The
Modern Occultist
Interview #3
As part of our inaugural issue, Modern Occultist is honored to welcome three guest contributors into our Circle. Over next few weeks, readers will find exclusive and unexpurgated editions of our candid and illuminating interviews with these esteemed figures.
Second in our unedited interview series is guest contributor Michael C. Weisenburg—Director of the Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, University of South Carolina Libraries.
Dr. Weisenburg’s Primary research field is in 18th and 19th American literature and book history, and he has had articles appear in ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, The New England Quarterly, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, American Periodicals, and, more recently, a chapter on comic books as rare books in an edited collection on Comic Books, Special Collections, and the Academic Library published by ACRL, a chapter on “Print Culture and the Enduring Legacy of Confederate War Monuments,” and a brief note about a Jazz Age Parody of Robert Burns
His incredible “The Grammar of Faith in the Age of Algorithms” can be found exclusively in our special Techgnosis
issue…
MODERN OCCULTIST
In your
article, you observed that today’s usage of A.I. for spiritual or mystical
purposes is “similar to the sentimental spiritualism of Victorian England, the
post-Civil War United States, and the inter-war period of the early twentieth
century,” adding that this often occurs during times of cultural, political,
and economic unrest. In your opinion as an educator and historian, is it
possible that modern “manufacturers” of such technologies are now savvy to that
trend, and are catering to it in a somewhat clandestine nature? (Consider, for
example, the consumer pushback of ChatGPT’s recent unveilings of their
generation 5 tiers, which removed much of the sycophantic interplay that users
habitually sought; by demand, ChatGPT then offered the previous generation of
its technology to those users who missed the personified form of the chatbot
that they’d customized.)
MICHAEL
WEISENBURG
Perhaps, but honestly, I’m not convinced they are quite that savvy or historically aware. That’s not to say that these companies are not being deliberate, I think that they are (very much so, especially with our data points and behaviors); however, I would be surprised to learn that any of these tech CEOs have thought about how their products echo the sentimental spiritualism of the Victorian Period or the yearning for connection with lost loved ones in the wake of a global pandemic. That being said, it has been reported for several years now that things like tarot readings and other esoteric mysticism are popular in Silicon Valley, but it seems to me that those roots lie more in 20th century new age philosophy, which has always been at the periphery of tech culture.
As for ChatGPT
waffling on the level of sycophancy in its outputs, I think that has more to do
with OpenAI letting go of its pretensions to technological supremacy and any
notion that it would operate as a non-profit. They are clearly adjusting to
what users want and what they hope will eventually bring in revenue (I mean
they’re turning to eroticism and porn, so they are basically admitting that
they are just another internet product. Remember the Avenue Q song?)
MO
Among your many observations was my favorite, “The tendency to attach mystical powers to technology is quite old. Humans have a long history of having faith in the technologies they create, not just to solve problems but also to talk to the divine and anticipate the future.” Again, as historian, would you say it’s fair to observe that, perhaps, the aim to “talk to the divine” somehow fuels technological research as much as the pragmatic merits? (Consider the late Jack Parsons, whose research into rocketry was inspired by his own goals of bringing the goddess, Babylon, physically down to Earth…)
MW
Like a lot of
things, the answer is often “Yes, but we also have to be careful not to over
generalize and to look for the nuance of lived experience of historical actors.”
I often teach with a handful of cuneiform tablets we have in the library. Two
are receipts and one is a prayer. After explaining what they are, how they
work, and how they were made, I then summarize to students that there are two
basic origins to the technology of writing: accounting and prayer. The
practical reason for inventing writing was to keep track of things: to count
and account, to record, to remember, and to transmit specific, concrete, and
material information. Very quickly, this same technology is used to record
pleas to the gods and goddesses, then later to record heroic histories and
legends. Conversely, the oracle bones of ancient China are the results of
pyromancy. The scapula of ox and shells of turtles would be burned and the
cracks interpreted, which in turn lead to the development of writing in China. So,
in these two examples we have inverse relations to technological advancement
and a yearning to talk to the divine. It’s not a chicken and egg scenario; they
are not mutually exclusive but rather mutually informative.
