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The “Force” of Modern Myth:

Religious Pastiche and Ethical Community-Building in the Context of Star Wars

by

Will Walker

Jason Josephson-Storm, Advisor

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Religion

WILLIAMS COLLEGE

Williamstown, Massachusetts

5/22/2017 Walker 2

Table of Contents

Introducing This Project ...... 3

Chapter One: Religious Pastiche in the Ethics of Star Wars Staking a Claim ...... 9 Star Wars’ Sources ...... 15 The Constructive Ethics of Star Wars ...... 41

Chapter Two: Jediism and the Lived Ethical Communities of Star Wars Setting the Stage ...... 47 The Jedi in Practice ...... 53 The Constructive Ethics of Jediism ...... 75

Drawing Conclusions ...... 77

Works Cited ...... 85

Acknowledgments ...... 88

Walker 3

Introducing This Project

The story of this thesis is, in a sense, the story of two distinctive Western myths. The first, and probably more familiar, starts in 1917, with sociologist Max Weber’s famous speech Wissenschaft als Beruf or “Science as a Vocation.” As Weber provocatively describes in that address: “The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the ‘disenchantment of the world.’ Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations.”1 In other words, modernity’s defining quality is its “disenchantment;” our lives differ from the lives of the ancients primarily because we have lost some sense of cosmic order or cohesion.

Consequently, for Weber,2 and the generation of modernist and post-modernist theorists that have come after him, we’re stuck in the alienating world of contemporary commercialism and capitalism. Where earlier generations had strong mythic narratives, a powerful sense of community, and a coherent system of ethics to live by and die for, modernity has a gaping lacuna – what Jason Josephson-Storm characterizes as the effect of

“the rise of instrumental reason, the gradual alienation of humanity from nature, and the production of a bureaucratic and technological life world stripped of mystery and wonder.”3

And that’s where Weber and his ilk leave us – dangling in descriptions of post-enchanted modernity, with no discernible of way forward.

The other story starts almost 60 years later, in May of 1973, when a 29 young motor- head and experimental filmmaker named George Lucas wrote the treatment for what was

1 H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, trans. and eds., Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford 2 Of course, Weber’s affiliation with “disenchantment” has not gone un-interrogated, especially in Jason Josephson-Storm’s recent book The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic Modernity and the Birth of the Human Sciences. However, while Weber’s own mythical/mystical history might be more complex than we would initially expect, his primary historical significance is still as the perpetuator of the “disenchantment” narrative. 3 Jason Josephson-Storm, The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 4. Walker 4 then merely called “The Star Wars.”4 Lucas, like Weber before him, was also interested in the mythical past: especially as it was represented in the romantic American and Japanese cinema of his boyhood. However, unlike Weber, he did not see the notion of a modern mythology as intrinsically hopeless. On the contrary, since its inception, Lucas saw the Star

Wars saga as having an explicitly ethical and existential function. As he confessed to one biographer: “I wanted to make a kids’ film that would strengthen contemporary mythology and introduce a kind of basic morality.”5 Lucas wanted to create the very meta-narrative that

Weber saw missing from the world.

In a sense, then, the basic purpose of this project is to connect the problem posed by

Weber with the solution posited by Lucas. Rather than accepting “disenchantment” as an inevitable aspect of contemporary experience, we will seek to show the way popular, commercial Star Wars films as enact a certain kind of enchantment – the way they helpfully recreate or re-order our existence. Star Wars, then, is not only an important piece of modern aesthetic culture, but an important piece of contemporary mythology. Its significance is not merely commercial, sociological, or aesthetic, but also ethical and religious: orienting its viewers towards a distinctive way of living or being in the world.

Of course, interpreting the Star Wars franchise in light of its religious significance is hardly a novel project. Throughout its three-decade-long history, Star Wars has been the familiar site of criticism and theorization on the behalf of religious studies departments, mythologists, and original practitioners. In a 1999 interview with Bill Moyers, series creator

Lucas acknowledged this explicitly: “When the film came out, almost every single religion came out and used Star Wars as an example of their religion, and were able to relate it to

4 Dale Pollock, Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas (Hollywood: Samuel French Trade, 1990), 134. 5 Ibid., 144. Walker 5 young people [that way] . . . [as] a tool that can be used to make old stories new.”6 The religious interest reached a fever pitch in 1988, with the televised The Power of Myth, a six- part Moyers special with Joseph Campbell, which made use of Star Wars as a version of modern myth. Since then, the religious dimensions of Star Wars have been examined in innumerable scholarly and pseudo-scholarly iterations, including long treatises on the

“mythological” dimensions of the films, esoteric guides for how to live out the “Jedi” life, and, most importantly, an entire “invented-religious” movement called “Jediism,” which involves a complex and sophisticated philosophy claiming millions of members world-wide.

But despite the noted and notable religious significance of the Star Wars film franchise, very little constructive work has been done to explicate exactly how these films model a coherent set of ethics, or how those ethics might apply to groups of living practitioners. Rather than taking the films or their religious devotees seriously, most academic work has been constrained by strictly sociological concerns, treating the films either as political relics of the early 80s, or bloodless catalysts for contemporary “fan experiences,” and not as substantive and significant religious texts in their own right.

The more restricted purpose of this paper, then, is to fill part of this scholarly gap. In particular, we will draw on the tools provided by the study of religion, biblical exegesis, and cinematic studies in order to re-construct a version of the ethical system the Star Wars films attempt to create – a pastiche of religious traditions, pop-cultural conventions, and mythological archetypes, woven together in distinctly cinematic frame. We will then, in a parallel project, attempt to determine the major tenets of the invented religious tradition

“Jediism” and trace the real-life ethical applications and implications of the Star Wars films.

Finally, by way of a brief conclusion, we will attempt to identify the overlaps and contradictions between the theoretical and applied ethical systems Star Wars constructs, and

6 The Mythology of Star Wars, directed by Pamela Mason Wagner (1999; New York, Films for the Humanities, 2000), DVD, 27:08. Walker 6 make some comment on what that might mean for the study of the religious aspects of Star

Wars, and pop-cultural artifacts, more generally. We hope that this paper will serve not only to provide meaningful analysis of the American Star Wars phenomena but model a mode of religious studies that takes elements of the popular zeitgeist and their “true believers” as more than just passing sociological trends. While the scope of this particular investigation might be limited to a “galaxy far, far away,” we hope its spirit and objective might extend beyond the cinematic canon of the seven7 existent Star Wars films and into the realm of “enchantment” more generally.

7 For reasons of both timing and substance, this paper will not concern itself with 2016’s Rogue One, the first of the extra-Skywalkerian “Star Wars stories.” Walker 7

Chapter One: Religious Pastiche in the Ethics of Star Wars

When George Lucas first met his hero, American mythologist and celebrity- intellectual Joseph Campbell, in 1984, no one really expected their relationship to affect an entire universe. Of course, everyone knew how much Campbell meant to Lucas. It was well understood, among the film-maker’s tight circle of friends how much he appreciated

Campbell’s landmark The Hero with a Thousand Faces and how important Campbell’s comparative mythology was to the recently-crafted Star Wars franchise.8 Despite his rising

Hollywood star, the notoriously-shy Lucas never reached out to his own celebrity-crush until the summer of ‘84, when Campbell was in town giving a talk about (appropriately enough) outer-space. Afterwards, the two men were introduced by a mutual friend – Nobel Laureate

Barbara McClintock – who knew about Lucas’s interest in mythology and thought that they would get along swimmingly.9 That hypothesis turned out to be correct and Lucas and

Campbell began a friendship that lasted for several years, into the late ‘80s.

However, the real turning point in the relationship (and the place where our story formally begins) came several years later, when Lucas invited Campbell and his wife to his recently constructed home-and-production-facility, Skywalker Ranch. Obviously, Lucas had often referenced his “completed” Star Wars trilogy to Campbell. But Campbell (unlike the rest of America) had never seen the films. Which is why, on this weekend just after his fortieth birthday Lucas finally asked the question that would seem, to the rest of us, effectively inevitable. As he recalls: “I talked about Star Wars, and he’d heard about Star

Wars. I said, ‘Would you be interested at all in seeing it?’ At this point I’d finished all three of them. He said, ‘I’ll see all three of them.’ I said, ‘Would you like to see one a day?’

8 Stephen and Robin Larsen, Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2002), 541. 9 Ibid., 542. Walker 8 because he was going to be here for around a week. ‘No, no, I want to see them all at once.’”10

What followed was an all-day marathon, an experience Lucas remembers as being

“actually the first time anybody, I think, had ever seen all three of them together at one time”11 But despite the intensity of that day and evening, the power of the moment did not escape Campbell. As their mutual friend McClintock (another visitor at Skywalker ranch that weekend) remembers: “[At the end] It was just us and George. It was very quiet in the dark, and Joe said, ‘You know, I thought real art had stopped with Picasso, Joyce, and Mann. Now

I know it hasn’t.’”12

Of course, Campbell’s statement is characteristically vague and characteristically sweeping. We can’t be sure, for instance, if Campbell meant that he saw a direct creative line running through Picassao et alia and terminating in Star Wars? Or whether he meant that Star

Wars somehow completed the work done by Joyce and Mann: a contemporary, commercial vehicle for the philosophy of the modernists. We can’t even be sure whether Campbell actually meant “great art” or if he meant something more along the lines of “great myth:” a film series that accurately and succinctly re-tells the stories of old.

Consequently, the project of this chapter is to academically re-interpret Campbell’s evocative, but fairly ambiguous phrase. In particular, we will attempt to uncover the specific mythological sources of Star Wars and show the way that those sources are fused together to construct new mythical or religious ethics. We will take seriously the notion that Star Wars provides its own ethical-aesthetic model, and examine the ways in which its visual and dramatic devices operate to evoke and then challenge certain emotional responses in its viewers. Finally, we will attempt to prove, through rigorous textual analysis, that there is

10 Ibid., 543. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. Walker 9 something morally and philosophically valuable in theses films.13 That, far from “mere entertainment,” these movies are holding up what noted scholar of religion Vincent Wimbush would call an “ethical mirror” to our world: an imaginary whose stakes and situations help us navigate our own complicated, multivalent ethical lives.14 In a sense, then, this section will work as a scholastically-sensitive reconstruction of Lucas’s original project. Unlike the second chapter of this thesis, which will examine the way that Star Wars functions for a particular community of believers, our methodology here will be exclusively textual and interpretive: bringing the resources of religious hermeneutics and mythological theory to bear on this particular pop-cultural leviathan.

STAKING A CLAIM

Surveying the Terrain

However, if we are going to try to elaborate on that insight Campbell had on his first viewing back in the late ‘80s, we might be served by examining the way that his position has manifested itself in the scholarly and pop-scholarly community. Indeed, soon after 1987’s

The Power of Myth (a six-part television interview15 between Campbell and Bill Moyers which heavily featured Star Wars as an example of the “new myth”16) the popular-academic market became saturated with accounts of Star Wars’ mythological resonances. In spite of the volume of published material devoted to the philosophical, religious, and mythic elements

13 We will be restricting our analysis to the seven existent feature-films and not the rest of the Star Wars “canon,” because of both a lack of space (it would take a literal life-time to consume, much less substantively critique all of the commercial and creative outgrowths of the Star Wars franchise), and also in order to focus in on the most popular aspects of the Star Wars universe – the films themselves. 14 Vincent Wimbush, African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Structure (New York: Continuum Press, 2001), 27-8. For further consideration of Wimbush’s ethics, see “The Constructive Ethics of Star Wars” section at the end of this chapter. 15 Filmed at Lucas’s very same “Skywalker Ranch.” 16 Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, ed. Betty Sue Flowers (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 18. Walker 10 of Star Wars, the explicitly academic17 attention that the issue has received is relatively meager. Instead, when Star Wars is addressed by the academy (which is relatively infrequently), it is discussed in the context of its unprecedented commercial success or the political implications of its fictional world.18 What’s more, even those academic attempts that take the religious and aesthetic elements of Star Wars seriously, like Andrew Gordon’s chapter in Joel W. Martin and Conrad Eugene Ostwalt’s Screening the Sacred: Religion,

Myth, and Ideology in Popular American Film, are largely derivative of the argument

Campbell makes in The Hero with a Thousand Faces and The Power of Myth. Though certainly praiseworthy for the attention they pay to one of the most important cultural and artistic events of the last century, they unwittingly ignore some of the most nuanced or conceptually sophisticated readings that the Star Wars saga offers.19

One of our greatest challenges, then, will be finding a compelling way to engage with these films without merely re-capitulating Campbell20 or reducing them to their sociological parts. In particular, we will attempt to use an expressly non-reductive version of

“comparative mythology” to identify important themes and cues in Star Wars and then show how those themes are interrelated or complicated by one another. Rather than finding the

“monomyth” behind all stories, we will attempt to use various existent mythic traditions as an interpretive “way into” one story: the Star War saga.

17 By academic, we here mean articles published in peer-reviewed journals or books published by traditional academic presses. For example, while Mary Henderson’s The Magic of Myth (New York: Batnam, 1997) is undeniably thorough and factually reliable, it is meant for mass-market consumption rather than for an explicitly scholarly audience and therefore would not meet our standard for “academic” work. 18 Examples include the majority of articles published in the 2012 volume Sex, Politics, and Religion in Star Wars: An Anthology (Plymouth, UK: Scarecrow Press, 2012), Chris Taylor’s How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise (New York: Basic Books, 2014) and, most recently, Cass Sustein’s The World According to Star Wars (New York: Harper Collins, 2016), an examination of economics as seen through the lens of the Star Wars films, with some personal meditations on fatherhood and growing up thrown in for good measure. 19 Of course, this critique is not universal. On the contrary, many scholarly essays, including Julien Fielding’s “Star Wars and the Great Eastern Religions,” and Andrew Bank’s “May the Force Be with Jew: The Jedi- Hebraic Connection” do treat Star Wars with the rigor and nuance that it deserves. Such examples are just rare. 20 One of the critical concerns many contemporary readers have with Campbell is that thinker’s tendency to reduce problems and ignore cultural contexts. See Robert Segal’s “The Romantic Appeal of Joseph Campbell,” Christian Century April 4, 1990, 332-335. Walker 11

Where to Look

In order to render a version of this sort of pastiche-analysis that is both compelling and complete, we have to limit our discussion to a set of features in the films that can be understood without resorting to clichéd generalities about the “ur-story” or the “power of myth.” Consequently, strictly aesthetic themes or motifs (like the duality of light and dark, or the use of certain, repeated plot-constructions like the “Belly of the Beast”) are less useful for our analysis because their significance necessarily relies on the sort of “psychological, metaphysical and mystical” modes of meaning-making that Campbell is often criticized for.21

Perhaps the richest and most interesting area of analysis, then, will be in the way that

Star Wars operates as a vehicle for a kind of ethics. In other words, an exposition of the way that the Star Wars films draw on “mythical” or “religious” symbols and imagery to construct their own, largely unique, “theory . . . of moral values.”22 The benefit of this particular topical area is twofold. First: it allows us to concern ourselves with an explicitly “interactive,” and hence, existentially responsive version of the Star Wars story. By focusing on those features of the films that might make an actual impact on particular human lives, we will be able to hone in on a version of the text that is not merely aesthetically or artistically coherent but actually substantively meaningful; we will be able trace the “real-world” consequences of the analysis we are conducting.23 However, secondly (and maybe even more interestingly) an ethical treatment of the “mythical” or “religious” elements of Star Wars seems to be uniquely in-line with the artistic agenda of the series’ author, George Lucas.24 Despite his relative

21 Segal, “The Romantic Appeal of Joseph Campbell,” Christian Century 334. 22 Merriam-Webster, s.v. “ethic,” accessed December 12, 2016. https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/ethics 23 A project that will be explicitly taken up in the second chapter of this thesis. 24 Authorship is a particularly fraught issue in cinematic studies, since movies, unlike books, paintings, symphonies, and poems are very much the product of collective creative effort. The issue is even more complicated in the case of Star Wars, since Lucas, the creator of the franchise and executive-producer of the first six films, did not himself direct Episodes V or VI, and had no creative involvement in the most recent installment, Episode VII. However, we would contend that, given Lucas’ unique position as inventor of the Star Wars universe, his voice and his creative intention should be privileged as the “authorial voice” of Star Wars Walker 12 shyness, one of the things the Star Wars creator has been most explicit about is the way his films are supposed to ethically orient human life in some significant way. As he put it in a

1999 interview with Bill Moyers, “what these films deal with is the fact that we all have good and evil inside of us and we can choose the way we want the balance to go . . . the issues of friendship and your obligation to your fellow man and ther other people around you.”25A focus on the morality of the Star Wars saga is not merely a convenient way to limit our investigation, then, but a project in fundamental concert with the way that these texts were constructed. By Lucas’s own admission – maybe even insistence – Star Wars is not merely meant to evoke mythical or religious themes and symbols but to orient and affect the ethical lives of its viewers in measurable and demonstrable ways.

