Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Occult/Archive 2

Great work
The page and the user boxes look great. I'm glad this project was able to be kept up while I've been offline. SynergeticMaggot (talk) 09:54, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Major Arcana articles
The Tarot Major Arcana series seem to have an awful lot of unsourced material that is laying there for almost 2 years (eg. The Magician). Could anyone please check possible sources for it? I do not have many books I can go through myself. --Nathanael Bar-Aur L. (talk) 00:12, 19 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I have Waite's book, but if anyone else does feel free to beat me to this.--Dchmelik (talk) 13:49, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Timothy Wyllie
This is an article started recently, but the original editor has now left, and needs a lot of work. From what I gather he has published information on "non-human intelligences" such as angels. Would this fall under the remit here? Paulbrock (talk) 17:43, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Making a quick read of the article, I think it is more under the scope of WikiProject Paranormal. --Legion fi (talk) 04:54, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

the 7 'planes,' i.e. worlds (continuums in the universe, not planets)
Most of the Theosophy plane (metaphysics) articles are part of this project, including the physical, though the astral is not, and the higher ones are (including the rest that I lately made articles on.) I am wondering if it was right to add those to the project, but why the astral is not listed, or if I should not have added the rest of the higher ones so quickly.--Dchmelik (talk) 13:22, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd like to see anyone disagree with any of it being included. Theosophy, astral, planes of existence, etc. These are all topics that in some way or another fall under occult, whether through the medium of esoterica or from somewhere else. I for one support it. &mdash; Maggot Syn 13:31, 7 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks; I just started joining projects so I do not know how they work... I also made a mental projection article, and I am not sure if it is more of 'paranormal activity' or if occult activities count--I consider it occult, though I will only add it if astral projection is already here.--Dchmelik (talk) 13:47, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Projects are just ways to get editors together, to share opinions on a particular topic that helps to build the pedia, or something similar along those lines. I can think of a number of different topics that deal with mental projection aside from theosophy, but also have to do with the occult. The Kybalion and The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn come to mind right off the bat. Welcome to the project. We speak rarely around here. &mdash; Maggot Syn 14:13, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

The box in plane (metaphysics) lists planes according to Theosophy, but also neo-Theosophy partly due to me. I suggest we remove the top 2 spiritual planes, which according to Theosophy are unknowable for humans. Then the articles on them have to be moved into spiritual plane and the consciousnesses on them have to be listed after it. IIRC, HPB research showed the causal body to be both mental and lowest spiritual, and found that the mental and emotional planes are one and the astral and ethereal planes are one and the physical plane is non-ethereal. Some articles already distinguish between Theosophy and neo-Theosophy, the latter of which may need a new system to combine with the former (unless it is secret and Tantric as some people say,) so perhaps there should also be a list for neo-Theosophy. Does anyone agree?--Dchmelik (talk) 11:16, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I can attest that these are two separate planes of existence. But this is not the case of course. I suggest the top four in the template be conjoined. All four cover, to some degree the same thing, but on different levels (soul or spirit can be argued to be the same thing in most cases). Also, all four articles are single sourced, and cannot survive alone. The whole area needs a lot of work.  Syn  ergy 11:36, 22 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I combined the name but now they do not point to the right planes, but they point to the right consciousnesses. I suggest the highest planes articles be combined with the spiritual plane article, but I have never combined articles before...  I guess I will copy them into sections.  Did you mean the single source is me or one Theosophist?  I thought I added references from 2 Theosophists....--Dchmelik (talk) 11:46, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * You may or may not have noticed that I'm the same user as the one above. I changed usernames. I believe I made a mistake here. At first I though all of the content came from HPB. Having seen two sources, I believe what should have said was: these articles only have citations, references or sourcing from Theosophy which is largely an inworld topic (meaning there aren't any sources outside of theosophy being used for sourcing). And what we normally do, is combine the articles when this happens, until a proper fork can be created.  Syn  ergy 12:07, 22 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, that would be a good idea. Maybe a chart should be made of the English, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek names of the planes rather than repeating the definitions in each place.  Would you say the Theosophical and neo-Theosophical descriptions should all be put on spiritual plane then, or should we keep the neo-Theosophy box somehow?--Dchmelik (talk) 12:14, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * A top down method should be used. The spiritual plane is not exclusive to theosophy alone, so anything you locate on this topic should be represented in the article, each with a section and description. The broader the base (or topic), the more defined the lead paragraph(s) should be. If there is more content toward cultural references (i.e. the many different references by country) than those are your first sections, with subsequent sub sections further defining the topic in relation to those specific cultures (i.e. ==Culture== -> ===religion/spirituality/philosophy=== -> ====examples of its usage or application====). And under each of the sub sections there could be a main article so long as the fork is reasonably justified (when the section is too large and is reported in multiple, independent or third party sources).  Syn  ergy 12:29, 22 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay. An anonymous editor combined the [neo-]Theosophy planes list with some mistakes.  I corrected it, but now I think the box is too wide.  Would anyone be for reverting to having them separate.  Some neo-Theosophical planes & consciousnesses do not exist in Theosophical philosophy, and some levels are different, which is why it made the box too wide as well as too long (with extra lines for plain Theosophy that will probably give misconceptions.)--Dchmelik (talk) 01:14, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Hermetism article
I noticed the 'to do: improve' section lists Hermetism and perhaps Hermeticism article, and says they were deleted, but now they are there. Should the request be removed, or are there statements that should be put in the new article? It does seem to have the basics.--Dchmelik (talk) 17:40, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
 * You should remove the statement that it was deleted. And if you like, improve the article any way you can. &mdash; Maggot Syn 15:41, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Isis?
Shouldn't Isis be under the scope of this project? Not that I am certain what "Occult" means, but there is The Fellowship of Isis. Tutthoth-Ankhre (talk) 14:53, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Not specifically. The goddess of Egypt predates any occult significance. But there are minor articles that could be created that associate with this project. &mdash; Maggot Syn 15:40, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Anthropomancy/ Julian The Apostate issue
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Can someone help to find a citation or reference that explains why Julian the Apostate is associated with the practice of Anthropomancy? When i do a google search most of the pages listed give the anthropomancy story without any clear ideq of where this assertion came from. Any info welcome.--Redblossom (talk) 19:31, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Doing a quick Google search, I've found three reliable sources which I list:


 * Occult Sciences: A Compendium of Transcendental Doctrine and Experiment by Arthur Edward Waite. Kessinger Publishing, 1993, ISBN 156459369X. 127 p. (Google Books limited preview)
 * An Encyclopaedia of Occultism by Lewis Spence. Courier Dover Publications, 2003, ISBN 0486426130. 27 p. (Google Books limited preview)
 * Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology by Leslie Shepard, Lewis Spence, Nandor Fodor. Gale Research, Detroit, 1991, ISBN 0810349078. 2008 pp. (Google Books reference and external link with text referred to the source)
 * Luckily for us, the first and second sources google preview includes the part of the book that deals with anthropomancy, establishing the verifiability of them. Although I couldn't find the hole text for the third source, it is referenced in several other pages (of which I left an example), it is clearly related to the second one, and is also mentioned as a reliable source in other third-party publications like this one, which also includes a good description and history of the source.
 * From among the sources, the first one seems to be the oldest, with its first edition dating to 1923 (Google Books snippet preview). All the rest of the sources are pretty similar to this one, except for the Gilles De Retz mention, which only occurs in the second and third sources.
 * Well, I hope this is of some use. --Legion fi (talk) 07:40, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, the Spence is from 1920, but Lewis Spence is not a reliable source on any subject. Waite is, and he expresses severe, and probably well-founded, doubt that the ancient reports are accurate; Christian libel of Julian is longstanding.  The identical phrasing   necromantic operations and nocturnal sacrifices.. suggests that both are copying from a common source; Google Books shows the same phrasing from The Romance of Sorcery by Sax Rohmer (yes, the author of Fu Manchu) in 1914; it may well be earlier - an encyclopedia is likely. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:27, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The ancient source appears to be Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 3, 21. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:19, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme
As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.
 * The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
 * The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
 * A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot  ( Disable )  21:11, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I mentioned this over on the assessment talk page, but thought I better mention it here too because I'm not sure how often the project members check assessment talk. Anyway, I'm currently using my spare time to help out with the Class and Importance assessments (we've got a backlog) and updating the currently tagged articles, but I'm wondering why our template doesn't reflect Importance on the talk page once its been updated. The Class changes, but no visual sign of the Importance level is provided. I realize the tag may be logged in through the project for record keeping, but I think it would be helpful to see what Importance rating an article has when you hit a talk page. It can help to keep ratings up-to-date and accurate when another project member comes across an assessment tag and does a review. Can we fix that? Sonds like it would be easy to do.  I'd do it, but I have no idea how. --Trippz (talk) 03:06, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup
Currently, 505 articles are assigned to this project, of which 185, or 36.6%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 2008-07-14.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. More than 150 projects and work groups have already subscribed, and adding a subscription for yours is easy - just place a template on your project page.

If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page; I'm not watching this page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:06, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Tarot cards
In the copy-edit catagory, in the March 2007 section, are an awful lot of articles about individual Tarot cards. I know nothing about Tarot cards so I've come here to see if someone here can help. They are full of WP:OR and are stubby. I would put merge tags on them but there is already a infobox for the Major and Minor Arcana and it would be a shame to kill the infobox too. -- Escape Artist Swyer Talk to me The mess I've made 15:11, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I have Waite's book on them, which is also at |sacred-texts.com; if someone could make a list I would try to cite them, or anyone could now that I said the author and a source.--Dchmelik (talk) 07:19, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Occult
Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:24, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Requested move discussion at Kabbalah
Since there is a occult form of Kabbalah, Hermetic Qabalah, I suspect some of you may be interested in the discussion at Talk:Kabbalah. Bob (QaBob) 14:05, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Samael Aun Weor article
A year and a half ago this article, which is part of WikiProject Occult, was assessed and marked as needing immediate attention. It is now tagged with NPOV, primary sources and cleanup. Despite this, this article cannot be found on the "To Do" list of the project, why is this? Thank you, Anton H (talk) 15:10, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Deletion sorting
Articles for deletion/Traeonna Wagener would be of interest to this project. If you get your own deletion sorting page, such discussions could easily be transcluded there. __meco (talk) 09:38, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to redirect Seth Material
There is a proposal to redirect Seth Material (an article within this Wikiproject's scope) to Jane Roberts. Please comment at Talk:Seth Material. Gandalf61 (talk) 12:20, 27 November 2008 (UTC)