up? Secret ^account 03:27, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject cleanup listing

I have created together with Smallman12q a toolserver tool that shows a weekly-updated list of cleanup categories for WikiProjects, that can be used as a replacement for WolterBot and this WikiProject is among those that are already included (because it is a member of Category:WolterBot cleanup listing subscriptions). See the tool's wiki page, this project's listing in one big table or by categories and the index of WikiProjects. Svick (talk) 20:54, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Misguided requested move to Final Fantasy character to Sephiroth over disambig page

Folks, there's an attempt being made to move the Final Fantasy character over Sephiroth by people who don't understand transliteration of Hebrew into English. Weigh in here. Yworo (talk) 02:01, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

LOL, nice catch. Fortunately, the discussion has ended. Personally, I think there should not be a disamb. The page should go to the kabalistic meaning, with a hat note about the FF character. --Legion fi (talk) 00:07, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Joining this WikiProject

Hello all, I'm not new to wikipedia but I'm trying to become more involved. Is there a specific way to join this WikiProject? I'm knowledgeable in a few areas of the occult and want to do a little more than just edit minor errors here and there. So yeah, is there a way to actually join wikiprojects or do you just add it to your watchlist and edit at will?

K (talk) 16:42, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Well hello there, and welcome. Yes, basically you just add your name to the project and start contributing. How? Well, there are a lot of ways: creating new articles, assessing existing ones, cleaning up other, getting references to poorly cited ones. This project is pretty open in their task, so do whatever you wish to do, and if you need second opinions, comments, or want to bring something to consideration just post it here. --Legion fi (talk) 08:34, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Individual Tarot cards

Hi, I am returning to an old topic for many reasons I think most of the individual tarot cards should be merged into other articles. ie Two of Cups Three of Cups into Suit of cups. Then replace a redirect. There probably needs to then be a page on interpretation or divination.

The maintenance of these pages tends to be done in a group and it takes a while just to tag them, still working on adding BTG tags. I wanted to let the relevant groups know of my suggestion before taking any actions. Tetron76 (talk) 17:43, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Request for input in discussion forum

Given the closely linked subjects of the various religion, mythology, and philosophy groups, it seems to me that we might benefit from having some sort of regular topical discussion forum to discuss the relevant content. I have put together the beginnings of an outline for such discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion/2011 meeting, and would very much appreciate the input of any interested editors. I am thinking that it might run over two months, the first of which would be to bring forward and discuss the current state of the content, and the second for perhaps some more focused discussion on what, if any, specific efforts might be taken in the near future. Any and all input is more than welcome. John Carter (talk)

_{Automated message by Project Messenger Bot from John Carter at 15:44, 5 April 2011}

I've already watchlisted the meeting page. Unfortunately I don't see many topics in which I can contribute. --Legion fi (talk) 15:40, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

If you know of any topics which are insufficiently covered by independent sources, particularly regarding recent developments, that would be useful information. And, at present, the first page is just a basic discussion page. If there are any ideas you would have to put forward, please feel free to add them as well. John Carter (talk) 16:00, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Relevant content

I am going through The New Encyclopedia of the Occult, by John Michael Greer, on the basis that items included as separate entries in that book should be discussed, in some form or other, even if only as a redirect, here. So far, I have gone through contained of it related to the Cabala, which can be found at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Kabbalah#Relevant content and the talk page of Wikipedia:WikiProject Thelema. I am in the process of developing lists for other similar projects as well.

The one thing which strikes me as being perhaps open to discussion here is how the various topics of the Occult should be organized. There seem to be several WikiProjects relevant to the Occult, some specifically about "sub-sections" of what is called the Occult, others about aspects of the Occult which are also relevant to other subjects. Maybe some attempts to organize the relevant projects, indicating which topics are left to the "primary" attention of which project, might be useful. Anyway, a detailed list for this project will also be available, hopefully sometime soon. John Carter (talk) 16:20, 16 April 2011 (UTC) Sections of such a list, as well as separate lists elsewhere, follow:

