A (5:09)

Looking back, do you see that first spark as intellectual or existential?

C (5:15)

It's existential. I gave it an intellectual cast, you know, hadn't really been my intention, you know, as a sociologist to explore that particular area. In fact, you know, once I got to college and discovered the intellectual life and the freedom of it at the university, it's like going to a different planet, a different world. It was lovely. And I jettisoned any serious involvement with religion at that point and left it behind and, and continued to do so until I got to the point of my doctoral dissertation. My interest in sociology moved from being. Originally I was going to be a criminologist and I ended up actually writing doctoral exam in that area. But by the time I got there, I was no longer really interested in that. For one thing, by the, by the late 70s, the feds had kind of taken over, you know, their war on drugs, had taken over research in that area and they were, you know, sort of dictating what should be done, which is not a very good way to do science or even social science. So I was not interested in that. So I'd become really interested in, in social and sociological theory. And I, I actually did. We had to kind of hook up my doctoral exam so that I, we made a distinction between two different kinds of theory and I did those, and I did the criminology because it was an easy sort of thing. To do. And believe it or not, along the way. I can't even remember if I had a course in the sociology of religion during my graduate program. It was probably at Western Kentucky during my master's degree. A course that I took would have taken that from Hart Nelson, who was actually fairly well known in that area, and Rafa Yokley, who was fairly well known for his work on the black church, a very, very interesting older sociologist. So anyhow, I got. I digress there and I'm not sure how and why, but. Oh, you asked if it was existential or intellectual. You know, it was, it was existential, but I was able to kind of COVID it by, you know, making it a matter of intellectual concern.

A (7:52)

Well, because it was an intellectual concern, more so than necessarily what you had originally set out with, did you find?

C (8:00)

Yeah, I, you know, it was both an existential and. And an intellectual concern. But more and more it became not much of a concern existentially and more of an intellectual concern.

A (8:17)

Did you feel tension between your personal curiosity and any academic expectations?

C (8:23)

No, because I sold out. I mean, I became an academic and I became a sociologist. And that, you know, was the dominant identity. And, you know, religion had become something that I enjoyed studying and it became. I was still interested in it in part because of it being part of my heritage. And I've explored, and I continue to explore that. But no, no tension because I, I'm, you know, basically ceased to be a religious believer and became primarily a. An observer of religion. You know, I found it fascinating and, you know, I didn't have any problem with people who were religious of whatever variety, but it was not attention for me.

A (9:16)

When you first began working with the idea of the cultic milieu, how did it resonate with your own observations of religious life?

C (9:26)

Well, the. When I found that concept, Colin Campbell is a British sociologist who coined that notion. And he did it in a kind of offbeat, out of the way paper, which when I, when I found it, you know, it was really because it described what I had been observing, you know, my field work for the dissertation and the stuff related to the esoteric and the occult. And this notion of occultic blue was a field study, an ethnographic study of those people in the Phoenix metropolitan area during the mid and late 1970s, I think is, it turns out, and I'll brag a little bit here, I think it's the first full blown ethnographic study of what later people called the New Age community. That terminology wasn't well established when I was doing that Research. And so I never used it. I used a variety of different terms, mostly the terms that people themselves were using to describe. To describe the movement. So when I found Colin Campbell's notion of the cultic milieu, it was. It was really eye opening, you know, from the standpoint that, hey, this guy's got it. He's described, you know, exactly. You know, hey, this is a concept that, that covers very nicely, this thing that, you know, this phenomena that I'm looking at here in Phoenix. And I should add to that that at the time, the notion of cults was just becoming. The popular press had begun to appropriate that term and to, you know, abuse it widely. And so there was a lot of confusion, including in some of the sociological literature, about the organizational and ideological character of alternative religious groups of one sort or another. And that's continued much. You know, whenever I do interviews with the press and stuff, I have to start off by saying, well, you know, what you're calling a cult really isn't a cult in terms of the classic sociological literature. It's more of a sect. And, you know, I have to go through all that song and dance, which is sort of irrelevant because, you know, once, once the. Once popular cultures appropriated academic terms and started to use them, they own them, and there's really not much you can do to change them. You know, my dissertation is a hodgepodge of different things. There are about three or four dissertations there, and only part of that dealt with the cultic milieu and the organizational character of this new age community in Phoen at the time.

A (12:39)

Well, do you see that milieu as a fringe space or as a permanent feature of culture?