How to Look?

Unfortunately, even if we’ve limited our inquiry to the ethical model the Star Wars saga creates, we still have to explicate the mode of analysis we want to take up. Perhaps our first stop, on this count, should be towards a clearer understanding of what we mean by

“religious myth.” Indeed, while we certainly want to point out the way Star Wars operates as a sort of collective social story,26 we would fall short of claiming these films act in exactly the same way as the straightforwardly mythic accounts from Genesis or Hesiod’s Theogony.

Perhaps the best “definition” to use, then, would be the one Burton Mack provides in an essay he wrote for Postscripts. That is, a story from an “imagined world,” which “reflects social interests” and “enjoy[s] collective recognition on the part of [the] people.”27 Not only is Mack’s explanation loose enough to fit the general version of “myth” (or “scripture”) that we want to engage with – it also usefully emphasizes the real-world social importance of this

(insofar as that voice can exist at all). In other words, while Lucas is not the ultimate arbiter of what counts as relevant in Star Wars, his input is still most interesting and most orienting for our study (see Robert K. Johnston’s Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue, 151-2). 25 The Mythology of Star Wars, 2:50. 26 An argument that will become even more important in the second chapter of this thesis. 27 Burton Mack, “How Myths Work,” Postscripts 5, no. 1 (2009): 56. Walker 13 sort of religious narrative. As Mack explains, myths both “make a difference . . . in the construction of our societies and the way our societies work” and are also explicitly constructed “in the interest of our social formations and their register of human values.”28

“Myth” is not merely an anthropological or religious category but an aesthetic category: a particular type of narrative that helps provide a template for life and lived experience.

Consequently, by sitting with this particular understanding of myth, we can move towards an existentially productive interpretation of the ethics of the Star Wars films while still maintaining a Campbellian emphasis on the stories and legends of old.

In terms of methodolgy, we would maintain that almost all of the existent literature on

Star Wars unnecessarily “essentializes” the films in basically the same way. Take, as a representative case study, Andrew Gordon’s aforementioned essay “Star Wars: A Myth for

Our Time.”29 Luckily for us, much of Gordon’s essay is genuinely interesting and illuminating. His discussion of Star Wars as a “pastiche which reworks a multitude of old stories, and yet creates a complete and self-sufficient world of its own” is remarkably sophisticated, and, in fact, summarizes the method we are attempting to engineer in this very paper.30 Although Gordon’s interpretive heart is certainly in the right place, the way he goes about his analysis of Star Wars as a “modern myth” reveals itself as too dependently

Campbellian to have much sway in our contemporary academic climate. Rather than examining the “pastiche” of myths and stories operative within the Star Wars universe,

Gordon claims that Star Wars derives its “fundamental appeal” from its “deliberately old- fashioned plot, which has its roots deep in American popular fantasy, and, deeper yet, in the

28 Ibid, 53. 29 This article was originally printed in Literature/Film Quarterly 6.4 (Fall 1978) after the release of the first Star Wars film, but was later re-printed, in revised version, in Joel W. Martin and Conrad E. Ostwalt Jr.’s Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth, and Ideology in Popular American Film (Boulder: Westview, 1995). Of course, Gordon’s article is somewhat problematic because of its early date (1978). That concern can be partially alleviated, however, by the fact that Gordon updated his argument for its re-printing in Screening the Sacred, incorporating a few references to both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. 30 Andrew Gordon, “Star Wars: A Myth for Our Time” in Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth, and Ideology in Popular American Film, ed. Joel Martin and Conrad E. Ostwalt, Jr. (Boulder: Westview, 1995), 73. Walker 14 epic structure of what Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces calls the

‘monomyth’ [Emphasis Mine].”31

Right from the outset, that notion might strike us as strange. As we noted at the very beginning of this paper, the “ur” story that Campbell describes in The Hero with a Thousand

Faces – the template of “Departure,” “Initiation,” and “Return” that Campbell saw present in every mythological story – was explicitly used by Lucas in his construction of the Star Wars films.32 Given, then, that Gordon’s scholarly method is generally representative of contemporary “mythic” readings of Star Wars,33 we can begin to see where the problem lies.

Rather than examining the Star Wars films as a “pastiche” in its own cultural context and on its own cultural terms, most “mythic” considerations of the Star Wars saga essentially stop by measuring the films against the model that Campbell describes in The Hero with a Thousand

Faces, a template that was explicitly used by Lucas himself. Rather than pushing towards new and original hypotheses about the aesthetic and religious qualities of these movies, modern writers merely regurgitate the circular parallels between Campbell’s “monomyth” and the

Star Wars universe, parallels that were consciously coded into the films at their inception.

However, by incorporating this new, more practical definition of myth into the “Star

Wars as pastiche” portion of Gordon’s thesis, we can move onto more constructive, more critically-responsive ground. In effect, we can use individual, cultural “myths” or religious stories to show the ways the films represent particular ethical situations in an aesthetically resonant way without making broader claims about the “transcendental” or “universal” nature of that resonance. Rather than starting with Campbell’s “monomyth” and checking off the ways that the Star Wars films fulfill its criteria, we can identify the individual mythic sources

31 Ibid. 32 Stephen and Robin Larsen, 541. 33 Of course, for reasons of time and space, we can’t explicate every version of this argument. Other particularly notorious examples of this form of analysis, however, can be found in Mary Henderson’s 1997 work Star Wars: The Magic of Myth, in Michael Hanson and Max Kay’s book Star Wars: The New Myth (Bloomington: Xlibris, 2002) and in Steven A. Galipeau’s The Journey of Luke Skywalker (Chicago: Open Court, 2001). Walker 15 of different scenes or sequences in the movies and use them to understand the way the films make meaning and build connections with their audiences. Therefore, the method that we propose works from the “inside-out” rather than from the “outside-in:” we will attempt to build out from the text of Star Wars, rather than de-construct it based on some external scholarly metric.

In sum, while we might be restricting our own constructive analysis to the ethical models that the films create, our hope is that we have identified and implemented a version of

“comparative mythology” that is both attentive to the sort of “aesthetic arrest”34 Campbell was so concerned with, and yet which also moves past a narrowly “structural” reading of the text. While the scope of our paper might be limited to a particular subject area, we believe that the method we are recommending could have significance and application far beyond the boundaries of this short analysis.

STAR WARS’ SOURCES

Look to the East

But how does Star Wars use these mythic sources to its advantage? And what ethical system do they work together create? The answer to that more directed question is difficult to articulate (and will concern the rest of this chapter). In summary, we might argue that Star

Wars synthesizes a number of different religious and ethical traditions with a Christian, three- act “Hollywood” narrative arc to model its own, substantive version of religious ethics. Put differently, the films use a variety of verbal and visual cues to put distinctive interpretive

“readings” (in particular, Daoist, Buddhist, and Mystical) into conversation with a traditionally Christian narrative of temptation, redemption, and salvation; Star Wars plays so well with the American imagination by taking those ethical elements we loosely regarded as

34 Joseph Campbell, Wings of Art: Joseph Campbell on James Joyce, Lecture I (Prince Frederick, MD: HighBridge Audio, 1995), Audio Cassette, 9:00. Walker 16

“foreign” and putting them in the context of and in conflict with a familiar story-structure and moral architecture.

Interestingly, the most important and most apparent example of this pattern comes in the saga’s general interest in “Eastern” religion and culture. A quick explanatory note: the phrase “Eastern” is, itself, general, reductive and ambiguous. One of the thornier methodological problems currently being tackled the study of religions involves figuring out exactly what we, in America, might mean by “Eastern” and how we ought to understand its inheritance and appropriation. However, given our unique focus on the “interactive” elements of Star Wars, we do not need to concern ourselves with “Eastern Religion” proper, as a well- defined historical or academic category. Instead, our emphasis necessarily remains on

“Eastern” sources as they are perceived by contemporary American audiences. In other words, we do not need to worry about the films’ fidelity to authentic traditions and source- materials but rather to the way that Americans might pick up on certain cues and link them back to their own version of particular religious or cultural traditions

Consequently, one important thing to examine, before we move forward, is the way that Lucas uses a visual and linguistic tableau of “Eastern” sources to “set the scene” for the intellectual or philosophical work he wants to do, conjuring an image of “the Mythical East” without too closely tethering himself to any one intellectual or religious tradition. This phenomenon is described particularly well (and particularly critically) in Jane Iwamura’s explication of “Digital Orientalism:” a term that author uses to mean “cultural stereotyping by visual forms of media . . . [that] adds gravitas to the narrative” through the use of generally or stereotypically “Eastern” elements.35 In effect, Lucas, like an entire generation of

Hollywood film-makers before him, is implicitly directing his audiences to look towards the

35 Jane Iwamura, Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popular Culture (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010), 7. Walker 17

“East” in order to add a certain “gravitas” or philosophical intrigue to his work; he is using

“Eastern” elements to achieve a specific critical reaction from his intended audience.

These elements are more-or-less significant throughout the seven-part Star Wars saga.

Some of them, as Julien Fielding catalogues in her essay “Beyond Judeo-Christianity: Star

Wars and the Great Eastern Religions,” exist in the strange hybrid version of English the characters of Star Wars use.36 Names, in particular, are frequently Vedic, Sanskrit, or East

Asian in origin. The wife of Anakin Skywalker (later Darth Vader) “Padme Amidala” derives her name from the Sanskrit word Padma, a reference to the lotus flower that “symbolizes purity and lucidity” in the Buddhist tradition.37 Likewise “Jedi,” the mythical peace-keeping order which operates at the narrative of the center of the Star Wars films gets its name from the “Japanese term jidaigeki, a ‘period film’ that retells old legends, re-creates epic historical events, and keeps the spirit of the samurai alive.”38

Lucas’s “Eastern tableau” also comes into focus in the visual vocabulary of the films.

Lucas himself expands upon this point in the 1999 Moyers interview, Star Wars and

Mythology. As he articulates: “In one case, I was specifically looking for an Asian influence

. . . and so I go to the research library and I look all over Asia from the Middle East, all the way to the Islands, to find these unique ceremonial costumes.”39 Fielding further elucidates this point in her afore-mentioned essay: “[a]lthough each Jedi Knight is dressed a bit differently, all wear a variation of the Japanese kimono. As costume designer John Mollo said, ‘George (Lucas) wanted (Obi-Wan) to look part monk and part Samurai warrior.’”40 In fact, Lucas’ interest in the Far East was so pervasive, that, according to Fielding, he “even considered making the entire film in Japanese with subtitles and casting Japanese actors in

36 Julien Fielding, “Beyond Judeo-Christianity: Star Wars and the Great Eastern Religions,” in Sex, Politics, and Religion in Star Wars, ed. Douglas Brode and Leah Deyneka (Plymouth, UK: Scarecrow Press, 2012), 25. 37 Ibid., 26. 38 Ibid., 28. 39 The Mythology of Star Wars, 5:22. 40 Fielding, “Beyond Judeao-Christianity,” 31. Walker 18 several key roles.”41 Therefore, although the purpose of Star Wars might be to “tell an old myth in a new way,” many of the specific “old myths” being told are East Asian and, in particular, Japanese (a cultural tradition which Iwamura notes as being especially prone to evoke “Orientalizing” impulses).42

However, the inclusion of certain “Eastern”-oriented verbal and visual cues do not, on their own, constitute an argument. On the contrary, the one thing Fielding misses in her article is the way that these images and associations work together to establish the cultural context Lucas wants to put his fictional Jedi in the midst of. In other words, the significance of Star Wars’ “Eastern” motifs is their ability to evoke a particular moral or ethical system.