Druids and Druidry: Abaris; Abred; Alban Arthuan; Alban Eiler; Alban Elued; Alban Gates; Alban Heruin; Ancient Order of Druids; Archdruid; Armanen; Ar nDraiocht Fein; Bard; Barddas; Castle of Heroes; Celtic reconstructionism; Ceugant; Circles of Existence; Colligny calendar; Degrees (of fraternal organizations); Druidic witchcraft; Druidry; Druids; Druids of Pontyprydd; Edward Davies; Edward Williams; Faery; Fraternal lodge; Gerald Gardner; Goddess; Grove; Gwynfydd; Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn; Holy Grail; John Toland; Kindred of the Kibbo Kift; Mabinogion; Merlin; Mistletoe; Neopaganism; New Reformed Druids of North America; Nwyvre; Oak; Ogham; Ogham tree-calendar; Order of Bards Ovates and Druids; Ovate; Owen Morgan; P. E. I. Bonewits; Pheryllt; Philip Peter Ross Nichols; Pythagoras; Reformed Druids of North America; Reincarnation; Three Worlds; Triads; United Ancient Order of Druids; Wicca; William Stukeley; Woodcraft;

Grimoires: The Arbatel of Magic; Book of Secrets; Book of the Death of the Soul; Dragon Rouge; The Goetia; Grand Grimoire; Grimoire; Key of Solomon; Lemegeton; Picatrix; The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage; Sworn Book of Honorius;

Like I said at the Kabbalah talk page, please do not construe this as saying that each and every article listed here must necessarily be created. But I do think that it makes sense to at least include some material relevant to Druids and Druidry to the above articles if it isn't already there, to create articles for those topics which have substantive content available for them, and redirects for those which would best be included in other articles. John Carter (talk) 17:22, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

So, what you are saying is that information from the cited Encyclopedia should be added to the relevant articles and redirects made? If that is the case, could I have a link to an online version or at least a full bibliographical reference for the encyclopedia?. I see many of the topics are covered, and I'm interested in reviewing the source specially for information regarding the grimoires. Thank you. --Legion fi (talk) 16:57, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

To a degree, the above is correct. Basically, I think we should try to ensure that the material to be found in any of the more reliable relevant encyclopedias should be, at least, contained somewhere here. In a lot of cases, particularly the shorter articles, redirects would probably be sufficient. And, FWIW, there are still a lot of articles, on such subjects as magic, divination, and other matters which I haven't listed above. I don't know if there is an online version, unfortunately, because of the recent nature of the work in question. I could, however, get the information on the grimoires, including the references cited, and try to relay it to yuo. John Carter (talk) 18:04, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Waite's article

Your assistance is requested in a move discussion as to the naming of Arthur Waite's article. Mangoe (talk) 10:56, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Richard Kaczynski

I would like to inform you of a Nomination for Deletion of the article about Richard Kaczynski, biographer of Aleister Crowley, which may be of interest to members of this project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Richard_Kaczynski_%282nd_nomination%29 Rosencomet (talk) 20:12, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Template:Alchemy

{{Alchemy}} has been nominated for deletion. 76.65.128.132 (talk) 04:25, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm on it; thanks! — Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 14:48, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Alchemy & Scope

Howdy. Alchemy related articles are often tagged as being within the scope of this project. From the scope description here, I'm not sure if this is always the best place for them. That being said, are there editors here that are knowledgeable on alchemy topics? The template listed above, Adam McLean and Outline of Alchemy are needing more-urgent love. I'm going to do my best to work on these, but wanted to open up the discussion and request for assistance. Thanks. Car Henkel (talk) 01:46, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm of a mind that there needs to be a coordination project for pre-science topics that spawned sciences... geomancy, astrology, alchemy, natural philosophy, which still exist as separate from their science progeny; and thus separate from WikiProject History of Science. Ofcourse, of these, astrology already has its own wikiproject... 76.65.128.132 (talk) 13:18, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

A case could be made for including these in projects related to proto-sceince, occult, philosophy, medicine, chemistry etc. IMO it is its own beast which overlaps all these aspects, so doing something similar to the astrology project seems right. (As an aside: I find myself hesitant to tag alchemy articles as "occult" (hidden/secretive) since they most-often are not.) The important bit I guess is to have it categorized in communities able to contribute on the topics of alchemy. Is this one of them? Car Henkel (talk) 18:28, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

It theoretically should be, though WikiProjects aren't always as active as we'd like them to be. "Occultism" itself is a huge beast, and some of us here may be fascinated with Alchemy while others don't care at all.

