The Magus

SS: What got you interested in the religions that you study? JS: Because they’re funny. They’re interesting in and of themselves. They relate to the world in which I live, but it’s like a fun house mirror: Something’s off. It’s not quite the world I live in, yet it’s recognizable. So that gap interested me. . . . I mean, you ask me what I get out of it. . . . I get a feeling of the absolute wonder of the human imagination. It’s unstoppable. It’s funny, it’s sort of a game among analytic philosophers when they discuss religion to invent something crazy and then talk about how you could invent it. And I always ask them, “Why are you working so hard to invent something? I could show you a hundred crazier things than you could come up with that are in somebody’s most sacred writings.” It’s mind-boggling. And the one who challenged me on it was someone who had a living rock. It could only go “woo!” or “uh.” And how do you work out the grammar of “woo!” and “uh”? And I said, “You don’t tell me how the woos got there. You don’t tell me how these woos and uhs got there. I mean, you’re a shitty mythmaker!” So I just picked up one yesterday—the world is a spider web, formed of the dripping, green semen of another spider that goes down the various parts of the web—I don’t know what you call them, filaments—and congeals here and there. So now you want to talk about rationality—man, you deal with that. To hell with your woos and uhs. And that’s only the first paragraph. The myth goes on for I think about 700 paragraphs actually. It’s a Brazilian native myth. Wow! . . . it’s not that I want to understand it so much. I just want to say, “Hats off to you kids! You sold it to generations and generations! Woo! Terrific! Wonderful!” That’s what I like about religion, it never fails to surprise me. Whenever you think you’ve seen it all, you find something like this that—“Whoops, back to the drawing board. My definition has not been broad enough. I have to get this one in too.” It’s good. It’s good subject matter. It doesn’t conclude, and that’s good too. (Sinhababu and Smith 2009)

Absolute (philosophy) · Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Epistemology · Feeling · Psychoanalysis · Theology · White (mutation) · Wonder · Yesterday · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · Philosophy · Psychology · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices · Study and Philosophy of Religion

• Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World

  Paul Mirecki, Marvin Meyer•Magic and Ritual in the Ancient…•2002

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• To take place

  Jonathan Z Smith•To take place•1987

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• Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities

  Lee Siegel, Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty et al.•Philosophy East and West•1985

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• No Place to Stand

  Gill, S Gill•Journal of the American Academy…•1998

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• Dreams, Illusions and Other Realities

  Joel P Brereton, Wendy Doniger O''Flaherty et al.•Journal of the American Oriental…•1985

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