C (12:43)

Now, I've argued sort of loosely that it, that it fit, that the cultic milieu fits extremely well with late modernity in the organization of our life. So, for example, you know, in the 19th and first half the 20th century, a great deal of American religion was organized on the part of communities. And you know, so you grew up in a community and you were a Baptist or you're a Methodist or you were a Lutheran or whatever, and. And that was sort of the community that you were involved in. And, you know, in the 20th century that began to change. You know, people were moving to cities, people were moving around the country for jobs, so that the traditional social organization of American life just changed radically during the. During the 20th century. And so the cultic maloose is kind of a response in a way, and an answer to that in that it's not very demanding. It's sort of loosely organized, and yet it provides an outlet for people's religiosity. You know, there's been a lot of talk, particularly over the last 20 or so years of Americans being spiritual but not religious. I find that whole idea sort of nonsense. It's all religion. You know, it's really a matter of is it. Is it orthodox, conventional, traditional religion, or is it, you know, is it something different from that? And it's, you know, it's very clear that actually the data now show I've been arguing this for 20 years and been laughed at by a lot of people, but the data now are pretty clear that organized conventional religion in the United States been on the decline since the turn of the 20th century, believe it or not. And, you know, when I was doing this work in the 70s, we were pretty safe in saying that roughly 90% of Americans were religious in some way, shape or form, and that's just no longer true. I don't know what the most recent data suggests, but, you know, that number is now, you know, down 80% or probably a lot less than that, maybe around 70%. So American religion has changed sort of dramatically. This social organization of the cult at Nalu fits this helter skelter, you know, sort of loose, not doctrinaire character or increasing character of American, of American religion.

A (15:43)

Which is why I think it's probably more relevant now than perhaps even in any time in the past. Would you say that because of American heterodox practices, the cultic milieu is much more the theme of this spiritual, not religious conversation that's being had in the public view?

C (16:01)

Yeah, absolutely. Yep, Absolutely. So, you know, people can. Can kind of pick and choose and, you know, a part of that is, is this sort of epistemological or ideological commitment to, you know, multiple truths. So, you know, you can. You can go to Catholic Mass, you know, on Sunday, and then you can go hang out with your. With your New age friends or, you know, some other kind of study group during the week. You can, you can kind of pick and choose, and you don't have to do just one thing. I probably picked a bad example in terms of Catholicism, but I've certainly known a lot of Catholics who were pagans, you know, and, you know, that's sort of true across the board.

A (17:06)

It certainly part of the changing American landscape. Has your definition of the cultic milieu changed with decades of reflection? Have you altered your personal perspective on it, both from your personal religious background and your background as an academic?

C (17:23)

No. I guess partly, you know, I've continued to do a little bit of work in that area and I continue to think about it, but most of my energy for the last, at least the last 20 years have been devoted to this sort of sorting through some of the history of early Mormonism. And so, you know, I'm not. Stayed super active. I probably should have, I probably should have followed up on a number of the ideas that I developed in the 1970s and 1980s. And I really didn't. So the answer is it hasn't really changed. If anything, it just, you know, that whole business of the cultic milieu is more relevant today than it ever was.

A (18:12)

To that end, why do you think you were personally drawn to study marginal esoteric traditions instead of mainstream religion?

C (18:20)

I was interested in, in prophecy and I left my doctoral program in Columbus at Ohio State and I had a part time teaching position at Arizona State and I needed a dissertation topic. By the way, that's a horrible way to do a dissertation. You need to stay where you are, stay with your mentors, work closely with those people, let them guide you. And I didn't do that. It's, it's much tougher to go this other sort of way. And so when I first got to Phoenix, I had in mind continuing the prophecy thing, but doing it in terms of black spiritualism. And then I sort of discovered, I did some field observation of that sort, but then I discovered an anthropologist that pretty well worked through that area. And so I needed something else. And in the meantime, the girl that I was living with and I had, we'd been going to psychic fairs and sort of hobnobbing in what I later called, you know, the cultic maloo, this esoteric seen in the Phoenix area, which was huge. That was where we sort of encountered the tarot. And she became interested in the tarot. And then, you know, she managed to convince me that I, I was too. And I started reading, you know, everything I get my hands on and what little had been done by academics and stuff. And so one thing led to another and that sort of serendipity, you know, accidentally became, became the focus of the research that I was doing.

A (20:08)

Was there a moment when you realized the cards mirrored sociology?

C (20:14)

There were a couple of sociologists that had taken an interest in that area and had done a few things, but there had been really no significant sort of work there. The, the better work on the history of this whole stuff had been done by historians. And actually they were historians that were largely ignored by the historical mainstream. I mean, in a lot of ways this regarded as frivolous. You know, it was kind of off the wall. It was not something that serious academics would do. And, you know, if there's a discipline stodgy, it's history. And, you know, the historians wanted to do what they thought was the most important stuff and, and not the other. And the same with sociologists. They, you know, they were not other than kind of a feature of popular culture. They weren't very interested in this area.