Creating a WikiProject Alchemy could possibly be a bad move if it means taking the articles out of the scope of other projects that are relatively more active. You may want to have a look here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals, if you're considering creating a new WikiProject. I've also seen "joint task forces" between projects, if that seems like a better idea. — Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 22:24, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

True. Wouldn't want to go that route unless I had reason to think it would be active. Something to think about maybe for the future. :) Car Henkel (talk) 02:33, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm currently the only active member in WikiProject Parapsychology (with the former leader blocked for POV-pushing on a major scale) -- it's pretty sad and lonely. :c — Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 03:39, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

We have WP Science and WP History of science, perhaps a WP Protoscience, to cover these cases (alchemy, etc) 76.65.128.132 (talk) 06:16, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

WikiWomen's History Month

Hi everyone. March is Women's History Month and I'm hoping a few folks here at WP:Occult will have interest in putting on events related to women's roles in occultism. We've created an event page on English Wikipedia (please translate!) and I hope you'll find the inspiration to participate. These events can take place off wiki, like edit-a-thons, or on wiki, such as themes and translations. Please visit the page here: WikiWomen's History Month. Thanks for your consideration and I look forward to seeing events take place! SarahStierch (talk) 19:10, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Father Ernetti's Chronovisor

Is there anyone here who would be interested in helping me improve the article I created about the book Father Ernetti's Chronovisor:The Creation and Disappearance of the World's First Time Machine? --RJR3333 (talk) 08:00, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Redesign

Hi folks, I'm going to be a little bold and do a redesign to help with navigating the project. If there are any objections, we can of course roll back the changes as needed. Phoenixred (talk) 20:16, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Proposed MOS for Religion

There is now a proposed general Manual of Style for Religion and other articles relating to ethoses or belief systems at Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion/Manual of style. Any input would be welcome. I personally believe at least one of the reasons why many articles in this field have been as contentious as they have been is because of lack of such guidelines, and would very much welcome any input from others to help come up with some generally acceptable solutions to some of these problems. John Carter (talk) 22:10, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of List of alternative names for Metatron

The article List of alternative names for Metatron has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

List contains abundant unsourced information, links to deleted articles, "misspellings," and generally unencyclopedic content. It may reflect original research. Its notability is debatable. Efforts at improvement have not turned up reliable sources.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. ℜob C. alias ÀLAROB 04:56, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Merge discussion

I have proposed that WikiProject Parapsychology and WikiProject Occult be merged, as per the templates I have recently added to the main project pages of both groups. I acknowledge that there is apparently a difference between the two groups, but that that difference seems to be more about the approach taken to given topics which are often of interest to both rather than in the topics themselves. Also, honestly, for those who haven't been watching my every move around here, I have recently been trying to generate lists of articles found in other reference works for individual projects, and the most recent highly regarded one I can find is Gordon Melton's 2-volume encyclopedia of the occult and parapsychology, which itself indicates that the differentiation between the two topics is sometimes difficult. Because of the often common nature of the topics of interest to both groups, even if the approach is at times different, and the fact that I am probably too lazy to try to break down the list of articles I find in Melton's book into separate lists for the two groups, and the recent inactivity of both groups, I think it makes sense to merge them in some form, although I'm not sure exactly how that might best be accomplished.

So as a concrete proposal, I propose that this page perhaps be moved to WikiProject Occult and Parapsychology, with perhaps the existing WikiProject Parapsychology be moved to a WikiProject Occult and Parapsychology/Parapsychology task force. I would myself support such a combination of moves and merger. John Carter (talk) 16:04, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm new to the project, but I'm happy to lend my support. It makes sense. Fiddlersmouth (talk) 19:57, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't think so, I think it should be the PSI task force of WikiProject Paranormal (considering I'm pretty much the last active member left) Help Me! Thus Spake Lee Tru. 14:20, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Strong Oppose: First of all, your proposal is based on a book being named like the projects you are trying to merge; just one book. If you find a book named "Encyclopedia of Crime and Parapsychology", would you try to merge those two projects?. Second, parapsychology has nothing to do with the occult. Yes, some topics may overlap, but the fields are different. Overlaping of projects is very common within Wikipedia. It helps to keep concerns separated. A topic may be relevant (to different degrees) to a number of fields. It is good to separate those fields, in order to check how much attention from the "experts" (I'm using the term loosely, to mean members of a projects) does a given article needs from each given field it is relevant to. Legion fi (talk) 07:45, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Further to my comments above, the above merge, and the other permutations being discussed on the WikiProject Council page, are becoming more confused and divisive with the passage of time. I strongly suggest dropping the whole thing, at least until the dust has settled, and then perhaps having a think about what to do with the esoteric projects that are no longer supported. Fiddlersmouth (talk) 10:43, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