The fact that Padme means “lotus” or that the Jedi dress like samurai is not merely accidental, but part of Lucas’ explicit mythic-ethical project – the director forcing us to turn our interpretive gaze to an imagined “Far East.” Consequently, while we might have looked at the way the scene is set, we have not, yet, engaged in the rigorous ethical or philosophical work Lucas is trying to move us towards. 43

The “Way” of the Jedi

Perhaps the best next step, then, would be an examination of a “reading” of the Star

Wars films that seems particularly obvious: the comparison between the Jedi and Daoism, a correspondence that has overtly excited the scholarly and pseudo-scholarly community since the 1977 release of the original44 Star Wars film.45 Even a cursory look at Star Wars reveals a

41 Ibid. 42 The Mythology of Star Wars, 30:55. 43 Unfortunately, this hypothesis has not been accepted unambiguously. Certain scholars (like Andrew Bank in his article “May the Force Be with Jew: The Jedi-Hebraic Connection” in the aforementioned Sex, Politics, and Religion in Star Wars anthology) argue that the Jedi actually represent other mythic and/or ethical traditions. And yet, the preponderance of visual, linguistic, and narrative cues the films offer seem to point directly towards the Jedi as an explicitly “Eastern” organization. While these other readings might be viable, they are ultimately unpersuasive. 44 While telling seven consecutive stories, the Star Wars saga was, famously, not released in linear narrative order. Instead, the first film, released in 1977, began a three-film “trilogy” (“The Original Trilogy”) which saw major cinematic releases every three years from 1977-83. That was followed by a trilogy preceding “The Original Trilogy” in narrative order (often-called “The Prequel Trilogy”), including Episodes I, II, and III, which was released from 1999-2005. This has, finally (and to much recent commercial excitement) been Walker 19 number of interesting Daoist resonances. Master Yoda, for instance, could be easily construed as a sort of version of a Daoist “immortal” or xianren, a spiritual leader who has attained long life and tremendous power through constant meditation and devotion to particular philosophical principles.46 Likewise, the Jedi emphasis on controlled mindlessness or “inaction” is almost certainly a sort of riff on the Daoist notion of wuwei. Compare Luke

Skywalker’s famous climactic trench-run in A New Hope with certain descriptions of wuwei in the Daodejing: just as the ghost47 of Obi-Wan Kenobi encourages Luke to “use the Force” and “trust his feelings,” Laozi encourages his disciples to “act without doing / work without effort.”48 In fact, even some aspects of the moral metaphysics of Star Wars seem to evoke a sort of Daoist balance between “light” and “dark.” Although frequently interpreted as striking a dichotomy between ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ the two sides of Star Wars’ “Force” might be read, in a more Daoist sense, as being a sort of “yin” and “yang” – two sides of the same coin, which must exist in order to manifest the “wholeness” of existence. As the villain Emperor Palpatine says at the end of Episode III: “if one is to understand the great mystery, one must understand all its aspects, not just the dogmatic, narrow view of the Jedi.”49

However, although the visual and metaphysical arrows towards Daoism are very well drawn, it is unclear whether Star Wars actually models a straightforwardly Daoist ethics. In

succeeded by a “Sequel Trilogy,” whose first installment, Episode VII, was released in the winter of 2015 and which is expected to come to a close in the summer of 2019. While I will refer to films by both the order of their narrative “episode” and their release date, I will try to make that distinction as clear as possible. For example, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, might be referred to as both the “fifth episode of the saga,” or “the second film Lucas released,” depending on the particular context of the statement. “The original film,” however, will always refer to the first film released, 1977’s Episode IV: A New Hope. 45 See Nick Jamilla’s “Defining the Jedi Order: Star Wars’ Narrative and the Real World” in Sex, Politics and Star Wars, as well as D.W. Kreger’s The Tao of Yoda (Palmdale: Windham Everitt Publishing, 2013). and John M. Porter’s The Tao of Star Wars (Atlanta: Green Dragon Books, 2002). 46 Livia Kohn, ed., The Taoist Experience, (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), 271. Yoda is also portrayed, especially in Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, as a sort of doddering, senile old man, a characterization frequently associated with wisdom in many Daoist traditions 47 Another interesting comparison with Daosim: just as powerful Jedi can come back from death to provide counsel, particularly powerful xianren can become powerful guiding spirits (called shen) after their deaths. 48 Stephen Mitchell, trans. Tao Te Jing, (New York: Harper Perennial, 1994), Chapter 63. 49 Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, directed by George Lucas (2005; Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2005), DVD, 1:03:27. This quotation is made less compelling by the fact that Palpatine is perhaps the only unambiguously “evil” character in the series. Walker 20 fact, those aspects of the films that we might call most plainly Daoist – the division between light and dark, the emphasis on a unifying “Force,” the interest in controlled meditation – are also those characteristics of the films that would be most difficult for their viewers to live out.

For instance, while Daoism makes no normative distinction between “light” and “dark,” Star

Wars most certainly does – associating the “light” side of the “The Force” with compassion, democracy, and heroism, and the “dark” side with greed, totalitarianism, and selfishness.

Consequently, while Doaism would encourage its practitioners to find “balance”50 between two metaphysical antipodes, Star Wars would have its viewers pursue one side of “The

Force” at the expense of the other. Therefore, although the mechanics of the “galaxy far, far away” are influenced by a sort of Daoist mysticism, those mystical elements don’t directly address the “issues of friendship and your obligation to your fellow man and other people that around you” that Lucas said Star Wars is oriented towards.51 Although Daoism is certainly one tradition Lucas draws on for his pastiche, it is not, in-and-of-itself, any sort of skeleton key to the Star Wars franchise.

The Ethics of Detachment

Perhaps a more compelling “Eastern” reading of Star Wars could involve a comparison to Buddhism. For one thing, unlike in the case of Daoism, there is a plethora of evidence to suggest that “pop-Buddhist” sources like the teachings of Shunryu Suzuki and the

Dalai Lama would be both accessible and influential in the lives of many American Star

Wars fans. According to religion scholar Charles Prebish, the “Japanese Zen Buddhism” which took root in America around the 1950s had a major impact on the religious thought of the latter half of the 20th century, influencing notable “Beat” writers like Allen Ginsburg and

50 Interestingly, Star Wars does use the language of “balance,” it does not treat it as a way of giving two opposites equal share or attention. For instance, while Anakin Skywalker is expected to bring “balance” to “The Force,” it is fairly clear, within the context of that films, that “balance” necessitates the triumph of goodness or “light” over evil. 51 The Mythology of Star Wars, 2:50. Walker 21

Jack Kerouac, and popularizing a version of Zen “meditation” throughout the country.52 The

Dalai Lama, and his version of “detachment” and “compassion” have also been particularly popular in America. As Prebish sees it, one of the most important reasons for the influx of

American Buddhism in the 20th century has been frequent visits by “global Buddhist leaders” like the Dalai Lama, whose 1989 Nobel Peace Prize and frequent best-selling books have also helped to confirm his significance in the American popular milieu.53 In effect, where

Daoism’s popularity has been relatively recent,54 the language and iconicity of Buddhism (at least in its broadly-construed American formulation) would have been a plausible and present influence on Lucas from the very earliest inception of the Star Wars saga.

What’s more, a closer examination of the films themselves, and especially of Lucas’s

“Prequel” Trilogy, reveals an overriding emphasis on the Buddhist philosophy of compassion and detachment. Take, as an example, two particularly telling conversations the afore- mentioned Master Yoda has with Anakin Skywalker, the young Jedi who later becomes

Darth Vader. In the first (midway through Episode I: The Phantom Menace), Skywalker is interrogated about the feelings he has for the mother he just left behind as a slave. After Yoda asks whether Anakin is afraid to lose his mother, an indignant Skywalker responds: “what’s that got to do with anything.” Yoda’s response is uncharacteristically dark: “Everything. Fear is the path to the dark side: fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to . . . suffering.

I sense much fear in you.”55

52 Charles Prebish, “Introduction,” in The Faces of Buddhism in America, ed. Charles Prebish et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 4. This data is particularly compelling given the fact that George Lucas grew up just two hours from San Francisco during the late ‘50s and ‘60s, around the time Suzuki would have been most popular. 53 Ibid, 8. It is also worthy of note that one of the Dalai Lama’s most popular books, The Art of Happiness (cited earlier), was released just a few years before Lucas’ “Prequel” trilogy came out, increasing the probability that that text might have been used as a source or companion to the later Star Wars films. 54 Diana Eck, “American Daoism in the 21st Century.” The Pluralism Project. . 55 Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars, directed by George Lucas (1999; Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2007), DVD, 1:30:32. Interestingly, much of the emotional resonance of this scene is derived from John Williams’ musical cues, specifically his use of Luke Skywalker’s “Force Theme” from the “Original Trilogy.” Unfortunately, a more sustained examination of the use of music in Star Wars Walker 22

The Buddhism of this scene is fairly straightforward. As His Holiness the 14th Dalai

Lama put it in his 1998 book The Art of Happiness: “According to Buddhist thought, the root causes of suffering are ignorance, craving, and attachment,” all manifestations of the first

“Noble Truth . . . which is the Truth of Suffering.”56 In effect, as the Dalai Lama understands it, the only way to attain any sort of true or lasting happiness is to “accept[] that suffering is a natural part of your existence,” by reducing the sort of clutching attachment to the material world and its constituent parts.57 Anakin’s fear of his mother’s death could (and, given the language of the scene, should) be read as the sort of “attachment” the Dalai Lama talks about, the “second” noble truth the Buddha put forth in his life and ministry (“The Cause of

Suffering”). Given Yoda’s role as a sort of Buddhist stand-in, his rebuke to Anakin is unsurprising. Such fear, in Buddhism and Star Wars is not just undesirable – it is, in a very real way, the source of all human misery.

But Yoda’s message does not take hold. Instead, in the very next film, Skywalker ends up slaughtering the aliens who killed his mother and building a forbidden relationship with the elected-Queen (later Senator) of the planet Naboo, one Padme Amidala. This sets the stage for the second conversation between Skywalker and Yoda in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, when Anakin goes to his master about “premonitions” he’s having about “pain, suffering, death,” specifically the death of his wife in childbirth. After Anakin admits these premonitions are about the end of someone “close” to him rather than himself, Yoda takes on the ethical voice he assumed two episodes earlier: “careful you must be when sensing the future, Anakin. The fear of loss is the path to the dark side.” When Anakin responds by expressing a desire to control the future by preventing this death, Yoda expands upon his

extends beyond the boundaries of this short paper. However, it could be argued that much of the “myth-making” Star Wars engages in occurs through its intra-textual musical references, particularly in the use of the “Force Theme” and the “Imperial March” as a signifier of boundary-crossings and “destiny.” 56 His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living (New York: Riverhead, 1998), 142. 57 Ibid, 141. Walker 23 feelings: “Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into The

Force. Mourn them, do not. Miss them, do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is . . . train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose”58

This second scene is, in many ways, just an intensified version of the earlier conversation. And yet, the higher stakes allow the Buddhism of the Jedi to become even more apparent. As the Dalai Lama describes, in those cases when relationships are built on a sort of attachment or jealous possessiveness, death can cause “your mental projection [to] change[],

[because] the concept of [your] friend is no longer there. Then you’ll find the emotional attachment evaporating and instead of that feeling of love and concern you may have a feeling of hatred. So that kind of love, based on attachment, can be closely linked with hatred.”59 It is not just a matter of controlling the desire for attachment, then, but controlling the response to grief. For the Buddhists and the Jedi both, Anakin’s existential situation is fairly classic – his personal “love” for both Padme and his mother and his fundamental unwillingness to “let them go” results in a state of constant and irreparable suffering.

However, Star Wars does not simply diagnose the problem without providing any answers. Another important parallel between Jedi and Buddhist ethics comes in the shared emphasis that they place on a sort of “right mindfulness” – on living in the moment as a way to combat death and attachment. Once again, the best example comes from the teachings of

Yoda – this time in his interactions with a later disciple, Anakin Skywalker’s son, Luke. As he describes to that boy during his training, the way to happiness is to be “calm, at peace, passive,” a state of mind he can attain by remaining “in the present.”60 Of course, the obvious

American-Buddhist analogue here is with Zen. As Shunryu Suzuki describes in his book Zen

Mind, Beginner’s Mind, one of the best ways to attain a sort of clarity of experience is

58 Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, 33:28. 59 Dalai Lama and Cutler, 114. 60 Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, directed by Irvin Kirshner (1980; Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2004), DVD, 1:01:58. Walker 24 through the very meditation Yoda describes. Suzuki explains: “When we do something with a quiet, simple clear mind, we have no notion or shadows, and our activity is strong and straightforward,”61 a level of concentration and awareness that the Jedi also clearly attempt to cultivate.

Likewise, although the Jedi are certainly skeptical of “possessiveness” and “greed,” one of the fundamental tenets of their order appears to concern “absolute compassion” or fellowship for humanity. In Episode II: Attack of the Clones, future-love-interest Padme

Amidala questions a young Anakin about whether or not “love” is forbidden by the Jedi. As

Anakin explains, “Attachment is forbidden, possession is forbidden. Compassion, which I would define as ‘unconditional love,’ is central to a Jedi’s life. So you might say we are

‘encouraged’ to love.”62 The obvious analogue, here, is to the Buddhist notion of anukampii or “universal love,” a principle with the Dalai Lama sees as absolutely necessary to any sort of right livelihood. Indeed, in the words of that religious leader, we, as human beings, are fundamentally “programmed with the capacity and purpose of bringing pleasure and joy to others.”63 Thus, the best way to achieve lasting “happiness” (the purpose of Buddhism, according to the Dalai Lama), comes through “maintain[ing] a spirit of compassion, [and] loving kindness,” which will “automatically open[] your inner door,” allowing you to

“communicate” with other people and the world much more effectively.64 Once again, the

Jedi teachings and the Buddhist teachings operate in essentially the same way: while they both see individual, erotic love as a form of “attachment,” they would acknowledge that some form of “universal” love or “compassion” for the suffering of others is necessary for a good and meaningful life.

61 Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, ed. Trudy Dixon, (Boulder: Shambhala, 2011), 58. 62 Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones, directed by George Lucas (2002; Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2005), DVD, 35:28. 63 Dalai Lama and Cutler, 61. 64 Ibid, 40. Walker 25

Therefore, we might comfortably claim that one of the most important (and also one of the most obvious) characteristics of the Star Wars saga is its use of particularly “Eastern” language, imagery, and narrative tropes to evoke an Americanized version of a Buddhist ethical system. Indeed, in a certain light, the whole saga might be interpreted as a sort of

Buddhist allegorical illustration of the dangers of “craving” – Anakin’s lack of compassion acts as a demonstration of the dangers of familial attachment, his redemption, in Return of the

Jedi functions as a move away from totalitarian selfishness and towards a sort of “universal love.” It might, then, be tempting to interpret Star Wars as a simple and exclusively Buddhist parable for Western audiences. Unlike the case of Daoism, it seems possible to “live out” the

Buddhist message of these films and their corresponding emphasis on compassion, meditation, and asceticism.

The Mystical Matters

Although Buddhist ethics help to explain a certain portion of the Star Wars saga, they leave out one of its most distinctive and most interesting elements: that metaphysical entity known only as “The Force.” Indeed, while we might have been able to make sense of “The

Force” (loosely construed) in a Daoist context, the Zen and Tibetan emphasis on concrete happiness and practicality seems totally at odds with any sort of substantive supernaturalism.

In fact, one of the defining features of the American schools of Buddhism is their lack of an emphasis on magic or the paranormal. As Martin J. Verhoeven argues in Prebish’s The Faces of Buddhism in America, the forms of Buddhism that have had real purchase on American life have undergone a sort of “assimilation” into “our basic [Western] ‘sense-making’ categories: Christianity, science, and liberal modernism.”65 Rather than emphasizing any sort of mystical or supernatural deity, the Western interpretation of Buddhism follows early scholar Paul Carus in interpreting the movement as a “religion which knows no supernatural

65 Martin J. Verhoven, “Carus and Transformation of Asian Thought,” in The Faces of Buddhism in America, ed. Charles Prebish et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 222. Walker 26 revelation and proclaims doctrines that require no other argument than ‘come and see.’” 66

The unique Western orientation of Buddhism puts it totally at odds with Star Wars’ notion of a transcendent governing metaphysics.

Consequently, we have not fully explored those interpretations that might privilege the supernatural or extraordinary elements of the Star Wars saga. However, to understand the mystical sources of Star Wars, we first must understand exactly how magic and “The Force” operate in Lucas’s universe writ large. Unfortunately, the definitions of “The Force” Lucas provides are barely narratively consistent, much less systematically rigorous. Maybe the best example of this problem comes immediately after we hear the word for the first time, in a discussion between Luke and the elderly Obi-Wan Kenobi. As Obi-Wan explains: “The

Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It is an energy field created by all living things: it surrounds us, it penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together.”67 Interestingly, the viewer’s first encounter with “The Force” is strangely scientific: a sort of physical, mechanical, almost magnetic field that helps fasten the fabric of the universe together.