A (21:08)

In your field work, what kinds of people most stayed with you? What personal encounters shaped your understanding of the esoteric scene?

C (21:20)

Well, there were. There were a variety of people and we're, you know, I'm now having to go back in my head to, you know, the 1970s, which is a long time ago. There were. There were a number of people that I met in the, you know, in the course of that research that became friends and. But once I left Phoenix, I sort of left all of that behind. I left Phoenix once I kind of mostly done the field work. That was when I got the job job at usf. And the dissertation had been mostly sort of written by that point in time. So, you know, once I took a job at the University of south Florida in 1978 and left Phoenix, then I sort of left all of that behind and I did not maintain contact with those people. The exception to that was the girlfriend who I had married in the meantime. And she was still there, part of the scene and part of my scene. And, you know, we continue to interact, you know, over the stuff that. That I had done on the dissertation she worked partly on. She worked on some stuff that was related to the dissertation. She did a number. She read tarot cards too, and she did a number of tarot card readings and she did some transcriptions of those readings. And that became very useful me later on in terms of doing the. Doing some analysis of divination. And a paper that we published together, she didn't do anything on it. I gave her credit because she'd done some of the. Some of the work, some of the fieldwork stuff on social meanings of the occult. A paper that still gets. Gets attention. Actually, some of this stuff still does get attention from time to time, probably because there's not all that much stuff in the area.

A (23:23)

There's not.

C (23:23)

And partly, if I do say so myself, it's pretty good stuff.

A (23:26)

It is. It's excellent material. Excellent material. Did you ever find yourself surprised by who was drawn to these traditions?

C (23:34)

No, not really. I mean, there were a wide variety of different. Different people you know, very few of them were, were highly educated. You know, they certainly weren't my university colleagues. If they were, they didn't admit it. So, so I guess yes and no. I, you know, the deeper I got into this stuff, the, the more it astounded me, you know, how gullible some people could be. And yet, on the other hand, you know, the stuff kind of, kind of worked for them and it made sense in a, you know, in a larger kind of context. I don't know. That's an ambiguous answer to your question.

A (24:32)

No, I think it's ambiguity is at its heart. Do you believe that this gullibility comes from a suppressed religious impulse or something different within participants in the cultic milieu?

C (24:45)

I think one of the most important things to understand about human beings is we have a thirst, an unquenchable thirst for meaning. And we're a meaning making creature. So, you know, if there are meetings there that we appropriate and they can work for us, okay, fine, if they're not, then we can create them. And you know, that's, that's precisely my take on prophecy, divination, otherworldly communication. I mean, I can go in a lot more detail on that, but I don't, I don't know, I lost track of your question there, if that addresses the issue that you raised or not.

A (25:41)

It does. It was on the subject of gullibility in these cultic milieu's and whether or not it was a reaction to the religious impulse being suppressed by the larger society or societal context that they find themselves in. How have you navigated being both an observer and in some sense a participant in the worlds that you have studied?

C (26:03)

At the time that I was doing my research, a number of sociologists, there was kind of a whole movement that I was sort of part of that was breaking away from the traditional idea that the only way to be objective was to be removed, to keep yourself separate from the natives. Going native, as the anthropologist referred to it, was considered a kind of major sort of crime. And the breakthrough, the big breakthrough for me at least there was a, was a sociologist, Annetta Jules Rosette, who had, with her husband at the time, gone to Africa and got involved in a new Christian religious movement. And they kind of brought that back here and they carried it through and they were intensely involved in that. And what her work suggested to me and a number of other sociologists was that not only was it not harmful to go native, to appreciate things from the native point of view, to perform native rules, but it was extremely beneficial and that there were lots of things until you'd done it that you really couldn't understand very well. And I can kind of go at that another different way. I've argued, and I. I think it's pretty well accepted now that at least by some, maybe not by. By the mainstream academics and sociology and anthropology, but that this is like performing different roles. And we do this all the time in everyday life. So, you know, I may have, you know, the role of child or son with my. I have an entirely different role with the person that I live with or with my spouse and with my children and with my colleagues and so on and so forth. And I don't get confused about that. I mean, occasionally. And we can. We could talk about the times where there are confusion, but, you know, I don't. I don't have any trouble with performing multiple different roles, not getting confused about those roles and not letting one. The, the. The way that I perform one role contaminate or distort the way that I perform another role. So the answer to your question, this is at the heart of much of what I've argued for ethnography and participant observation, is that going native or being a participant in an observer is not only not a liability, but it's an advantage if you do that, and if you don't do that, then you have to do other things to compensate to. For acquiring the insider's point of view, which is presumably the gold of all basic social science.

