Beetlejuice and The Sacred Clown Part 2: History, Restriction, Misinterpretation, and a Deeper Connection
The Occult RejectsShow Notes
Links For The Occult Rejects https://linktr.ee/theoccultrejects
Occult Research Institute https://www.occultresearchinstitute.org/
Substack https://substack.com/@theoccultrejects?r=7auau0&utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page
Cash App https://cash.app/$theoccultrejects
Venmo @TheOccultRejects
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/TheOccultRejects
BIBLIOGRAPHY Babcock, Barbara A., ed. The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978. This is one of the major theoretical works behind our discussion of symbolic inversion, reversal, reflexivity, and why societies sometimes institutionalize behavior that deliberately contradicts ordinary norms. Black Elk [Nicholas Black Elk], as told through John G. Neihardt. Black Elk Speaks. Originally published 1932; complete annotated edition, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Chapter 16, “Heyoka Ceremony,” is the important material for our comparison, particularly Black Elk’s explanation that Heyoka authority is connected with visions of the Thunder Beings and that sacred power is expressed through apparently foolish or reversed behavior. The modern Nebraska edition includes annotations by Lakota scholar Raymond J. DeMallie and additional contextual material. Burke, Charles H. “Circular 1665: Indian Dancing.” Office of Indian Affairs, April 26, 1921; “Supplement to Circular No. 1665: Indian Dancing,” February 14, 1923; and “To All Indians,” February 24, 1923. Copies are preserved in the Indian Rights Association Papers, reel 40, D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, Newberry Library. These are the crucial primary federal documents behind our discussion of attempts to discourage, regulate, and suppress Native dances. Contemporary archival citations confirm the dates and repository. Mathiowetz, Michael D. “The Keepers of Tradition: Clown Societies in the Casas Grandes and Puebloan Worlds.” KIVA: Journal of Southwestern Anthropology and History 91, no. 2 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1080/00231940.2025.2461803. This is the major new archaeological source in Part Two. Mathiowetz argues that clown societies existed within the Casas Grandes cultural world during the Medio Period, approximately AD 1200–1450, and may have influenced later Pueblo clown institutions; he also explores relationships with governance, Sun Youth, katsina ritualism, medicine societies, and agriculture. Mathiowetz, Michael D. “The Sun Youth of the Casas Grandes Culture, Chihuahua, Mexico (AD 1200–1450).” KIVA 84, no. 3 (2018): 367–390. https://doi.org/10.1080/00231940.2018.1463685. This earlier article supplies much of the archaeological and iconographic background underlying Mathiowetz’s later clown-society argument, particularly his reconstruction of Sun Youth and the political-religious complexity of Paquimé. National Gallery of Art. “Awa Tsireh: Two Kossa,” ca. 1925. Corcoran Collection, accession 2015.19.381. This is the primary museum record for the artwork we discuss throughout Part Two: two Kossa figures painted by San Ildefonso Pueblo artist Awa Tsireh during the period of the Pueblo dance controversy. National Gallery of Art. “Expressing the Individual” and “Artists Who Expand Views of the Southwest.” These NGA interpretive resources are particularly valuable because they discuss Awa Tsireh’s repeated representation of Kossa, the possibility that his clown imagery responded to federal attempts to suppress Pueblo ceremonial life, and his practice of omitting or altering details to protect sacred Pueblo knowledge from non-Pueblo viewers. National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution. “Statement on Online Collections and Culturally Sensitive Collections.” This is the major contemporary museum source behind our section on restricted knowledge. NMAI explicitly states that it withholds culturally sensitive images and information when requested by authorized Native or Indigenous communities and can present records
More from The Occult Rejects
Links For The Occult Rejects https://linktr.ee/theoccultrejects
Links For The Occult Rejects https://linktr.ee/theoccultrejects
Links For The Occult Rejects https://linktr.ee/theoccultrejects
Links For The Occult Rejects https://linktr.ee/theoccultrejects Occult Research Institute https://www.occultresearchinstitute.org/ Substack https://substack.com/@theoccultrejects?r=7auau0&utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page Cash App https://cash.app/$theoccultrejects Venmo @TheOccultRejects Patreon https://www.patreon.com/TheOccultRejects PART TWO BIBLIOGRAPHY Christianity Created the Western Occult Primary Sources Paracelsus. Paracelsus: Essential Theoretical Writings. Edited and translated by Andrew Weeks. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008. This is the edition I’d use for Paracelsus rather than modern occult compilations; it gives the German and English texts with extensive scholarly commentary. Wellcome Collection Dee, John. John Dee’s Five Books of Mystery: Original Sourcebook of Enochian Magic. Edited and translated by Joseph H. Peterson. Weiser Books, 2003. A modern edition of Dee’s Mysteriorum Libri Quinque and one of the most useful primary-source collections for the early angelic sessions. Red Wheel/Weiser Böhme, Jakob. Aurora: The Day-Spring, or Dawning of the Day in the Orient. Originally written 1612. Any scholarly or reliable critical edition can be used for the primary material concerning Böhme’s early cosmology. Böhme, Jakob. The Way to Christ. Useful for the explicitly Christian and regenerative side of Böhme rather than treating him merely as an abstract occult cosmologist. Swedenborg, Emanuel. Heaven and Hell. Originally published in Latin in 1758. I’d use the New Century Edition, translated by George F. Dole, because it includes scholarly historical material and annotations. Swedenborg Foundation Saint-Martin, Louis-Claude de. Theosophic Correspondence between Louis Claude de Saint-Martin and Kirchberger, Baron de Liebistorf. Translated by Edward Burton Penny. Especially useful for documenting Saint-Martin’s engagement with Böhme and his increasingly interior understanding of Christian theosophy. Theosophy Society Eckartshausen, Karl von. The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary. The A. E. Waite translation is historically useful because Waite’s transmission of the text is itself part of its later occult reception. Lévi, Éliphas. Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual. Translated by A. E. Waite. Important as a primary document for Lévi’s synthesis of Kabbalah, ceremonial magic, Christian symbolism, priesthood, polarity, and magical theory. Lévi, Éliphas. The History of Magic. Again, use this as a primary source for what Lévi believed, not as reliable modern historiography. Waite, Arthur Edward. The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal. Essential for understanding the specifically Christian-mystical dimension of Waite’s esotericism. Waite, Arthur Edward. The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry. Useful for Waite’s conception of mystical initiation and the “secret tradition.” Fortune, Dion. The Mystical Qabalah. First published 1935. Essential primary material for Fortune’s attempt to interpret Qabalah through the twentieth-century Western Mystery Tradition. Medieval Grimoires, Ritual Magic & Angelic Practice This is the group I would rely upon heavily for the material we added concerning Christian prayer, exorcism, angels, grimoires, consecration, and the unstable boundary between religion and magic. Kieckhefer, Richard. Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997/1998. Absolutely essential. Kieckhefer edits and analyzes a real medieval magical manuscript containing prayers, conjurations, astral operations, spirit catalogues, and ceremonies for consecrating magical books. PSU Press Fanger, Claire, ed. Invoking Angels: Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012. One of the strongest sources for our thesis because it specifically examines medieval and Renaissance attempts to obtain knowledge or supernatural assistance through angels. PSU Press Fanger, Claire. Rewriting Magic: An Exegesis of the Vis
Links For The Occult Rejects https://linktr.ee/theoccultrejects Occult Research Institute https://www.occultresearchinstitute.org/ Substack https://substack.com/@theoccultrejects?r=7auau0&utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page Cash App https://cash.app/$theoccultrejects Venmo @TheOccultRejects Patreon https://www.patreon.com/TheOccultRejects