But our initial encounter with that term is complicated a few minutes later in the same film, when Darth Vader is mocked for “believing” in the power of “The Force.” As one of his underlings exclaims: “Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerer’s ways Lord Vader. You’re sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you . . .” a statement that is interrupted by

Darth Vader’s famous “Force-choke” and the haunting: “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”68 In effect, although it might have its root in some sort of scientific or physical reality, “The Force” is closely associated with a form of spirituality: something beyond the

66 Paul Carus, qtd. in Ibid., 221. 67 Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope, directed by George Lucas (1977; Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2004), DVD, 34:42. 68 Episode IV: A New Hope, 38:22. Walker 27 technological ken of the Evil Empire and their pet project, the Death Star.69 To use Vader’s own language, “The Force” can only be accessed through “faith. “

Probably the most useful definition of “The Force” (for our purposes) comes in the next episode of the saga, The Empire Strikes Back, during Yoda’s aforementioned training scene with Luke. After Luke shows some skepticism about Yoda’s ability to lift his space- ship out from a swamp, Yoda explains Luke’s problem at some length:

Size matters not. Look at me: judge me by my size, do you? Hm. Hmmmmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us, and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you: here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere. Yes, even between the land and the ship

What’s more, this monologue is extended even after Yoda successfully moves the ship. Luke expresses disbelief at the power of his master by saying “I don’t believe it.” “That,” Yoda responds, “is why you fail.”70

So what can we glean from these overlapping, contradictory definitions? The first, and certainly most important point is that “The Force” introduces a transcendent entity, beyond rational and linguistic description into Lucas’s universe, necessarily complicating our notion of Star Wars as a Buddhist parable. Indeed, the fundamental “Buddhist” morals we identified in these films foregrounded a sort of “common-sense ethics” or “practicality.” The reason we are warned away from the path of Anakin Skywalker is because his story does not end well: certain actions are proscribed not because of their cosmic or spiritual associations, but because they result in unfortunate outcomes. However, if the universe of Star Wars is

69 As with many things in the Star Wars saga, even this statement is rife with contradiction. Indeed, the introduction of “midi-chlorians” in The Phantom Menace (micro-organisms that live in the blood-stream and help produce “The Force”) seems to provide a more biological, and hence “rational” explanation for “The Force” and its effects. And yet, we read that introduction as a way for Lucas to synthesize “The Force” with a more “scientific” understanding of the world. Therefore, such a statement does not eliminate the “mysticism” inherent to the Jedi or the cosmic “Force” they see as binding the universe together, but attempts to join it with our more contemporary modes of apprehending the world. Furthermore, while we cannot discredit the reference to “midi-chlorians” the fan-outrage at that reference eliminated any further discussion of the phenomena from the rest of the Star Wars films. Consequently, while that scene in The Phantom Menace might complicate our understanding of this issue, it does not negate it. 70 Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, 1:10:27. Walker 28 somehow predicated on a “mystical” or “supernatural” ordering of the world, beyond our scientific and rational modes of apprehension, then the “Buddhist” ethics we read into the series become substantially complicated.

Secondly (and on a related point), it weakens the association we made between Jedi praxis and Daoist modes of concentration and meditation. Although Jedi methods of manipulating “The Force” are certainly in line with Daoist notions of wuwei, that Daoist term is not necessarily connoted with something supernatural or extra-sensory (at least in its

American iteration). “The Force,” on the other hand, actively exists as a cosmic or transcendental category – a sort of noumenal tool that can be used to achieve feats of telekinesis and telepathy like Yoda’s levitation of the X-wing or Obi-Wan’s manipulation of the “weak minds” of meddling storm-troopers.71 Consequently, given that the American forms of Buddhism and Daoism don’t emphasize any sort of supernaturalism or magic, it seems impossible to identify Star Wars as entirely or exclusively Buddhist or Daoist. If nothing else, Star Wars is explicit about the fact that “The Force” exists, in its world, as more than a metaphor – that it exists as a tangible and very real source of power and wisdom.

How, then, should we mythically interpret the metaphysics of Star Wars?

Unfortunately, that question is somewhat more difficult than the straightforward question of

“religious ethics” since many religious or philosophical systems appear to provide compelling versions of “The Force.” What’s more, unlike in the case of the saga’s “Eastern” influences, the mythic signs of “The Force” are not as deeply embedded into Lucas’ world. In other words, the verbal and visual cues don’t prompt us in a particular direction the way they did with the films’ clear Buddhist and Daoist roots. But despite that challenge, we can still explicate two possible sources for Star Wars’ metaphysics.

71 Episode IV: A New Hope, 43:35. Walker 29

The first, and maybe the most superficially obvious, comes from the general philosophical and religious tradition known as “Gnosticism”72 – in particular, in the way that

Lucas’s world appears to be constituted. The “dualism” between light and dark that we read as a sort of “yin” and “yang” earlier, for example, could also (and maybe more comfortably) be described using the Gnostic “dualism” of the universe, where “this world, the material cosmos, is the result of a primordial error on the part of a supra-cosmic, supremely divine being.”73 In fact, Yoda’s description of the metaphysical situation of the world (“luminous beings are we, not this crude matter”) seems to point towards just that sort of divide – with

“The Force” representing the sort of “divine breath” contained in every human soul and the

“crude matter” of the material world representing that which ought to be transcended through use “The Force.”74 Likewise, for the Jedi, a particular, specialized knowledge, or gnosis brings about salvation and transcendence. So too in Gnosticism, where, according to German scholar Hans Jonas, “Knowledge, gnosis, may liberate man from [his] servitude.”75 There are not merely resonances between Gnostic and Jedi metaphysics, then, but also in the way out of the material evil of each universe: a path towards transcendence that requires a specialized knowledge of or sensitivity to “The Force” or “The Word.”

Finally, while Gnosticism might seem somewhat more obscure than Buddhism or

Daoism (at least insofar as the Coptic Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary aren’t ready reference points for most American movie-goers), the tradition has influenced all sorts of different cultural productions in various, and often fairly comprehensive ways. In her book

72 Obviously “Gnosticism” is a complex philosophical/religious movement, with ties to a variety of different traditions including Ancient Greek Philosophy, Buddhism, Judaism, and, eventually, Christianity. See my discussion of What is Gnosticism? below. 73 Edward Moore, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. “Gnosticism,” accessed December 15, 2016. http://www.iep.utm.edu/gnostic/ 74 Of course, there’s an obvious disanalogy here since the “dark side” of “The Force is not necessarily associated with materiality any more than the “light side” is. While there’s certainly a dualism operating between the spirit and the world, then, it’s unclear that that same duality is also manifest in the explicit division Star Wars draws between the light and dark sides of “The Force”. 75 Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001), 329. Walker 30

What is Gnosticism?, Harvard scholar Karen King explains how the movement has actually impacted broad swaths of American culture, including “philosophy, literary studies, politics, and psychology,” from the analysis of “Carl Jung” to the novels of “Herman Melville,

Lawrence Durrell, and Walker Percy among others.”76Add to this the fact that late twentieth- century blockbuster films like The Matrix trilogy have dealt heavily in Gnostic themes and images77 and the resonance of the movement becomes clear. Although a typical American audience-member might not explicitly identify the Gnostic themes of Star Wars, they would still have some general familiarity with the philosophical patterns and arguments being put forward – while they might not be able to articulate exactly what is going on here, they would have the resources to identify these motifs as philosophically familiar but still “foreign” to the traditional, three-part redemptive narrative of most of Hollywood cinema.

However, Gnosticism is not the only way we might interpret “The Force.” On the contrary, another broadly “mystical” reading that might reconcile the sorcery of Star Wars with existent religious traditions involves “Western Esotericism,” a sort of spiritual sub- current in the 20th century West that synthesizes elements of Christian Gnostic philosophy with more straightforwardly paranormal activity. As Arthur Vesluis writes in his book Magic and Mysticism, we might define the Western esoteric tradition as necessarily concerning both a sort of “gnosis or gnostic insight, i.e., knowledge of hidden or invisible realms or aspects of existence,” as well as a more general “esotericism, meaning that this hidden knowledge is either explicitly restricted to a relatively small group of people, or implicitly self-restricted by virtue of its complexity or subtlety.”78 Furthermore, unlike Christian Gnosticism, which deals almost exclusively in spiritual terms, Western Esotericism also includes “magical”

76 Karen King, What is Gnosticism? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 5. 77 See April DeConick’s The Gnostic New Age: How a Countercultural Spirituality Revolutionized Religion from Antiquity to Today (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). 78 Arthur Versluis, Magic and Mysticism: An Introduction to Western Esotericism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 2. Walker 31 practitioners: a group “whose primary aims are essentially cosmological in nature – that is, more or less ‘worldly’ in the sense of garnering wealth or power.”79

Of course, the resonances between Western Esotericism and Star Wars are readily apparent. Here is a tradition that not only involves a sort of selected and well-guarded knowledge, but also claims that certain kinds of knowledge might be used to make actual material or magical changes in the world – a tradition that would allow for raising X-wings and mind-controlling storm-troopers. What’s more, certain historical magicians and esoterics have provided fairly compelling proto-versions of “The Force” in their own writings. Early hypnotist and astronomer Franz Mesmer theorized about “Animal Magnetism,” an “occult force or invisible fluid emanating from his body” that “permeated the universe, deriving especially from the stars.”80 Likewise, some 19th and 20th century theosophists speculated about something called “Astral Light,” a term used to describe “another world, or another story of the world, related to a different set of human senses, and characterized by different relations of space, time, and other qualities”81 – the sort of mystical “plane” we might gain access to if we achieved the enlightenment of the Jedi. Not only, then, does the supernaturalism of Star Wars fit within a broad Western esoteric framework, but the specific mechanics of Lucas’s world appear consonant with historical articulations of different esoteric and magical world-views.

Unfortunately, this analysis is slightly hampered by the fact that (as in the case of

Gnosticism) the referents here are not directly explicated by the Star Wars films themselves.

Though these movies might be supernatural and fantastic, there are no real magicians, alchemists, or pseudo-scientists in Lucas’s cinematic universe. However, unlike in the case of

Gnosticism, most American moviegoers would have some acquaintance with a general form of the Western Esoteric tradition as it is manifested in contemporary “spiritualism” and the

79 Ibid, 3. 80 Encyclopedia Britannica, 2005 ed., s.v. “Animal Magnetism,” (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 2005). 81 Henry T. Edge, The Astral Light (Point Loma, CA: Theosophical University Press, 1943), 8. Walker 32

“New Age.” As Vesluis explains, much of what we might consider magical or mystical has roots in traditional American “spiritual” philosophy, dating all the way back to Emerson. In particular, notions of a “direct spiritual experience” that precedes “established religions,” and an “esoteric center” that exists “behind or within all traditions” are, in Vesluis’s view, fairly ubiquitous in contemporary American culture.82 Therefore, while it is unlikely that the average Star Wars fan would have an explicit awareness of Mesmerism or the “Astral Light,” it seems plausible that most moviegoers would have some limited familiarity with the

“transcendental” and esoteric themes present in these films.

Nevertheless, as was the case with the Buddhist and Daoist “readings” we examined earlier, this interpretive lens is also limited. For one thing, a gnostic or mystical interpretation of Star Wars does not offer much in the way of constructive ethics. In particular, while it is clear that “The Force” draws on a sort of “New Age” esoteric milieu, it does not seem like

Lucas or the Star Wars films are propagandistically promoting the belief in an actual

“Force.” On the contrary, when taken to its extreme, “The Force” of Star Wars actually subverts the broader ethics of the series, emphasizing a sort of exclusionary “election” (only certain people are genetically granted “Force Sensitivity”) and implying that true spiritual value is conferred biologically rather than chosen or earned. Consequently, while we might rightly say that “The Force” is more tangible than, for instance, American-Daoist notions of wuwei, it also seems to act more metaphorically than something like the “Animal

Magnetism” of Mesmer

In sum, the “mystical reading” of Star Wars, like the Daoist and Buddhist readings that came before it, is fundamentally incomplete. Although viewing the films in a Gnostic or esoteric light might be revealing and informative, it seems clear that the real ethical message we are receiving goes beyond any particular Buddhist, Daoist, or Mystical reference-point –

82 Versluis, 149. Walker 33 that, on the contrary, the resonance and complexity of these films comes in the way they combine different “Eastern” and mystical source-materials to create their own ethical pastiche. We will press on this final point during our fourth and last interpretive “lens” on

Star Wars: our reading of the saga as a fundamentally Christian narrative of redemption and salvation.

Our Christian-American Myth

Of course, as in the case of its Daoism, Buddhism, and Mysticism, the “Christian- ness” of Star Wars is more complicated than a catalogue of its features or elements. In point of fact, one of the most important things about these films is the way they individually and generally use a “three-act” Hollywood structure to create a sort of implicit salvation narrative of redemption and deliverance.

However, that narrative arc does not exist in a bubble. Instead, as cultural critic

Robert Johnston puts it in his book Reel Spirituality, almost all American cinema of the

Hollywood blockbuster variety involves the same, tried-and-true narrative architecture:

During Act 1, the protagonist is offered a new challenge which, after some indecision, he or she accepts. Then, in Act 2, the challenge produces conflict, which escalates throughout the act until a conflict is reached. Finally, in Act 3, the protagonist must ‘fight’ to achieve the goal, often against great odds, before achieving (or not achieving) ‘the prize.’83

Unsurprisingly, this general cinematic architecture applies especially well to the entries in the

Star Wars saga and to the trajectory of the series as a whole. In the original 1977 release, for example, Luke’s decision the rebellion (Act 1), leads to his conflict with the Empire and entrapment on the Death Star (Act 2), a problem that is finally resolved when, in the film’s climax: he destroys that space station and is named a hero of the new rebellion (Act 3).84

83 Robert K. Johnston, Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 144. 84 There are, of course, obvious similarities between this sort of analysis and the scholarship of Campbell. However, while Campbell saw himself as uncovering the fundamental “mythic structure” behind all stories, Johnston restricts himself to a particular narrative pattern evident in one variety of 20th century Hollywood Walker 34

But in Star Wars that structure does more than provide a familiar narrative foundation for the movies. As Johnston further explicates, in some cases the general movement of a standard Hollywood plot reinforces the redemptive ethics of a film itself. In other words, the

“three-part” arc, taken for granted in much of cinematic story-telling, can actually “suggest” a

“primary reading” of certain films as being hopeful or spiritually salvific.85 Such is certainly the case in Star Wars, where every single entry in the seven-part series shows good winning out over evil, the virtuous being heroically vindicated, and the unjust being mercilessly destroyed.86 In effect, the “Christian” elements of Star Wars cannot be reduced or put aside the way their Daoist, Buddhist, and Mystical elements can. Unlike those other interpretive

“lenses,” a sort of “Christian” super-structure of conversion and redemption is written into the deepest fabric of the Star Wars story, written into the very medium of Hollywood cinema that Lucas is using to tell his story. Therefore, although there are certainly “Eastern” and mystical elements at play, it is clear that, at its core, the story Lucas telling is traditionally

Christian.