A (29:19)

But I think that's where the rub is. Maybe detractors of such an idea would say by going native, the academic is tainting the sample because of precipitating different reactions in the study subject.

C (29:33)

Yeah, There are those arguments that, that, you know, that it harms objectivity, although this whole, you know, the whole business of objectivity. Subjectivity been called into. Called into question. Yeah. And in serious question, I don't know. I. That's what I play around with in part in that. In the book that I published with Rutledge in 21, in fact, take it even further than that. The extreme position that came out of this view of participant observation that I've been talking about, that I was an advocate of, was that there is no truth that, that you can, you know, you can kind of just make it up. And an extension of that was the idea that, you know, there was. There's no difference between fiction and nonfiction. And so one of the things I take on in that, in that book that I did with Rutledge in 21, the title of which slips to my mind right now. I have to look and see. What I call that thing was that there is a difference and that, you know, we all make a difference. It's not that, you know, Mark Twain made, you know, wonderful sorts of observations in, you know, the, in the novels that he wrote, but they're different and you know that. So that's part of what I talk about in the title of that book is Principles, approaches and issues and participant observation. And so I deal with these issues of, you know, epistemology there. And I'm probably not quite as firmly convinced that there's a difference between novel's representation of reality and social sciences reputations, representations as I once was. But I still think there is a line there and that it's well worth maintaining that line. Otherwise, I mean, social science could sit in their life, sit in their studies and make it all up. There would be no need to go, you know, actually deal with human beings.

A (32:07)

Right. And of course, no testing of real academic integrity. Looking back on your personal decades of work, how has your perspective on the occult and the esoteric scene changed? You've watched it from the 70s until now, 2025. Where do you see it going in the future and what have you recognized as a seismic shift?

C (32:29)

I, I guess one of the things that's changed and a big change. And I was involved with this to some extent too, particularly right after you were a student at usf. And to back up, there was no visible discernible neo pagan movement in the mid-1970s. It was basically all, it was there, but it was all underground. And that changed in the late 1970s. And so, you know, one of the things that happened was this huge blossoming of this neo pagan movement, which became very vital and has continued to do so. And I think it's maybe overshadowed this earlier New Age sort of movement, even though there's a lot of overlap between the two.

A (33:29)

Would you distinguish your personal views of the neopagan movement and what you would think of as the New Age movement?

C (33:36)

Well, the New Age movement is much more eclectic. And there are significant parts of it, of course, that have heavy overtones of conventional religion, Christianity and so on and so forth. That's less true of Neo paganism, although Neo paganism today is extremely eclectic. And you know, even in terms of the, the smaller witchcraft movement, for want of a better word, there's still a lot of eclecticism and a lot of sort of variety that, by the way, I see as healthy for these movements. They're, they're, they tend to be non dogmatic. And they're, they're not locked heavily into, you know, there's. There's no set one, there's no creed, there's no one set right way of beliefs. And that makes them fairly flexible, fairly adaptable to rapidly changing social conditions.

A (34:34)

I do recall there was a Gardenerian coven that you had brought into one of our lectures. And the ritual that they performed, I remember, was extremely eclectic. They were doing invocations from the Kabbalah and blending that with obviously traditional gardenarian practices and then starting to dance at the outside of Alexandrian practices. And that eclecticism was probably part of their vibrance, or at least it would appear that that was what maintained their buoyance and I would imagine their adaptability. But that does speak to the subject of the cultic milieu in the perspective of how it is that these cultic milieus existing today, deeming themselves either spiritual rather than religious, or maybe taking a more esoteric approach to the religiosity that they espouse. How does this look appropriate for our burgeoning technological age? How has the Internet, for instance, changed the attitudes some of these people working on the margins of society approach their personal spirituality or religion?

C (35:46)

Well, of course, the, the Internet has simply provided another form, you know, a. A media for these groups to use. And they have, and they, they've. They've used it very, very successfully, you know, to, to help secure the boundaries and the pathways of, of the cultic milieu and this, you know, this larger.

A (36:16)

Esoteric scene beyond the academic lens, what personal meaning have you drawn from the tarot and the esoteric traditions that you've studied?