General assessment

Just a heads-up. I've started working through the assessment backlog. If there are any issues I'll put them on the Assessment talk page, but I'm using this space to apologise unreservedly to the people I'm bound to offend. I don't have strong opinions on most of it, feel free to redo if you feel any of your pets have been mislabelled. Fiddlersmouth (talk) 19:55, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Circletriangle.gif

image:Circletriangle.gif has been nominated for deletion -- 65.94.79.6 (talk) 03:12, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

What links where concerning magic?

I drafted this note at Portal talk: Occult and moved it without change except here=>there. "There" refers to Portal:Occult --as displayed about half hour ago, before 0:00 (UTC).

We have articles on ritual and esotericism; also on chaos magic, sigil magic, ceremonial magic, all linked directly there. --And Magick, not linked there.

Ritual magic redirects to the main article Magic (paranormal) but those two [pages] are separately linked there.

viz. "Chaos magic is a form of ritual magic" --Portal:Occult, section Magick

What is the relation of "ritual magic" to paranormal magic on the one hand, and to the matters of the first sentence on the other? For example, are chaos, sigil, and ceremonial three subsets of ritual magic?

As I write, 28 pages in Article space --ie, not counting this Portal and pages in other named spaces-- use the redirect ritual magic. Someone who knows this subject will be able to improve some of them by choosing a target better than the main article.

I have improved many indirect links to the main article, by shifting the target to spell (paranormal), magic (gaming), and magic in fiction as appropriate. I will improve many that use the adjective magic(al).

 Done

I leave ritual magic to you all.

The three articles magic and religion, folk religion, and witchcraft may also be sometimes-valuable replacements for the target ritual magic ==> magic (paranormal). --P64 (talk) 00:19, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

This weekend I visited all 150+ articles that link Magic (paranormal) via redirects and revised most of them --but none that use the ritual magic redirect, see above. Then I changed several of the redirect targets. See Talk: Magic (paranormal)#Previous redirects to this page.

--P64 (talk) 17:35, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Occult Barnstar

Greetings, I have recently proposed the creation of an Occult Barnstar over at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Wikipedia_Awards#The_Occult_Barnstar. I have made this suggestion as many editors of occult articles face a barrage of abuse and complaints, and I know several who have left Wikipedia completely due to this. If you would like to support, or not, or just comment on this suggestion please head on over there. Morgan Leigh | Talk 04:04, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Merge proposal

I have proposed to merge this wikiproject and 12 others to a new wikiproject. Please see the proposal. IRWolfie- (talk) 19:42, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Poor quality of articles from archaeosophical topics

When I was at Guardian of the Threshold I noticed a lot of uncited content and a lot of material giving heavy weight to archaeosophy - which appears to be a branch of Italian esotericism from the early 20th century. I've got some WP:DUE concerns regarding this area of Wikipedia. I'll be sorting through a bunch of it shortly to see how much of it is a walled garden and working on adjusting the WP:NPOV balance slightly. I'll be notifying a few different noticeboards about this in case anybody wants to lend a hand / rein me in. Simonm223 (talk) 16:27, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

New article: Magical Treatise of Solomon

I started an article on the Magical Treatise of Solomon. I will add some more sources when I get home from this infernal waiting room (three bloody hour fraggin' wait for a smegging checkup?!?!). Everything there exists in one of the sources already in the article or mentioned on the talk page. It's the link between the Testament of Solomon and the Key of Solomon, so I thought y'all might wanna assess it or format it or something. I'm stuck with a phone keyboard that can't do the pipe thingy, so there's some potential linking that just ain't happening right now unless someone else wants to do it. Ian.thomson (talk) 20:15, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Dennis Klocek

The article Dennis Klocek has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

A search for references failed to find significant coverage in reliable sources to comply with notability requirements. This included web searches for news coverage, books, and journals, which can be seen from the following links:
Dennis Klocek – news, books, scholar
Consequently, this article is about a subject that appears to lack sufficient notability. Please see the plain-language summary of our notability guidelines.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Tgeorgescu (talk) 12:18, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello, Please note that Ghost Story, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of Today's articles for improvement. The article was scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Today's articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by Evad37 [talk] 06:24, 11 August 2014 (UTC) on behalf of the TAFI team