However, the real significance of the Christian superstructure of Star Wars is not merely in the way it helps the film to narratively operate, but in the way that it pushes up against the pastiche of religious and cultural elements that these movies have already incorporated. Phrased differently, the Christian elements of the films do not merely rest alongside the Daoist, Buddhist, and Mystical readings, as another possible interpretive “lens” or “way-into” the series, but the Christian elements help order, prioritize, and complicate the rest of those interpretations. Therefore, by examining three major Christian themes or sub-

cinema. Consequently, while the “generalizing” work of each type of analysis occurs in essentially the same way, Johnston’s critique is more contextually sensitive and therefore more appropriate for our purposes here. 85 Johnston, 156. 86 The two notable exceptions to this pattern are Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, and Episode V: the Empire Strikes Back. And yet despite the relative “bleakness” of these respective films, their placement within the context of the rest of the saga (always just before a major victory by the rebellion) and the ultimate hopefulness of their respective climaxes (Episode III’s last shot focuses on the children of Anakin Skywalker rather than on the fallen Jedi himself, and Episode V’s ending reinforces the durability of the nuclear Star Wars team), allows them to fit (albeit more loosely) into this standard cinematic story-structure. Walker 35 narratives in Star Wars – namely, the “messianic” imagery of “destiny” and “the chosen one,” the explicit narrative pattern of the Fall from Grace and the subsequent salvation through martyrdom, and, finally, the importance of love and friendship as a particularly localized event rather than a general feeling of compassion or detachment – we can understand the way that Star Wars both establishes and subverts the different traditions that it incorporates: the way these films do more than synthesize existent religious philosophies but actually create their own, complex ethical “mirror” to hold up to the contemporary world.

First, take the references to Anakin Skywalker, later Darth Vader, as a sort Messianic figure. Perhaps one of the clearest pieces of evidence for this thesis comes from The Phantom

Menace in a brief (and much decried) conversation between Anakin’s mother and the Jedi

Master Qui-Gon Jinn. After a brief display of Anakin’s prodigious powers, Qui-Gon investigates further, remarking: “The Force is unusually strong with him . . .Who was his father?” Anakin’s mother Shmi responds: “There was no father that I know of. I carried him,

I gave him birth… I can’t explain what happened.”87 Anakin’s origin, then, came without sexual intercourse. Just like Jesus of Nazareth, he was born to a sort of virgin (or virgin- figure),88 an exemplification of his association with the transcendental and the super- human.89

Likewise, Anakin’s birth seems to fulfill some sort of long-held “prophecy” of the

Jedi (although the exact details of this are somewhat unclear). After his introduction to the council, one of the residing Masters, Mace Windu, interrogates Qui-Gon about young

Anakin’s power and potential: “You refer to the prophecy of the one who will bring balance to the Force. You believe it’s this boy?”90 Qui-Gon insists that this is correct, an insistence

87 Episode I: The Phantom Menace, 47:18. 88 Matthew 1:18-25, Luke 1:26-38. 89 This is buttressed by the fact that, later in that same film, Qui-Gon offers the possibility that Anakin was “conceived by the Midichlorians” (The Phantom Menace, 1:25:18), a statement which would have direct analogues to the Christian tradition’s notion that Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit. 90 Episode I: The Phantom Menace, 1:25:24. Walker 36 that results in Anakin’s training by Qui-Gon’s own apprentice, the aforementioned Obi-Wan

Kenobi. Unfortunately, the exact verbiage of this “prophecy” remains hidden throughout the rest of the Star Wars saga. However, the fact that it is brought up in every one of the

“Prequels,” including, crucially, in the final duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan91 marks it as particularly important for the picture Lucas is painting.92Anakin is not only unusually powerful, but he is somehow destined to bring a sort of “final judgment” along with him: he will act as the fore-told “chosen one” who will end the permanent struggle between the Jedi and their evil counter-parts, the “Sith.”93

Of course, the obvious analogue, here, is to Judeo-Christian prophecy of the coming

Messiah. Even though Lucas leaves the actual language of Star Wars’ prophecy to our imagination, it seems extremely plausible that it might look like Helmer Ringgren’s re- statement of the prophecy of the Jewish mashiach in the Encyclopedia of Religion, a “future king, who was expected to restore the kingdom . . . and save the people from all evil,”94 or even his version of the Christian savior, the spiritual “son of God” meant to “fulfill” ancient expectation.95 Consequently, although Anakin’s function in the broader tapestry of the Star

Wars saga might not be narrowly or singularly Messianic (more on that in a moment), Lucas

91 In which Obi-Wan states, explicitly: “You were the chosen one; it was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them; bring balance to The Force, not leave it in darkness” Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, 1:59:57. 92 There’s also a possible reference to the “prophecy” in Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, although the allusion is much more ambiguous than the explicit discussions from the “Prequel” Trilogy. Namely: after Luke departs from Dagobah to Cloud City, Yoda and a ghostly version of Obi-Wan Kenobi discuss the state of their situation. In particular, Obi-Wan laments that “[t]hat boy is our only hope,” to which Yoda responds: “No. There is another.” (Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, 1:25:20). This is has generally been read (especially in the pre-Prequel era) as a veiled allusion to Leia, Luke’s sister who might succeed even if Luke fails. And yet, given the climax of Return of the Jedi and the introduction of the mythos of the “prophecy,” it seems perhaps more likely that Yoda is referencing the possible redemption of Vader. In other words, while Obi-Wan believes Luke is the only chance the Jedi might have against the Evil Empire, Yoda holds some faith in the original prophecy, a reading that effects both greater coherence and greater narrative significance to the scene and to Anakin’s arc more generally. 93 This version of Star Wars’ Messianism is obviously complicated by the new “Sequel Trilogy,” which implies that Anakin did not wipe out the evil “Sith” (or even the Empire) at the end of Return of the Jedi. However, until we know how Episode IX resolves the Star Wars story, the “Messianic” reading of the first six films must stand as the most compelling and coherent available interpretation. 94 Helmer Ringgren, “Messianism: An Overview,” Encyclopedia of Religion, Vol. IX, 5972. 95 Ibid. The interpretation of Anakin as the “Son of God” is particularly compelling given his ostensible conception by “midi-chlorians.” See note 69. Walker 37 is certainly drawing on Christian cultural and mythological images to create some sort of association between Anakin and the story of Christ. While we might not be able to reduce

Star Wars to Christian allegory, we can see the various threads and symbols Lucas is weaving together to make the narrative resonant for his largely American, primarily Christian audience.

Those associations are made even more explicit when we consider the general arc or narrative trajectory of Anakin’s story within the Star Wars saga. Although it might not really map onto the story of Christ’s life as we receive it in the Gospels, Anakin’s arc still mimics the trajectory of the Christian scriptures more generally. In this reading, the sort of straightforward Buddhist “parable” we read into the “Prequel” trilogy earlier – with its warnings against “attachment” and advocacy for a sort of “universal compassion” – is re- interpreted as a version of the Adam-ic fall from Grace. Anakin’s love for Padme and his rejection of the Jedi is less a reflection of his distance from “nirvana” and more a manifestation of Augustinian “original sin:” a temptation offered by sex and power that fits fairly well into the Christian notion of “The Fall.”

Likewise, in this schematic understanding of the saga, the culmination of the prophecy, and the narrative climax of the Star Wars series more generally, comes in Anakin’s

(now Darth Vader’s) transformation at the end of Return of the Jedi. Indeed, if we read the

“Prequel Trilogy” as a sort of abbreviated version of the Genesis story, we might read the

“Original Trilogy” as a version of the New Testament – a vehicle to introduce salvation into the Star Wars narrative. What’s more, a closer examination of that story bears some interpretive fruit. Not only does Darth Vader’s destruction of his master “The Emperor”

(formerly “Chancellor Palpatine”) at the end of the film seemingly fulfill the prophecy we traced in the “Prequel Trilogy,” it also models a notion of “salvation” as occurring through death or sacrifice. For instance, in the last conversation between Luke and Vader, after Vader Walker 38 finally turns to the “light” and instructs his son to leave the rapidly-deteriorating Death Star

II, Luke refuses: “No, you’re coming with me. I’ll not leave you here, I’ve got to save you.”

Vader’s response is both clichéd and undeniably poignant. “You already have, Luke. You were right about me.”96 The soteriology of Star Wars is doubled by this last interaction. Not only does Vader’s sacrifice bring “balance to The Force” more generally; it also has the particular effect of saving him from the de-humanizing effects of the “Dark Side” and the influence of the “Emperor.”97 In Star Wars, as in the Christian tradition it draws from, the original sin committed by Adam is redeemed by an act of death and spiritual martyrdom.

Only through sacrifice can Vader’s soul (and the fate of the galaxy in general) be saved.98

Finally, the mechanism of that salvation is worth our attention. Because, while everything heretofore could be read as a sort of “Christian” re-formulation of either the

Buddhist ethics or the Daoist/Mystical metaphysics we identified earlier, the way that salvation occurs in Star Wars is explicitly not through “detachment,” meditation, or any sort of generalized compassion. Instead, one of the prevailing themes, especially of the “Original

Trilogy,” seems to be a particularly localized notion of love, centered on friendship, loyalty, and family connection.

By far the most dramatic (and most significant) example of this comes through

Vader’s sacrifice on behalf of Luke. Indeed, while Vader’s martyrdom undeniably acts as a move towards Star Wars’ notion of “light” or “goodness,” his sacrifice also undeniably comes about through his particular attachment to his son. Only after seeing Luke tortured by the Emperor and hearing him cry out “Father” does he actually take action against his

96 Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, directed by Richard Marquand (1983; Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2004), DVD, 2:01:00. This is also an inter-textual reference to the end of Episode III (or, rather, this is inter-textually referenced by Episode III) when Padme Amidala insists, in the moments before her death, that she “know[s] there’s still good in [Anakin],” Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, 2:07:08. 97 The visuality of Vader’s sacrifice also clearly evokes images of the crucifixion. 98 Interestingly, in the coda to Return of the Jedi, we see Anakin Skywalker’s “Force Ghost” in a way that evokes some sort of resurrection or “second coming” (cf. 1 Peter 3:18 “He was put to death in the body but made alive in the spirit”). Walker 39 imperial master, fulfilling the “prophecy” and ending his political reign of terror.99 Lucas also endorses this interpretation. In the afore-mentioned Mythology of Star Wars special, he notes that: “[U]ltimately Vader is redeemed by his children, and especially having children, I believe that. I believe that you are redeemed by your children, because that’s what life is all about, is procreating and raising children, and it should bring the best of you out.”100 For

Lucas and for Star Wars, then, ethics and the “good life” cannot be reduced to a general sort of detachment and universal agape. On the contrary, while admittedly Anakin’s “original sin” or “first mistake” is his relationship with Padme and his inability to accept the death of his mother, it is only through attachment and a particularized, paternal sort of love that he finds redemption and salvation. Although attachment might be the problem in Star Wars, it is also the solution, a particularly “Hollywood” and non-“Eastern” ethical model that severely complicates our earlier readings of this text.

What’s more, even though Vader’s “salvation” through his children is certainly the most important example of the localized love operative in Star Wars, it is not the only example. One of the defining themes of the “Original Trilogy” seems to be the significance of loyalty or commitment to a particular group of people, above and against commitment to an ideology or a creed. In the original film, this takes the form of Han Solo’s last-second rescue during the climactic trench-run, a decision he makes because of the human relationship he has to Luke and (to a lesser extent) Leia, and not because of his interest in the cause of social justice and equity championed by the Rebels. Likewise, in The Empire Strikes

Back, Luke explicitly thumbs his nose at Jedi traditions and structures of power just like his father did before him. After Yoda implores Luke not to quit his training just to save his friends, Luke responds pointedly: what should I do, “sacrifice Han and Leia?” Yoda’s response might as well be taken from his conversations with Anakin four episodes earlier.

99 Return of the Jedi, 1:57:00. 100 The Mythology of Star Wars, 41:36. Walker 40

“And honor what they fight for? Yes.”101 Even the new film, The Force Awakens, seems to draw on many of these same themes. The heroic (and Solo-esque) Finn actively lies to

Resistance forces to get himself on Starkiller Base, solely for the purpose of going “to get

[his friend] Rey.”102 In Star Wars, then, as in much of contemporary American cinema and storytelling, loyalty and passion for a particular group of people is privileged above fealty to an ideology or a particular political creed. While one of Anakin’s primary foibles seems to be his attachment and worldliness, those same impulses appear to save both him and the generation after him in a real and meaningful way.

Consequently, although there are certainly many Buddhist, Daoist, and Mystical references coded within the ethics Star Wars, the narrative “beating heart” of the saga is some version of the classic Christian believer’s story of the Fall, salvation, and redemption.

Although other aspects of the film might be informed by “Eastern” or mystical sources, in the end the ethical system that Star Wars models appears to be localized and narrative-ized in a way that foregrounds certain versions of attachment and particularized love – what narrative psychologist Dan McAdams calls the American “redemption narrative” of “deliverance from suffering into a better world.”103 Therefore, even though the mythological origins of the film might be diverse and divergent, the saga ends up as a fairly run-of-the-mill conversion narrative.

101 Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, 1:24:25. Interestingly, both Yoda and the “ghostly” Obi-Wan explicitly reference conversations that they had with the young Anakin Skywalker during this scene, an inter-textual reference which makes the juxtaposition between Luke’s decision and Vader’s even more clear. 102 Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens, directed by J.J. Abrams (2015; Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2016), DVD, 1:36:57. 103 Dan P. McAdams, The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 7. Walker 41

THE CONSTRUCTIVE ETHICS OF STAR WARS

Tying it All Together

So what do we make of all this? Even if we have successfully teased out the way that

Star Wars complicates its Daoist, Buddhist, and Mystical readings with a Christian version of salvation: where does that leave us? Or, put differently: what affirmative ethical system does

Star Wars ultimately model?

Unfortunately, it is difficult to answer that question with any neat rhetorical phrase.

While we might identify the mythological substratums and themes of the various films, it would be hard to completely homogenize them in any way that strongly promotes a particular

“version” or “reading” of the world. The Daoist and Mystical motifs are thwarted by the need for real-world, practical ethics; the Buddhist reading is contradicted by an emphasis on transcendence and particularized love; even the “Christian” narrative of redemption and salvation is problematized by the fact that the Messiah, in Star Wars, is also responsible for

“original sin” and the birth of the Empire.104 Consequently, while we might acknowledge that

Star Wars is about some version of love, deliverance, and the dangers of attachment, we must also recognize that too closely associating the ethics of the saga with any single religious or spiritual tradition would be both reductive and against the spirit of the series. As Lucas said in his 1999 interview: more than an example of any “particular religion,” these movies were meant to be used as a “tool . . . to make ‘old stories’ new, and relate to young people.”105The purpose of Star Wars is not “allegorical” but in some way, synthetic: a means of taking several different religious philosophies and weaving them together into one “enchanted” cinematic story.