C (36:25)

I suppose I was fairly heavily influenced by the witchcraft movement. I'm not personally ultra religious. I'm not even sure that I believe in the supernatural. It's probably safe to say that I'm largely agnostic in terms of my own personal beliefs. You know, one of the things that I do on a daily basis is ride my bike. And one day I ride it through the city. The city of Sierra Vista has lots of nice bike paths and stuff. And that's okay. You know, I get to see the city life doing that. It's a small town. But the other day I ride in the desert, I ride up through the mountains and I ride in the foothills. And for me, that, that involvement with nature is a religious experience, or what I would consider a. A religious experience.

A (37:25)

Has your scholarship affected the way you approach your own spirituality in the way.

C (37:30)

That I mentioned it before, that I, you know, I'M not, I'm not religious in any kind of conventional or traditional sort of sense, but I do highly value the natural world. And I think one of the ways in which modern Western civilization has really gone awry is by not having sufficient respect for it for the natural world. And I, for one, you know, I live off here in the desert and I love the desert. I feed the hummingbirds and, you know, the other birds and javelina come around my place and I don't see many of anymore, but there are deer around. I'm anxious to see bear and, and mountain lion. I see lots of coyotes. And I, you know, I really enjoy the natural world and, and, and wish that we would make that more a center of our culture. In a concern.

A (38:39)

Do you think that the cultic milieu will always remain fertile ground for future study and research?

C (38:45)

Well, yes. I mean, this whole world that we live in is, we don't understand it very well. We don't understand the social construction of reality very well. So there's, there's no end of, of work to be done. And that includes, you know, these religious groups off the, off the beaten path, which, with the decline of conventional religion, appear to be more and more significant. They aren't, they're not going to replace, you know, traditional religion. In fact, the, you know, what, what we seem to know about this decline of conventional religion is that more and more people just abandon religion. It just doesn't really, whether it's its conventional or unconventional form matter much to them. And I would expect that to continue. In fact, it's, yeah, I think, you know, even though I indicated that there's good, there's good evidence that this began well over 100 years ago, it's likely to accelerate it. You know, for the first 80, 90 years, people were willing to argue about whether decline was happening at all or not. At least in the United States it was. You know, clearly Europe had already gone through this, and I think it's going to, you know, it's going to accelerate. I, I will be very surprised if we come back 50 or 100 years from now and don't find religion in the United States being very similar to what it is in, in much of Europe, where, you know, the vast majority of the population is not really religious in much of any sense at all. All.

A (40:35)

What advice would you give to a young student today, undergraduate or postgrad, who feels drawn to the esoteric margins as you once were?

C (40:43)

I, I, I guess it probably would be to find something that they're interested in and to stay with it and to pursue it and to use that as kind of the starting point. You know, what initially seems like a small, insignificant phenomena oftentimes becomes, you know, the more you explore it and you work it, relevant to other much larger sorts of concerns. So I would say, you know, this would be my advice, actually, to students in general. You know, go find stuff that you really like to do and do it and stay with it, because that's what's going to sustain you over the long run.

A (41:31)

Very well said, Dr. Jorgensen. Thank you for bringing such clarity and depth to the study of traditions that too often remain in the shadows. Your work demonstrates that the margins are not simply peripheral, but essential to understanding meaning and identity are constructed in modern life. On a personal note, it is deeply meaningful for me to share this space with you. Having once been your student and now having the privilege to engage with you as a colleague in dialogue, I know our listeners will take as much from your insights as I once did in the classroom. It has been an honor to sit with you today. Thank you very, very much.

C (42:07)

Thank you, Juan Carlos. You have my utmost respect.

A (42:11)

I appreciate that. Dr. Jorgensen, I hope to talk to you again soon. And be careful out there on the bike.

C (42:16)

Okay, I will. Cheers then.

A (42:22)

That was Dr. Daniel Jorgensen, a scholar.

B (42:25)

Whose careful attention is into the margins of religious life has helped us see that what is dismissed as fringe is often the place where the deepest innovations occur. His work challenges us to look again at how meaning is constructed and how communities endure without institutions. I want to thank Dr. Jorgensen for joining me and for sharing a body of work that continues to expand the horizons of sociology and religious studies. For our listeners, I hope this conversation has stirred not only your curiosity about the esoteric, but also your sense of how human beings, across every tradition, keep building shelters of meaning against the chaos of the world in their attempts at understanding the observable unknown. Before we part ways today, if this conversation stirred something in you or offered offered a spark of insight, would you take just a moment to share that light back? Leave us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. It's one of the simplest ways to help the observable unknown reach new seekers and fellow travelers. Your words matter more than you know, and they help this circle grow. Until next time, Remember, what appears unknowable often stands for right before us, waiting to be observed through both the lens of science and the wisdom of spirit. This is Dr. Juan Carlos Ray of crowscubboard.com inviting you to look deeper into the observable unknown.