You mention the
Jet-Propulsion Lab, but let’s look at a much earlier period. Ancient
astronomers looked to the heavens to understand the seasons and
develop calendars because knowing things like when to plant crops or when the
sun will rise on any given
day is important to an agricultural community. Such knowledge was mythologized
and often considered divine because the epistemological perspective of these
people didn’t separate sacred wisdom from secular science: it was all sacred
and cyclical time. That being said, we have to be careful regarding historical
assumptions and remember that it is just as easy to point out that “certain
familiar ideas about the origin of astronomy are historically untenable than
[it is] to give an adequate survey of our real knowledge” of any
particular ancient perspective on the heavens. Jack Parsons may have been driven by faith,
but Wernher von Braun was largely interested in engineering as a pursuit in and
of itself. Each of them helped us develop space exploration as well as some of
the most destructive and far-reaching weapons of war ever imagined (I mean they
give Apollo and Mars a run for their money). The biggest pop-culture franchises
of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are born of these
technologies, and while Star Trek is more empirical and democratic
whereas Star Wars is more mythological and monarchical, both have us looking
upward and outward as we have been for a long time.
To bring this back to communication technologies and writing, before the printing press idea occurred to him Johannas Gutenberg manufactured mirrors that he sold to pilgrims so that they could capture divine light from the holy land. Moveable type, the thing Gutenberg should really be remembered for, is born out of his background as a goldsmith and his association with alchemy. Modern printing and type are derived out of mysticism, and printing was a secret science, a trade guild, and industrial technique. Again, there was not a tension between the technological side of things and the divine desire for Gutenberg or Popes Nicholas V and Pious II. As Nicholas Barker has argued, the written word is a kind of alchemy, and Stephen King has associated writing with telepathy. I know it sounds like I’m going on a tangent here, but I’m just trying to emphasize that we shouldn’t be looking to separate things but rather bring them together.
MO
On a related
note, I’ve personally noticed the cultural divide between the United States and
European countries when it comes to integrating esoteric and gnostic histories
into High Education curriculum. If we go
with a theory that mystical and religious aims were, at least in part,
inspiration for the majority of humanity’s technological achievements, wouldn’t
such an approach be universally beneficial within the Liberal Arts?
MW
The short
answer is ‘Yes.’ The medium length answer is that we do a disservice to history
and those who came before us by blatantly dismissing their inspiration,
preoccupations, and world views. In fact, we can better understand them and our
own histories if we interrogate the knitted web of human knowledge as the
beautiful tapestry it is rather than pulling on a single strand just to unravel
it. The longer answer has to do with how late capitalism has corrupted the
university and lead us down a path of fetid neoliberalism that has hollowed out
the Classical Liberal Arts, sold out STEM for parts, and made a mockery of the
Professional Schools, all of which is reinforced by the Anglo-American
philosophical tendency toward the analytic rather than the empirical or
theoretical, but that’s a story for another time.
MO
In your own
experiences, how are such esoteric and “mystical” subjects handled in a more
academic way? (secondly, would you agree
that “post-Bacon” academia eschews the majority of earlier esoteric studies of
the natural world?)
MW
Yes, the modern academy eschews earlier esoteric studies, but I think it takes place well after Bacon (both Roger and Francis). It’s really more of a post-Enlightenment problem that has ties to industrialization and the instrumentation of knowledge.
As for how we might handle mystical subjects in a more academic way, there is always room for an empirical study of history about how and why mysticism manifests and persists in culture. Beyond that, we can theorize mysticism and ask not only “what is it?” but also “how does it work?” “what are its operating principles?” and “what does it tell us about culture?”
MO
On a
non-esoteric note—but rather, in your position as a curator of historical
objects—do you see a “hybrid” form of Esoteric A.I. use in future academia? For
example, a recent “Tutankhamun Immersive Exhibition” allows visitors to
experience an entire POV of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, incorporating
a “real world” virtual playground of the afterlife, in accordance with Horus
and Ra…)
MW
Ha! That’s news to me, and I’m happy to hear about it. Augmented Reality has been threatening to be the future of material culture, museum studies, and cultural history for the past 20 years or so, but it has never really taken off. In addition to being expensive, it also requires a lot of resources and infrastructure that most institutions cannot afford to invest in and maintain. On top of that is the proprietary nature and programed obsolescence of many of these technologies. They’re just not reliable investments. I’ve seen far too many digital humanities projects fall into the digital wasteland of abandoned servers, bit-rot, and funding cuts to put much faith in any of it. That’s part of why I pivoted to material culture so early in my career (the power can go out, the internet can go away, but I can still light a candle and open a book).