104 A notion made even more explicit with the end of Episode VII, which implies that Luke, like Vader before him, has had his “natural goodness” tainted by his experience and existence in the world. 105 The Mythology of Star Wars, 27:10. Walker 42

If we were going to try and appropriately describe the ethics of Star Wars, then, we might say that it promotes the virtue of reflection, compassion, and universal agape, while also acknowledging the impractability of those qualities, especially in the context of individual love and family relationships. Far from vacuous, Star Wars’ ethics are actually surreptitiously multiple. While Star Wars is, at its core, a morality tale about the fall and salvation of Anakin Skywalker, the ambiguity of its story keeps us from burdening it with any straightforward prescription human life. Instead, Lucas seems to be arguing that Buddhist and Daoist mystical mediation might be one mode of salvation, but that transcendence can be found more immediately through particularized love and individual connection – that

Buddhist nirvana is both a noble and unachievable goal.

As Wimbush sees it, the significance of foundational stories like the Bible – stories that, in other contexts, might easily be called “mythic” – is not their ability to create univocal ethical models but rather to hold a sort of textual “mirror” up to the contemporary world. In this interpretation, the “movements of human striving and formation,” that “with due concessions to the usual appropriate qualifications” we might call “universal or nearly universal,” are not caused by scriptural art so much as scriptural art “in arresting and compelling ways . . . records or captures them.”106The purpose of a myth like Star Wars is not to provide us one way to live, but to give voice to an ideological and a practicable mode of living. Phrased differently: this series is not an example of the “mono-myth,” or the

Campbell-ian “story behind all stories,” but the “multi-myth:” a pastiche that simultaneously offers us a number of different ways of apprehending and coming to terms with our world, while also helpfully “mirror[ing],” reflecting, and refracting our own ethical wrestling.

In the end, then, the concrete ethical system that we attempted to identify in Star Wars is more generative than prescriptive; it uncovers the interrelationship between various

106 Wimbush, 27-8. Walker 43 systems and mythological referents and presents them in a way that is meant to purposefully connect with modern audiences – taking the “issues of the stories of old” and placing them in a new mythological vehicle.107 Therefore, while we might not be able to make sense of Star

Wars in the linear confines of a particular narrative box or allegorical system, one thing that we can understand, through our pastiche-oriented approach, is that the ethical “mirror” Star

Wars provides us with is ultimately extremely valuable: an attractive, layered (and, as we will see in the next chapter, actionable) reading of the world where the individual concerns of love and loyalty always trump devotion to an empire or a creed, and where good and evil are, paradoxically, often more complicated than “light” and “dark.”

107 The Mythology of Star Wars, 2:20. Walker 44

Chapter Two: Jediism and the Lived Ethical Communities of Star Wars

It is hard to imagine what must have been running through the minds of the British government officials in the Office of National Statistics that fateful day, in the autumn of

2001, when the census data first started pouring in. First, it must have seemed like an error – a blip in the system or some sort of elaborate prank committed by the data-entry team to confuse their superiors. There was no way this was real: how could it be? But as the days and weeks went on, it must have become clearer and clearer that this was no mistake – that over

390,000 of Her Majesty’s subjects in England and Wales had written in the census that their religious affiliation was: “Jedi Knight.”108

And, in 2001, the phenomenon appeared to be a sort of virus spreading across the

English-speaking globe, wreaking havoc for any curious ethnographer or sociologist in its wake. In Australia, the number was 70,000,109 in New Zealand, 53,000,110 in Canada, a mere

21,000.111 But in all cases, the answer was being written in, and written in forcefully (pardon the pun). People wanted to make sure their government recognized their “Jedi” beliefs; they wanted to be counted as part of the mythical peacekeepers and mystics of the Star Wars universe.

As with many things in the Internet Age, there was more than a little snark at the root of the phenomenon. The movement did not start as a legitimate expression of religious sentiment but as a way for people to intentionally skew statistics – to disrupt the process of record-keeping and protest what many believed to be an arbitrary and unnecessary new

108 BBC News: World Edition, "Census Returns of the Jedi." BBC News. February 13, 2003. . 109 Australian Associated Press, "May the Farce Be With You." Sydney Morning Herald. August 27, 2002. . 110 Alan Perrott, "Jedi Order Lures 53,000 Disciples." The New Zealand Herald. August 31, 2002. . 111 The Canadian Press, "Canada's Jedi Knights Not as Much of a Religious Force." CBC News: Canada. May 8, 2013. . Walker 45

“religion” question in the British census.112 And, at least to a certain extent, that mission was successful.

However, the story gets stranger when, in the following years, it became clear that not everyone who had written “Jedi Knight” on their census was in on the joke. On the contrary, in the weeks and months that followed the 2001 incident, a variety of different communities started sprouting around on the internet declaring themselves bona fide practitioners of

Jediism and the so-called “Jedi Path.” 113 To these people, declaring oneself a “Jedi Knight” was no laughing matter. Instead, it was a sincere and important declaration of faith and philosophy: a way of viewing the world that they found to be just as religiously valid as the systems of their more traditional Christian, Muslim, and Hindi brothers and sisters. As one website put it: “We are not a community of Star Wars role-players, but a church of genuine religion,” full of “followers, ministers, and leaders” who embrace Jediism as a “real living, breathing religion.”114

And as time has gone on, the institution of Jediism has become more and more structured and legitimate. Where there were originally only forums and Facebook pages, there are now whole hierarchies and cosmologies.115 There have been legal disputes, like a case, in Great Britain, where a man refused to remove his hood in a shop, claiming religious freedom of expression.116 There have been parliamentary battles, like the attempt to block

112 BBC News: World Edition, "Census Returns of the Jedi." 113 Tom de Castella, "Have Jedi Created a New "Religion?" BBC News: Magazine. October 24, 2014. . 114 Ren Sydrick, “Homepage.” Temple of the Jedi Order, accessed December 12, 2014. . 115 The most impressive of these is perhaps the Temple of the Jedi Order’s “Laws Relating to the Definition of Rank and Status,” which painstakingly describe the process required to move up the Church’s eight-tiered clerical pecking-order: Michael J. Kitchen, "Laws Relating to the Definition of Rank and Status." Temple of the Jedi Order, accessed December 12, 2016. < http://www.templeofthejediorder.org/faq/34-policies/2039-laws- relating-to-the-definition-of-rank-and-status>. 116 Daily Mail Reporter, "Jedi Church Founder Thrown Out of Tesco For Refusing to Remove His Hood Was Left "‘Emotionally Humiliated’" The Daily Mail: Online. September 18, 2009. . Walker 46

Jediism from protection in Britain’s failed Racial and Religious Hatred Amendment.117 In recent months, there was even a full-scale religious controversy, with the United Kingdom’s

“Charity Commission for England and Wales” publishing an “official ruling that Jediism does not count as a religion” and therefore should not receive the coveted tax-status of

“charitable organization.”118 In short, it has become clear that this phenomenon is real and here to stay – that even as the dust from the joke settles, a substantial portion of the Western population (one recent report put it at around 170,000 in Great Britain)119 actually believe in the fictional religion Star Wars has created.

Consequently, the goal of this chapter, broadly-construed, is to try to understand just what is going on here – to do what the British government did not and take seriously the notion that Jediism works as a genuine form of religious expression and religious belief.

However, in the spirit of contemporary “religious studies”120our emphasis will not be on investigating some sort of unifying hierarchy or cosmology but on the way that the Jedi self- consciously manifest their worldview through practice, behavior, and activity. Our primary mode of analysis will not be exegetical or hermeneutic so much as it will be ethnographic and sociological – we will obtain relevant data by talking to practicing Jedi, by examining their cosmologies and statements of belief, by combing through their websites and their forum pages, and, ultimately, by attempting to find those tenuous religious or spiritual threads that seem to connect them. In a way, then, this chapter will work as the sort of empirical counterpart to the argument we made in our first chapter, about the unique religious-ethical pastiche that Star Wars helps model. The primary difference is, where that argument was

117 United Kingdom Parliament: House of Commons, Racial and Religious Hatred Bill. Standing Committee Debates, July 1, 2005. . 118 Christopher D. Shea, “Bid for ‘Star Wars’ Religion Is Shot Down,” New York Times, December 19, 2016, accessed January 27, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/movies/star-wars-religion-jediism-charity- commission-for-england-and-wales.html 119 Henry Taylor, ""Jedi" Religion Most Popular Alternative Faith." The Telegraph. December 11, 2014. . 120 For more on this, see Brent Nongbri’s Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015). Walker 47 largely theoretical and speculative – about how Star Wars was designed to affect the lived ethical experiences of its viewers – this argument operates is concrete and material – about the way that particular ethical lives were changed by interaction with the Star Wars saga, outside of the mythological or religious themes Lucas self-consciously coded into the franchise.

SETTING THE STAGE

Surveying the Terrain

It would be a mistake to assume that none of this work has been done before. On the contrary, one of the refreshing things about Jediism is the (albeit somewhat limited) attention it has received from the academy. In particular, Australian scholars Adam Possami and

Carole Cusack have written monographs on the social and religious implications of Jediism, and the Dutch academic Markus Davidsen has published several articles attempting, in an explicitly ethnographic mode, to understand the “dynamology, practice, and ethics of [the] fictional religion” of Jediism.121

However, in spite of the existent scholarly contributions to the study of Jediism, we would contend that a substantial amount of work remains to be done. For instance, although the primary research in the field – completed by Cuscak and Possami – is certainly interesting, it is not necessarily in-line with our own research questions. More specifically, while both authors treat Jediism fairly extensively, that treatment is almost always within the context of some other trend in religious theory and discourse. For Possami the Jedi are most useful as consumers of “hyper-real religion,” or the religious phenomenon where “the ‘real’ has been broken down and connection with the ‘real’ sources of religion [has been]

121 Markus Davidsen, “From Star Wars to Jediism: The Emergency of Fiction-Based Religion,” in Words: Religious Language Matters, ed. Ernst van den Hemel et al. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016), 388. Walker 48 blurred.”122 Cusack, on the other hand, interprets Jediism as a lens into “invented religions,” or those religious sects which are “not only new but admitted to be the product of human imagination.”123 But in both cases, it is clear that the significance and resonance of the Jedi phenomenon is not so much in its own philosophy or cosmology, but in the trends that it reveals about media-consumption, social formation, and the influence of “pop-culture” on religious practice. In other words, the Jedi do not work as a sui generis philosophical organization, but as a sort of manifestation of sociological trends in the “Internet Age.”124

Markus Davidsen, however, has a different project. Throughout the approximately five articles and book chapters he’s written on Jediism, he’s demonstrated an interest, contra

Cusack and Possami, in the genuinely philosophical and cosmological particularities of Jedi belief. As he writes in his most recent study of the movement, “From Star Wars to Jediism,” his intellectual goal is:

(1) to present an overview of the core elements (Force teachings, ritual practices, and legitimization strategies) of Jediism; (2) to compare Jediism with Star Wars fan culture and argue that Jediism must be classified as a religion, whereas fan culture must not . . . and (3) to introduce the category ‘fiction-based religion’ and establish Jediism as a member of this subcategory of religion.125

What’s more, the list of Jedi organizations that he studies, and the mode of online ethnography he takes up, is fairly close to the type of analysis we will model later in this paper.126 Where Cusack and Possami merely treat the same group that we want to look at here, it is clear that Davidsen is actually looking at that group in a similar cosmologically sensitive mode.

We would argue, however, that our own project remains valuable for a couple of key reasons. The first, and perhaps most important, is that Davidsen’s work on Jediism is fairly

122 Adam Possami, Religion and Popular Culture: A Hyper-Real Testament (New York: Peter Lang, 2005), 72. 123 Carole Cusack, Invented Religions: Faith, Fiction, Imagination (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 1. 124 That is not to say, of course, that these are not interesting questions. Indeed, I am indebted in many ways to the legacy of Cusack and Possami’s work. This paper is merely designed to fill a gap that they have left open, rather than criticize or comment upon the work that has already been done. 125 Davidsen, “From Star Wars to Jediism,” 376-77. 126 Ibid, 383. Walker 49 attenuated. The only long-form article on Jediism that Davidsen has ever undertaken is the aforementioned “From Star Wars to Jediism,” a piece, which, itself, focuses more on the nature of “fiction-based” religions than on the ethics or behavior of the Jedi.127 Likewise, while Davidsen is certainly more attentive to the philosophical and cosmological aspects of

Jediism than Possami or Cusack, his interest also seems marred by an attempt to academically categorize or “essentialize” Jedi practice. Indeed, by his own admission, part of his broader intellectual project is to “argue that Jediism must be classified as a religion,” a type of scholarly assertion which necessarily narrows and unfairly homogenizes Jedi activity.128 Finally, while Davidsen is certainly interested in the praxis of active Jedi, part of that interest involves the study of those Jedi movements that self-consciously “disassociate” their belief from the supernatural “Force” of the Star Wars saga.129 In other words,

Davidsen’s interest in Jediism extends to the way that movement operates as part of the broader American trend towards spiritualism and universalism. Although he takes the issues of philosophy and cosmology seriously, those interests ultimately work in service of an examination of Star Wars as representative of “fiction-based religions.”130

Consequently, while the existent scholarship on Jediism is both richer and more valuable than the existent literature on the aesthetics of Star Wars, there is still a very substantial scholarly hole left by Possammi, Cusack, and Davidsen, especially in terms of

Jedi cosmology and philosophy. Put differently: although we might know about what the Jedi show us about the sociology of the 21st century, we don’t have a lot of information about what they believe or why they might believe it.

127 Ibid, 376-89. 128 Ibid, 383. 129 Ibid, 386. 130 This point is made particularly clearly by the fact that Davidsen’s primary research area is not Jediism at all, but “Tolkeinism,” or the way that the Lord of the Rings books are used as a sort of religious object. In other words, while Star Wars and the Jedi are of genuine interest to Davidsen, it seems like part of that interest comes in the way they prove broader points about the religious significance of fantasy literature/film more generally. Walker 50

Constructing an Approach

Consequently, rather than viewing the Jedi as a sort of “new religion,” or even as an example of the burgeoning “fan culture” phenomenon, we will treat the Jedi as a group of individuals who self-consciously and very seriously attempt to live out the “ethics” of the

Star Wars films. As we hinted at near the beginning of this section, our primary motivation is to create an “empirical” complement of the project that we took up at some length in the first chapter of this thesis. Where we spent the majority of our earlier argument trying to understand the complex shape and significance Lucas imbued the Star Wars films with, we will attempt, in this second chapter, to see how that significance is differently interpreted by a particular group of Star Wars fans. To that end, we will attempt to answer four different, but related questions about the real life Jedi: 1) what is the substance of Jediism (in other words, what do the Jedi believe and to what extent do they believe it), 2) what are the sources of Jediism (in other words, what personal situations drew the Jedi to Jediism and what religious or spiritual elements do they see Jediism incorporating), 3) what are the ethics of

Jediism (in other words, how has Jedi ethical practice manifested in the Jedi’s lived experience, and what ethical behavior do the Jedi emphasize), and 4) what are the particular benefits of Jediism (in other words, why is Jediism the Jedi’s mode of religious or spiritual self-identification, as opposed to, for example, Buddhism, Esotericism, or even another

“fiction-based” religion). It is our hope that over the course of the next several pages, we will be able to understand the Jedi, not necessarily as a religious group or organization, but as a collection of individuals with their own experiences and their own particular relationship to the Star Wars films. Like the saga itself, our mode of analysis will be mosaic; we will attempt to identify and establish general trends in the Jedi community, without reducing or eliminating the autonomy of each individual subjective practitioner. Walker 51

But even if we know what we’re looking for, there’s still the thorny issue of “how we’re looking for it.” Unfortunately, the field of contemporary ethnography is particularly complicated, especially as it applies to the uniquely challenging community of Jediism. For instance, even though “Jedi Knight” might seem like one fairly distinct category, the international, grassroots nature of the Jedi phenomenon does not lend itself to organization or central authority. In particular, although the census might have prompted the creation of several Jedi “denominations,” there is no one unified “church” within the movement. Instead, there are two major groups, the “Temple of the Jedi Order,” and the “JediChurch.org,” complemented by literally dozens of regional or topical churches or subgroups (which include the “Maryland Jedi Order,” the “Ordem Jedi do Brasil,” the “New Jediism Order,” and the “Order of the Living Force”).131 What is more, each individual “church” group contains small (but substantial) differences in philosophy, intention, and organization. Where the “Temple of the Jedi Order” emphasizes a more open and loose interpretation of the films,132 the “Jedi Church,” sees the (non-canonical) “Jedi Code,”133 as the key to Jedi spirituality.134 It would thus be impossible (and against the spirit of these individual organizations) to assume or attempt to uncover any sort of universal “denominational” character or “group” sentiment operating behind Jediism at large. Our dealings must privilege the experiences and beliefs of individual Jedi practitioners over the broad statements of principle and purpose offered by different Jedi organizations.