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Magical vs Mystical

I propose that occurrences of "magic/magical" should be changed to "mystic/mystical" in pages on religion. They both refer to happenings that occur or appear to occur in a way that cannot be explained or violates scientific natural happenings. Under conventional and more official definitions of "magic" it is more associated with when one party is trying to fool or convince another party. Mysticism is more general and appropriate. I understand that some people may think that by definition (or near) religions are comprised of people trying to fool other people. If you disagree with my proposal here because of that, go make sure your opinion is represented on atheism or agnosticism. These pages are about what the people who believe(d) in the religions believe(d).--FUNKAMATIC ~talk 01:34, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

This would be excepting the pages that specifically talk about magic itself (although I think they are outside of the scope of this project unless the page is referring to when religions refer to other religions as using magic. That's a different discussion however.--FUNKAMATIC ~talk 01:41, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Mysticism doesn't necessarily involve believing something contrary to scientific law. Science can explain a vision of divinity as a hallucination, and the believer is capable of accepting that God chose to speak to them through the hallucination. The difference between a vision and hallucination is merely what qualitative meaning it is given, not the actual scientific mechanism.

For example, Shamanism and Tantra may be both magical and mystical, or one but not the other. Zen and Hildegard of Bingen are certainly mystical and religious, not magical. Transcendentalism is a secular form of mysticism. The Magical Treatise of Solomon and the Greek Magical Papyri are magical but (unless you belong to certain self-proclaimed "magical religions") not mystical.

What about religions that consider themselves magical religions, or at least consider their mysticism to be entrenched in magic, such as Thelema? And what does atheism or agnosticism have to do with this? Chaos magic has atheist and agnostic practitioners, and the New age movement has atheist and agnostic mystics (not skeptics, but atheism and skepticism aren't identical).

The concept that magic is inherently deceptive might apply to Stage magic, but supernatural magical practitioners (while perhaps lying to themselves and/or customers) usually do so in earnest, often tying it to their religion in parallel to mysticism. Ian.thomson (talk) 03:21, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

So I take it changing ALL "magic" references to "mystic" would be an over generalization. I concur. I propose based on your (Ian.thomson) comment that unless specifically an attribute of a particular religion(s) mystic should be used. The most prevalent article would be this one on magic in religions. Based on the the aforementioned cited definitions I believe that whole article should be rewritten. Also, this has to do with agnosticism and atheism only because I imagine that there are people that wouldn't mind trying to degrade religions by using the word "magical". You (Ian.thomson) have made it clear that some religions prefer their practices to be considered magic, but I strongly think that using "magic" generally is a violation of neutrality. There are several other pages that were written with "magic" instead of "mystic" where they should not have (Folk religion, Anthropology of religion, Ancient Egyptian religion, plus others).--FUNKAMATIC ~talk 23:21, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

"Magic" is an awkward word, but "mystical" is not an adequate replacement in most cases. Much of what the Greeks and Romans called "magic" (magia in Latin, γοητεία in Greek) was ritual, often without mystical connotations—for instance, cursing people. The current version of the ancient Egyptian religion article, which I wrote years ago, is flawed, but the religion itself is actually a good demonstration of why "mystical" does not fit. Heka, the Egyptian word that is usually translated as "magic", was regarded as the divine power that made rituals work—temple rites to give offerings to the gods, oracle ceremonies for the gods to deliver messages to people, execration rites to curse the pharaoh's enemies, or personal rituals to attract a lover. Those acts were pretty prosaic, especially the latter two. When I eventually rewrite the Egyptian religion article, I will use heka in most places instead of "magic", but to understand why heka is called magic, you have to grasp the history of the term. I'm not an expert on that subject, but I have studied it, and I think this outline is loosely accurate.

Greeks and Romans applied their words for "magic" to any ritual practice that they thought was foreign or otherwise suspect; the very name comes from the magi, the priests of Zoroastrianism, whose religion was mainstream in Persia but exotic to Greeks. People weren't at all systematic about what they called "magic", but the word's meaning was usually, if not always, derogatory. As in Egypt, a lot of what was called magic was fairly prosaic. Apuleius, for instance, once defended himself against a legal accusation that he had performing magic to attract the rich woman he married. In the late Roman Empire, some philosophers developed theurgy, a system of ritual that was indeed mystical, because it sought to achieve union with the divine. But Iamblichus, theurgy's best-known proponent, denied accusations that theurgy was magic, because magic was "a process operating within the bounds of nature, manipulating and exploiting natural forces rather than demonstrating the causative power behind and beyond them". Christians took over the Roman use of the term "magic", but to them, any pagan ritual was disreputable, so it was all "magic". That is the reason why the Coptic version of the word heka was used to translate magia, and thus why modern Egyptologists still refer to "magic".