I think you
will probably see very big projects like this only every so often, and I’ll be
curious to watch how stable and future proof they turn out to be. I look at what happened
to the British Library a little over a year ago: the recent struggles the
staff are facing and what this might
mean for open culture, and I don’t hold out much hope for Esoteric A.I. to find a
place in cultural heritage (at least not yet). One of the points I make in my
article is that we need to be careful about the large tech corporations and the
outsized influence they have on our data and how we experience and interact
with these new and emergent technologies. Unfortunately, I fear that
privatization will continue to dominate in the short-term (though I would love
to be proven wrong).
MO
In your opinion—and
to the benefit of new students and initiates—how would you describe “Occult
Philosophy”?
MW
Philosophy of
the secret or hidden broadly conceived, a desire to know or experience things
transcendental, but we might also think about it as the wisdom and insight of
the relational, the serendipitous, and the unexpected, what Swedenborg and
Emerson referred to as “correspondences.” If we want to take a more modern track,
then we might even consider the ‘Pataphysical,’ the science of imaginary
solutions, answers to questions unasked, and hope founded in matters beyond the
immediate or obvious answer. The ancients called it poesis, and we tend to call
it creativity.
MO
What was your
personal start in your academic path?
MW
I read the Book of Revelation as a teenager, and it set the tone for my sense of humor. Though I am a very reserved person, I have long been fascinated by art, literature, music, and creativity in general. I find beauty in the unexpected. When it comes to mysticism in particular, I came to read about it by way of the poets, psychology, and philosophy, in other words (and as you gestured to above) by way of a Classical Liberal Arts education. I had a pretty traditional education, and I think it’s hard not to get a taste of mysticism if one studies the canon.
As for my
profession, I have a background in literary studies and bibliography, so
pivoting to rare books and special collections made a lot of sense, and I very
much enjoy sharing cultural heritage with people. “Clean Hands and a Pure
Heart. The Right Book in Front of the Right Person.” are our mottos.
MO
To this
magazine, the concept of “modern occultism” can (and should) be equally viewed
from both the academic and practical sides. What would you recommend to a
person only now coming along to these subjects, and is uncertain if an
objective academic career, or a true “practical path” may be right for them?
MW
Academic careers are hard to come by, take a lot of time and preparation (i.e. grad school), don’t remunerate very well (most professors earn mid-five-figures), and are increasingly under political and social threat. So, I wouldn’t necessarily suggest it for anyone and would emphasize that you really need to love your subject area and love teaching. Also, while I love my job, there is a lot of administrative and committee work that goes into it, which doesn’t leave me as much work for creative or intellectual pursuits as one would assume.
Despite the pop
culture stereotype, the academy is a very conservative space (in the
traditional sense of small-‘c’ conservative). It is a slow moving, lumbering,
bureaucratic beast, but those are also some of its strengths; and, while it has
persisted for centuries, and will likely persist well beyond the current
cultural-political crisis (the humanities
has been in crisis since 1922, while Caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab
probably did not burn the Library of Alexandria libraries have
been attacked throughout history, and the university has
been under treat and in conflict with the broader culture since at least the 13th
century)
it’s not for everyone (which is why only about 1% of the
population has a PhD). All that being
said, if you really want to do it for all the right reasons, then you should try
it. No one who knew me when I was young would ever have thought I would have
the career I currently have.
MO
What is one book,
film, lecture, or teacher that helped shape your journey and personal
philosophies that you would recommend to a new student or occult practitioner (or
historian)?
MW
For a budding
historian interested in the topics we have been discussing, I would highly
recommend the work of Carlo Ginzburg, especially: The Cheese and
the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller, The Night
Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries, and Ecstasies:
Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath. Also, Owen Davies’ Grimoires: A
History of Magic Books is excellent.
MO
And finally,
what is one daily activity that you believe is a MUST for all seekers of the
Occult philosophies and/or arts?
MW
This is going
to sound overly simple but honestly reading. Reading a lot and reading widely.
Reading the oldest books and reading the best books. A library card is your gateway
to the world, to history, and to the beyond. I’m not just saying that because I
work at a library. It’s an irrefutable fact.
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