Furthermore, while some Jedi might attempt to meet or congregate in the real world, the vast majority of their communication and interactions take place online – especially on

131 “Jedi Ministries.” Jedi Church, accessed December 12, 2016. . 132 Sydrick, “Homepage.” Temple of the Jedi Order. 133 While the “Jedi Code” is an important element of the spiritual practice of the Jedi Church, it does not actually appear in Lucas’s films themselves. For more on this, see pp. 14-18 later in this chapter. 134 “Homepage.” Jedi Church, accessed January 30, 2017. < https://www.jedichurch.org/>. Walker 52 the forums hosted by different Jedi churches and Facebook pages.135 The obvious advantage to that kind of organizational framework is that their dialogue remains part of the public domain: the conversations, arguments, and meetings of different Jedi practitioners are logged completely and indefinitely for anyone interested in exploring their cosmology.136 However, creating an entire ethnography based only on online interactions also poses some methodological risks. As Annette Markham points out in her useful (if slightly dated) article,

“The Methods, Politics, and Ethics of Representation in Online Ethnographies:” “new communication technologies privilege and highlight certain features of interaction while obscuring others, confounding traditional methods of capturing and examining the formative elements of relationships, organizations, communities and culture.”137 Put more succinctly: many of the observational checks and fail-safes we’ve become accustomed to don’t work in online environments, where basic demographic and social data is obscured by the anonymity of the internet.

Of course, we are not interested in modeling a mode of ethnographic inquiry that would be responsive to all of the problems that Markham elucidates in her work. Indeed, it seems, to a certain extent, like that article itself acknowledges the impossibility of completing a “perfect” online ethnography – as she writes, it “is difficult even in qualitative research to peel back one’s own complicated layers of interpretation,” to complete an analysis that is fully independent of the perspectival intuitions and opinions of a particular researcher.138

However, we can keep implicit bias from overtaking or grossly affecting this project in two ways. First, we can restrict ourselves from making any undo hypothetical statements about

135 Davidsen, “From Star Wars to Jediism,” 377. 136 Of course, this is not entirely true. “Group administrators,” for example, notably have the option to ban particular contributors if their comments are deemed violent, offensive, or inappropriate in any way. And yet, while that sort of “censorship” certainly demonstrates one way in which the different Jedi “churches” or forum- hosts exert influence over their 137 Annette N. Markham, “The Methods, Politics, and Ethics of Representation in Online Ethnography,” in Handbook of Qualitative Research, 3rd edition, ed. Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005), 796. 138 Markham, “The Methods, Politics, and Ethics of Representation in Online Ethnography,” 811. Walker 53 the experiential or physical situations of our ethnographic subjects. In other words, we will be careful not to attribute any physical, social, or demographic characteristics to any of our research subjects. Secondly, we will attempt to garner information through multiple sources and outlets. Rather than focusing on one specific site or forum, we will look at two different webspaces and communities, focusing our gaze on the way that apparently disparate individuals might articulate their ethical relationship to the Star Wars films.139 Therefore, while we will almost certainly be subject to the “biases inherent in our traditional ways of seeing and knowing,” we will attempt to limit those biases as best we can.140 Our methodology, like our research questions, will be appropriately diffuse, ad hoc, and comparative: a collage of different people and different stories, which may or may not form some final, coherent narrative.

THE JEDI IN PRACTICE

What Are the Jedi?

What better place to begin than with the most basic question of all: what is Jediism?

Phrased differently: what do the Jedi actually, substantively believe, and to what extent do they believe it? Of course, that issue is difficult to neatly answer, since not every Jedi responds to the question in exactly the same way. What’s more, unlike our aesthetic analysis in the first chapter, not every piece of relevant philosophical data here will come from the films. On the contrary, practicing Jedi distinctly break from the “scriptural” authority we might expect the Star Wars canon to have for them – pursuing instead a kind of “universalist” ethics which take the metaphors of Lucas’ saga out of their original cinematic context. But despite those complications, we might still be able to identify the major “nodes” or “hubs” of

139 In particular, we will look at “forum” posts from the two largest organizations, “The Jedi Church,” and “The Temple of the Jedi Order,” and we will solicit interviews from a number of different Jedi “Facebook” pages, ensuring that our project is at least somewhat sensitive to the diversity, complexity, and non-centrality of the Jedi phenomenon. 140 Ibid, 796. Walker 54

Jedi praxis a dual interest in a metaphysical entity called “The Force,”141 and the way that that entity can guide certain ethical decisions through an invented “Jedi Code,” two features which emphasize the “rationally-compatible” and pragmatically practicable aspects of Jedi cosmology.

Take, first, “The Force,” the supernatural entity in Star Wars that seems to structure much of Jedi (and for that matter, “Sith”) cosmology. As we discussed in the first chapter of this thesis, “The Force,” as it appears in Star Wars, seems to work primarily as a “mystical” phenomenon. Its roots in Western Esotericism reveal an emphasis on a “hidden gnosis or gnostic insight, i.e., knowledge of hidden or invisible realms or aspects of existence,” as well as a more general “esotericism, meaning that this hidden knowledge is either explicitly restricted to a relatively small group of people, or implicitly self-restricted by virtue of its complexity or subtlety.”142

Although “The Force” is fairly explicitly supernatural within the world of Star Wars, practicing Jedi seem to treat the entity much differently than their fictional counterparts.

Indeed, one of the most interesting (and enduring) aspects of Jedi cosmology is an emphasis on “rationalism” or an explicitly “scientific” interpretation of “The Force” – the way that substance metaphorically bridges the gap between the realms of the “mystical” and the traditionally empirical.143 Turn, for example, to John Mark Adams, one of the Jedi I interviewed extensively and a third-generation descendent of Methodist preachers. As he phrased it: “what I fundamentally believe in is Science. Whole heartedly and undoubtedly.

Science.”144 He sees “The Force,” as an analogue to “gravity. It holds everything together.

Planets, solar systems, galaxies.”145 The “Dark Side,” then, that mysterious quantity that

141 An ontological entity that takes its name from the Star Wars films but operates, for the Jedi, in its own, distinctive way. 142 Versluis, 2. 143 And another way in which cinema, more broadly, might act in an “enchanting” mode. 144 John Mark Adams, Facebook-message to the author, November 21, 2014. 145 Ibid. Walker 55 seems to be the font of all evil in the Star Wars films, is nothing more than “Dark matter, which we don’t really understand too well, but is ultimately very powerful.”146 For a self- described “atheist” like Adams, part of the appeal of Jediism is its compatibility with his traditionally secular and empirical vision of the world. “The Force” is spiritually significant, in part, because of its non-competition with a more straightforwardly scientific world-view.

Interestingly, Adams’s emphasis on “rationalism” is not singular. On the contrary, several other practicing Jedi share similar sentiments. Most notable is Trevor MacDonald, an ex-military PhD in anthropology working in Criminal Forensics, who wrote about how he sees “The Force has having scientifically provable potential.”147 While MacDonald concedes that his belief might seem mysterious now, “if Gods, or if The Force, is real, there will be a means in which they can be scientifically explained, and proven.”148 However, unlike Adams, he did not find an explicit analogue in any currently known scientific phenomenon. Instead, for MacDonald, the Force is about some sort of core “energy” that could someday be

“accessed, controlled, changed, twisted, shaped, concentrated, guided, diverted, and used”149

– the sort of latent physical or metaphysical substance we see throughout the “New Age” pseudo-scientific milieu.150 Rather than a religious belief, MacDonald sees “The Force” as a kind of quasi-rational hypothesis – as something that might be systematically or empirically borne out after further technological, theosophical, or mystical advancement.

Still more Jedi accept that version of “The Force” but contend that it manifests most clearly in action and practical activity. One Jedi Church member emphasized that he felt:

[C]onnected to the force even stronger after exercise. I think its because as your body is exercising you are releasing your energy into the force and then you are gaining more strength and better health especially through meditation. I know there is a

146 Ibid. 147Talon Trevor MacDonald, email-message to the author, November 22, 2014. 148 Ibid. 149 Ibid. 150 See Walter J. Hanegraaff’s New Age Religion and Western Culture (New York: SUNY Press, 1995). Walker 56

scientific explanation to how your body rebuilds strength, but I feel like you are feel connected to others [sic].151

A user named “V-tog” on the Temple of the Jedi Order concurs. As he or she writes: “My belief in the Force means that there are certain ways in which I would like to act (i.e. practicing meditation to learn to connect to the Force, helping others as we are all parts of the same larger thing, etc).”152 For some practitioners, this “rational” appeal of “The Force” is more investing in its practical, day-to-day application than in its metaphysical or scientific possibility; Star Wars’ mystical ontology is most useful as a tool, or a way of understanding and managing the day-to-day pressures of contemporary life.

Not every Jedi is strictly “rational” in their interpretation of “The Force.” Some seem take a more traditionally esoteric mode. One contributor to The Jedi Church asked his community whether his ability to alleviate his wife’s headaches through “plac[ing a] hand on her head,” meant that he might “posses healing powers.”153 Another, on the Temple of the

Jedi Order, discussed how the fact that she was a “formally trained high priestess in a Dianic tradition, a Reiki master and [had a] formal education in Astro-Physics” meant that she could be accurately called a “professional witch.”154 But even these more explicitly esoteric or

“magical” perspectives are highly influenced by a sort of rationalist or empirical understanding of the world. The “healer,” for instance, ended his comment by asking whether it was plausible that he actually could manipulate “The Force,” or, instead, whether it might be a “conscious thing that because my wife believes that I make her feel better, that her own

151 Facebook Post, Stuart Wall, on Jedi Church (The Original), January 13, 2017 at 12:52pm, accessed February 2, 2017. 152 Forum Post, V-tog on Temple of the Jedi Order, July 9, 202 at 1:18 pm, accessed February 2, 2017 . 153 Facebook Post, John Stone on Jedi Church (The Original), January 21, 2017 at 3:45am, accessed February 2, 2017. 154 Forum Post, Kyrin Wyldstar on Temple of the Jedi Order, January 20, 2017 at 12:50 am, accessed February 2, 2017. . Walker 57 thoughts remove the pain itself.”155 Similarly, the “professional witch” actually framed her comment as a response to a different magical practitioner, who claimed to be able to “harness and manipulate” the “esoteric energy” of the world, a proposition this particular Jedi found to be false since real “energy work” is more about manipulating “psychological activity internal to the individual that they allowed to come about as a response to their environment.”156 As one

Temple of the Jedi Order contributor named “Loudzoo”157 put it, while “The Force” may connote certain “mystical,” elements, it is explicitly “not a supernatural phenomenon - but one that anyone can experience perfectly naturally.”158 Even in the more “spiritual” wings of the Jedi churches, science and empiricism reign supreme.

Consequently, while we can’t say that all Jedi believe in the same version of “The Force,” we can say that a large number of them seem to embrace a version of that concept that is compatible with science and empirically oriented. Phrased differently: mysticism and magic seem to be less important to these real-world practitioners than “The Force” as a sort of metaphor for the aspects of science and spirituality that forge connections between different bodies or objects.

As a Temple of the Jedi Order member named “Nicholasos” framed it, this is not so much a

“religion” as a sort of “secular spirituality,” 159 a rationally influenced movement whose emphasis has less to do with Lucas’ cinematic canon, and more to do with contemporary

American pluralism and “New Age” spirituality writ large.160

However, “The Force” is not the only quasi-unifying aspect of Jediism. Another common spiritual thread seems to be an interest in something called the “Jedi Code:” a

155 Facebook Post, Stone. 156 Forum Post, Kyrin Wyldstar. 157 A phonetic pun that is almost surely intentional. 158 Forum Post, Loudzoo on Temple of the Jedi Order, January 14, 2017 at 12:01 pm, accessed February 2, 2017. . 159 Forum Post, Nicholasos on Temple of the Jedi Order, January 27, 2017 at 7:32 pm, accessed February 2, 2017. ; 160 For more on the history and dominant trends in “New Age” spirituality, see April DeConick’s Gnostic New Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). Walker 58 statement of principle that different individual Jedi use to guide their own spirituality or religious belief. Paradoxically, that “code” is not ubiquitous for all Jedi practitioners. In fact, one of the most interesting things about the “Code” is that it does not actually appear in the cinematic Star Wars films at all. Instead, the most frequently-cited version of this doctrine appears to derive from the 2003 role-playing video game Knights of the Old Republic, a source which itself might have borrowed the under riding philosophy of its “code” from

Lucas’s notes on the Episode I: The Phantom Menace (the film which first mentions the existence of some kind of “code” as structuring Jedi philosophy and praxis).161 But even despite its tangential relationship to Lucas’s cinematic universe, some form of “the code” effectively constitutes the second pillar of contemporary Jediism.

Take Doug Clancey, an ex-Christian who found the “code” while browsing books at

Barnes & Noble.162 As he remarked: “I couldn't put it down, all of my answers were here, right in front of me. I was thinking: how could I have missed this.”163 In this case, the “code” was one of the two most common variants – the series of aphorisms: “There is no emotion, there is peace. / There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. / There is no passion, there is serenity. / There is no chaos, there is harmony. / There is no death, there is The Force.”164 But even despite their simplicity, the words rang very true for Clancey, allowing him to finally

“let go of my anger and properly grieve.”165 In effect, the “code” acted as a sort of practical distillation of what Doug saw as the core of Jedi wisdom, a tool that gave him the guidance he needed to navigate a particularly emotionally fraught transition in his life.

