User:GooferMan

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My real name is Jay and I live in Seattle, Washington with my wife, Jenni, and Maine Coon cat, Maceo. I'm originally from Charleston, South Carolina, where I spent my first 32 years. My interests include magic, hoodoo, European grimoires and arabic magic.

Education
I received my BA in Comparative Religion from the College of Charleston in 2003. While there I studied anthropological approaches to the study of Native American and Muslim magical traditions. I also minored in Biology because I worked as a zookeeper during my undergraduate years. While there, my research interests were in behavioral studies of captive cougars and I started a research project that aimed to improve their psychological wellbeing.

After graduating from the College of Charleston, I moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington for graduate school. At UW I continued my study of Muslim magical traditions and also focused on European magic and American hoodoo. I graduated from UW in 2007 with an MA in International Studies: Comparative Religion.

Contributions

 * reworked article, Hoodoo
 * added section on Muslim Magic in Magic (paranormal)

In Process

 * Hoodoo (rewrite)
 * The original article Hoodoo (folk magic) wasn't hopeless but did contain a lot of irrelevant information. By the end of the article, no one would have had a clue as to what hoodoo was except that it was related to African Americans and magic.  I've added sections on the conceptual world, social context, and regional influences to try to have a more developed base to filling out the article more completely. GooferMan 18:55, 25 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Picatrix (rewrite/improve stub)
 * Currently, the article Picatrix is a stub with very little information. Moreover, some of what little information is there is incorrect.  (See my rant below for my guess as to why this is the case).  So I am developing it to correct the factual errors and provide a substantive description of the text.  I will be adding sections on its authorship, sources used, and its influence.GooferMan 18:55, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Many thanks to user Picatrix for jumping in and starting a better stub for this article! GooferMan (talk) 23:33, 29 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Muslim Grimoires (create)
 * This one is a tough one. I'll be describing two grimoires, Picatrix and Shams al-Ma'arif, but I'm not sure if I should just create a seperate article for the latter.GooferMan 18:55, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Monolingual Occultists
I am surprised that there are so many "occultists" who only speak English. This is particularly the case with those who are interested in phenomena related to magic. The first thing that I noticed about many of the Wiki articles on this subject was the complete lack of citations and references. Then, I noticed that beyond sometimes listing different language translations of some occult texts, there was very little reference to any material NOT published in English. To all you fellow occultists out there I say this. . . there is a LOT of material out there on this subject that never makes it into English. As a community, we are selling ourselves short by not utilizing these sources. Fortunately, there is a remedy for this. One doesn't have to be proficient in a language to read it so I recommend picking up a copy of Wheelock's Latin ISBN 0060956410, French for Reading Knowledge ISBN 096618436X, or German for Reading Knowledge ISBN 1413003702, and do yourself, and me, a favor. It's not hard. Monolingual Occultism can be Cured! GooferMan 18:55, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Miscellaneous
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