In the Middle Ages and early modern times, the concept of magic underwent a very complex development. By the 18th century, its meanings could be divided into three broad categories: the ancient knowledge of pagan figures like Zoroaster and Hermes Trismegistus, whom the Greco-Roman world, and even some early Christian figures, regarded as admirable; natural magic, that is, doing stuff like alchemy or astrology that supposedly used the laws of nature; and the invocation of higher powers like angels or demons. The meaning of magic got even more confused in the past 300 years, as people increasingly divided thought into religion and science, and magic got stuck in the middle.

[Magic] has progressively become a mere label for a conceptual wastebasket filled with anything that did not seem to fit those alternatives (e.g. while natural magic might be seen as closer to science, it was not “real” science but something tainted with superstition; demonic worship was closer to religion, but it was “false” religion; and from the perspective of scientific progress, ancient wisdom could only be an outdated and superseded pseudo-wisdom). In other words, “magic” has come to be conflated with equally vaguely used concepts such as e.g. “the occult” (resp. “occultism”, “occult science”), “superstition”, “mysticism”, “esotericism”, “the irrational”, “primitive thought” (cf. “fetishism”, “idolatry”), and so on.

The term is so fraught with confusion and value judgments that Paul Mirecki and Marvin Meyer, in a series of conference books about ancient magic, introduced the phrase "ritual power" to replace it. I don't know that it has caught on. In any case, there is no term that can substitute for "magic" in all its meanings. "Ritual power" wouldn't work for many of the medieval and modern uses of the term, which often aren't rituals. "Mysticism" doesn't work for many cases, like the prosaic ancient rituals. And some articles, like magic and religion, must use "magic", because they are supposed to describe this very problem with definitions. A. Parrot (talk) 01:31, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

@A. Parrot:: Excellent.

@Funkamatic:: There's the problems that:

• just because something is important in mainstream religion doesn't mean that it won't have additional or alternative interpretations for magicians
• a part of a mainstream religion sometimes is important to understanding broader magical thinking (even if it offends the sensibilities of some of that religion's followers)
• mysticism usually has a marked lack of material benefit (and little, if any, material ritual) while magic is very much material (both in terms of supposed benefit and in ritual)
• some religions describe themselves or their rituals as magical, and it would be inaccurate to pretend they do not. This is in no way an affirmation of any real magic, any more than describing theistic or nontheistic religions as such.

To replace "magical" with "mystical" would make as much sense as replacing "ritual" and "worship" with "meditation." Ian.thomson (talk) 02:07, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Alright. I see your points and agree in most cases. I believe that I could concede to use "mystic" when there is no physical materials and "magic" when there are. It appears that among specialists such as yourselves using the word magic and its derivatives has a special meaning. I hold that using the word magic in instances where magic is not specifically believed in it should not be used as the layperson reading the article may misinterpret. If there is a special definition of "magical" (such as when Ian.thomson here says "magical thinking") among experts than I propose an article explaining the definition be made and referred to in the articles. I am going to stand by my opinion unless someone can show me a conventional or official definition of "magic" that matches its use here. Honestly, that's why I started this dispute because I am not an expert, and I perceived the articles that I mention here are misleading. I may be wrong, but I need proof that I'm wrong; again and specifically this is a reference to a conventional and/or official definition of "magic" that fits in its use in these articles.--FUNKAMATIC ~talk 05:45, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

There is an article on magical thinking, which is linked in anthropology of religion and folk religion. Those articles are practically guaranteed to need work, because they're such broad and difficult subjects, but the linked article does explain what "magical thinking" means. I can probably rewrite and rearrange the magic/heka section of ancient Egyptian religion next week. Where else do you think "magic" is a particular problem? A. Parrot (talk) 06:40, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Sounds like a great start. I'll see about how this can be applied to my idea. If we do decide to keep "magic" then we'd need to be sure to mention/link to this magical thinking article.--FUNKAMATIC ~talk 21:49, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

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