And interestingly, while Doug’s experience might have been more emotionally pointed than it was for other members of his church, that same interest in the “code” as a

161 Knights of the Old Republic, directed by Casey Hudson. (2003; San Francisco: LucasArts). PC Game. 162 The book in question is Daniel Wallace’s The Jedi Path (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2011). 163 Doug Clancey, email-message to the author, November 15, 2014. 164 Ibid. The full text can also be found on the page “Doctrine of the Order.” Temple of the Jedi Order. Accessed December 12, 2014. . 165 Ibid; the grief Clancey is referring to here is over the recent death of his mother, a topic he engaged in with me fairly extensively. Walker 59 clarifying device holds true for a number of Jedi practitioners. For instance, in a discussion forum entitled “Favorite Jedi Code line,” a user named “Alethea Thompson” described how the phrase “There is no Death, there is the Force:”

[G]oes to the heart of the discussion on just how valuable any individual or thing is in the world. Whether we get along with someone or not matters very little, when we die we all return to something. Depending on your belief it's Heaven, possibly Hell, or simply the universe as returned energy. Either we are valued to the ecosystem or we are valued to a deity (or both!). Knowing that our end matters regardless is rather a beautiful thing.166

For “Alethea,” the significance of the Jedi “code” is the way that it offers comfort on a metaphysical scale. The fact that “death” does not mean the cessation of life, but the “return to something,” helps this user find the “beaut[y]” in his or her existential situation.

For another user, “MadHatter,” that comfort and consolation operates more locally.

As he or she describes: “My favorite line is: There is no chaos, there is harmony. The reason being is that no matter how insane the situation seems if we really look at there is an eye of calm in the storm. If we can find that eye we can be at peace with almost anything in life. It gives us a stable outlook that allows for calm and thought in even the harshest of environments.”167 In effect, although the Jedi “code” is certainly comforting, that comfort takes the form of a kind of practical wisdom; the “chaos” of the world is refracted and organized by the particular interpretive or religious lens offered by the Jedi worldview.

However, not every user understands the “code” in exactly the same way. In particular, a Jedi named Marie-Ora de Villiers, discovered that the “code” she found most valuable was not the standard “There is no emotion, there is peace” rendition embraced by most Jedi, but something else entirely called the “Jedi creed.” It is, as she notes, “a reworking of St. Francis’s Prayer,” beginning with “I am a Jedi, an instrument of Peace,” and

166 Forum Post, Alethea Thompson on Temple of the Jedi Order, August 29, 2016 at 1:28 pm, accessed February 2, 2017. . 167 Forum Post, MadHatter on Temple of the Jedi Order, August 29, 2016 at 1:52 pm, accessed February 2, 2017. . Walker 60 culminating in a profound statement of reciprocity and a call for mutual understanding.168 But despite the different language of this particular statement of Jedi principle, Marie’s use of the code was consonant with the other interpretations that we’ve looked at already. She emphasized that “I hand pick my beliefs according to what make sense to me, and can therefore never fully embrace any religion or code.”169 Consequently, she found the “creed” produced by the Temple of the Jedi Order to be particularly compelling insofar as it naturally

“aligned with my inner experience.”170 For Marie, part of the advantage of Jediism was that it did not need to be modified or altered in order to fit into her moral schema – instead, the

“code” gave articulation to a philosophy of life and religion that she had already developed through years of independent study and education.

What’s more, even overt dissenters to notions of Jedi “doctrine” seem to have some sort of sympathy for an ordering statement of principle or philosophy. For instance, on a

Temple of the Jedi Order forum thread called “Jedi Doctrine and Question,” one commentator named “Edan” volunteered that: “The only commitment that matters is the commitment that you have to your Jedi path... what we tell you you are is completely irrelevant... if you follow the doctrine, you call yourself a Jedi, not nobody can tell you otherwise J (And frankly... the doctrine bit is optional to being a Jedi J).”171 On another thread entitled “Jedi Knights Meaning,” a forum member named “x57z12” said that he or she found one of the Jedi Code’s off-shoots, the “Knight’s Code”172 to be difficult to follow, a

168 Marie-Ora de Villiers, email-message to the author, November 25, 2014. The full text of the creed reads: “I am a Jedi, an instrument of peace; / Where there is hatred I shall bring love; / Where there is injury, pardon; / Where there is doubt, faith; / Where there is despair, hope; / Where there is darkness, light; / And where there is sadness, joy. / I am a Jedi. / I shall never seek so much to be consoled as to console; / To be understood as to understand; / To be loved as to love; / For it is in giving that we receive; / It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; / And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. / The Force is with me always, for I am a Jedi.” 169 Ibid. 170 Ibid. 171 Forum Post, Edan on Temple of the Jedi Order, August 8, 2016 at 9:06 pm, accessed February 2, 2017. . 172 One interesting aspect of Jedi cosmology is the Temple of the Jedi Order’s rather elaborate system of hierarchy. In particular, in order to qualify to be a “Jedi Knight,” one has to study under a master for about eight Walker 61 point that made him or her “thankful” that it was an “optional” part of the Jedi lifestyle. As that practicioner described: “From my own perspective I already struggle with the Creed as I do not believe I can be… well, like this. I have no troubles striving for those ideals, however

I do believe in offering help, shelter, peace in a less forceful way.”173 In effect, then, even those Jedi who do not subscribe completely to the Jedi “code” in its most popular iteration seem to meaningfully interact with it, or at least orient themselves towards it, in some substantive way. Although it might not be a binding element of their faith, almost all Jedi seem to reserve some place for established heirarchy or “path,” if only as a sort of Wimbushi- ian “mirror” to ethically wrestle in and against.

In sum, while “The Force” and the “code” might not be interpreted by each Jedi in exactly the same way, it is clear that most of Jedi belief is structured around these two cosmological pillars, both of which emphasize the rationalism and universalism of the order as well as its practical or existential potential. Therefore, while it would be impossible (and against the spirit of this project) to reduce all Jedi spirituality and praxis to any sort of clearly defined organizationl superstructure, we can comfortably assert that Jedi faith primarily involves belief in a “scientifically compatible” version of “The Force,” as well as dedication to a creed of compassion and non-agression. While we might not have defined exactly what

Jediism is, we have uncoverd the primary drives and interests that motivate individual Jedi practicioners.

Where does Jediism Come From?

However, even if we have some tenative answer to the “what,” question, that still leaves the more psychologically rich problem of “why”: “why choose Jediism?” Or, more

months to a year, and pledge oneself to the “Knights Code,” written as: “A Knight is sworn to valor. / His heart knows only virtue; / His blade defends the helpless; / His word speaks only truth; / His Shield shelters the forsaken; / His courage gives hope to the despairing; / His justice undoes the wicked; / His image brings peace; / His code breaks the darkness; / His legend brings light.” 173 Forum Post, x57z12 on Temple of the Jedi Order, July 26, 2016 at 9:12 am, accessed February 2, 2017. . Walker 62 expansively, “what personal and religious sources drove these individual Jedi to Jediism?” As we might expect, the answer to that problem is somewhat more diffuse than the explicit

“what is Jediism” issue that we just attempted to understand. But we could still generally typify the Jedi experience as involving some sort of personal tragedy or existential crisis that triggers an interest in “religious universalism,” ultimately leading to the acceptance of

Jediism as an explicitly synthetic and constructed amalgamation of religious traditions.

Bill Nault, one of the Jedi I spoke to, makes this general pattern particularly clear. As he writes:

[Jediism] has probably saved my life. I was born with a heart condition called WPW Wolf Parkinson's White; I didn't find out about this until I was 37, approximately. I began meditating as a young child and my meditation techniques improved drastically when I was 15. The way [this heart condition] was described to me, my heart can be twice as fast. . . and . . . skip a beat at any given moment. In high school when running track I lost track of how many times my heart went into [fibrilation]. I was able to bring it back under control through meditation and I still use this technique today.174

In effect, Nault’s interest in Jediism began because of a practical health-crisis: the effective failure of his heart, which spurred a general interest in “meditation.” That eventually developed into a broader curiosity about a variety of “spiritual” traditions, particularly

“Reiki,” although he experimented, at one time or another, with essentially “all different religions.”175

However, the more Nault read, the more he realized that “all religions had something inherently wrong about them and something right about all of them. At that point I began putting together all the things they had in common. This was about the same time Lucas began doing that for the [Star Wars movies] and I came up with the same results [that he did].”176 Queue the second major feature of the Jedi experience: the assimilation of a group of diverse religious sources into one “universal” Jedi cosmology. As Nault put it, one of the

174 Bill Nault, Facebook-message to the author, February 3, 2017. 175 Ibid. 176 Ibid. Walker 63 most appealing things Jediism does is “take out the things that don't make sense” in

“organized religion,” particularly “the unnecessary dogma and the he-said-she-said storylines that go with it”177 and replace them with a more coherent, unifying narrative superstructure.

Therefore, despite its deconstruction of religious tradition, Jediism could not be rightly accused of standing “in opposition to any other religion because it incorporates all of them.”178 Nault effectively implies that Jediism takes the philosophical “heart” of established religion, and strips away all the associated rituals and the dogmas. Rather than reflecting the pluralistically inflected Christianity we saw in the first chapter of this thesis, Nault sees Star

Wars as unifying all existent spiritual traditions in one common framework, while simultaneously eliminating any waste or “unnecessary” superfluity traditionally associated with religious praxis.

Of course, Nault is just one of the Jedi I spoke to. But if we take him as an illustrative example, we can begin to understand how Jediism intends to deliver its practitioners from personal suffering into psychological equilibrium through the explicit synthesis of different external “philosophies” or “traditions.” Indeed, while it would be a drastic empirical overstatement to assume that all Jedi share the specific intellectual and religious background of Nault, his story certainly seems to be a present, if not dominant thread among practicing

Jedi.

The use of Jediism as a means of transcending personal hardship, for instance, seems to be a focal point of almost all Jedi message-boards and forums. As one contributor put it on

The Jedi Church’s Facebook page: “Are Padawan’s a thing here, because I need help?!”179

Interestingly, this particular crisis does not involve life and death, the way it did for Nault.

Instead, the post author writes:

177 Ibid. 178 Ibid. 179 Facebook Post, Grace Skidmore on Jedi Church (The Original), February 12, 2017 at 11:45am, accessed February 12, 2017. Walker 64

Today I had a meltdown because I wasn't sure about my Job . . . [S]ure performing is good but I get so tired in the shows . . . I [] don't feel good enough anymore to be in the business that I'm in, the pay is alright (for a 14 year old) but even though I've come far[,] I'm on a running [machine], trying so had but never getting anywhere. I still want to dance and act but it's such a hard business. I don't know what to do and I need help.”180

Despite the fairly run-of-the-mill quality of this existential problem, it garnered tremendous support from the rest of the Jedi community. One user “commented:” “You are on your journey, accept that you won't always reach your best, with every try, but as you practice you will get better . . . You're almost there. You'll get it, May the Force be with you.”181Another chimed in: “Following your heart is the choice most fear to do. But it is often a path more difficult. If dance is your passion, denying that [won’t] help you live. Maybe survive...but you [won’t] be living. Sometimes the scariest jump is the leap of faith in the beginning.”182 In all cases, individual Jedi community-members used both the language of Star Wars and the language of general spiritual universalism to respond to this initial “poster” with a display of emotional solidarity. These films, and the spiritual atmosphere around them were harnessed to achieve a straightforwardly therapeutic or cathartic effect.

What’s more, that same template was also replicated when the emotional stakes where much higher. For instance, in a forum post entitled “Memento Mori,” thread-author

“Cabur Senaar” wrote about how his mother had fallen “quite ill,” a fact that made it likely that she would die “in the coming year.”183 But rather than passively sharing his experience with his community, “Cabur Senaar” saw this as “an opportunity to rehearse an attitude of letting go,” a pose that “involves cultivating that attitude of death as an inevitability to be

180 Facebook Post, Grace Skidmore on Jedi Church (The Original), February 7, 2017 at 4:49pm, accessed February 12, 2017. 181 Facebook Comment on Grace Skidmore’s Facebook Post, Eric Vasquez, February 8, 2017 at 12:06am, accessed February 12, 2017. 182 Facebook Comment on Grace Skidmore’s Facebook Post, Zachary Gunderson, February 7, 2017 at 5:10pm, accessed February 12, 2017. 183 Forum Post, Cabur Senaar on Temple of the Jedi Order, August 30, 2016 at 6:17 pm, accessed February 12, 2017. < https://www.templeofthejediorder.org/forum/Jediism/115751-memento-mori?limitstart=0>. Walker 65 regarded with equanimity and, often, relief.”184 In this context, the resources of Jedi philosophy and the Jedi community were not leveraged to deal with heart palpitations or career frustrations, but “death as it confronts us personally, in concrete, life-altering terms.”185 Like Doug Clancey before him, “Cabu Senaar” found Jediism’s most useful function to be its mediation of the profound sadness brought on by death and loss.

But these pure expressions of grief are not the whole story. The other interesting and abiding element of the Jedi phenomenon is the way its participants draw on a diverse range of religious and philosophical sources to address their existential problems and difficulties. In the case described above – the imminent death of “Cabur’s” mother – forum respondents turned to a huge number of scientific and spiritual/philosophical sources to lend some sort of existential aid. One Temple of the Jedi Order member named “Proteus” cited Book 50 of the

Daodejing, encouraging “Cabur” to “Take a walk... in nature. Look around you.”186 Another, named “Snowy Aftermath,” turned to a version esoteric empiricism. As he or she saw it,

“The Law of Conservation of Matter,” implies that, “when we die, our atoms return to the well, where they get used to build other things over and over . . . until the universe collapses and explodes again,” a fact that made “Cabur’s” mom “eternal.”187 One respondent even chose to turn to the invented Jedi cosmology outright. As he or she put it:

In my recent practices, I learned from a master in Brazil something very interesting. In a shamanic rite I could have an experience out of my body . . . so I could connect to the Force and understand what your point of view. There is no death or life, everything is the same, there is no more material body, but there was always the soul and it goes back and forth as the will of the Force. So we are never alone or away from these people.188

184 Ibid. 185 Ibid. 186 Forum Post, Proteus on Temple of the Jedi Order, August 30, 2016 at 6:40 pm, accessed February 12, 2017. . 187 Forum Post, Snowy Aftermath on Temple of the Jedi Order, August 30, 2016 at 9:16 pm, accessed February 12, 2017. . 188 Forum Post, Kyber on Temple of the Jedi Order, August 30, 2016 at 9:33 pm, accessed February 12, 2017. . Walker 66

However, in all cases, “Cabur’s” problem – or at least the version of the problem that existed on this “Jedi” message board – opened itself up to a diverse and extensive range of sources.

Rather than restricting themselves to one scripture or one tradition, these Jedi self- consciously viewed their belief as a sort of fragmented coalescence of a number of possible

“spiritual” or “universal” texts and religious traditions, each as valid as the next. In effect, the resources of the Jedi are not only extremely broad – they are also necessarily “democratic” and interchangeable. Rather than sticking to an established “doctrine” or “canon,” the Jedi utilize, and even encourage, wide-ranging, inter-cultural exploration to resolve particular existential anxieties or traumas.

Perhaps predictably, the evidence of self-conscious Jedi universalism is abundant. In fact, one of the most common features of Jedi message boards is their reference to external mystical or religious traditions. A user named “Korvus,” for instance, talked about how the

Jedi cosmology is heavily influenced by both “Buddhism and Hinduism,” two “Eastern” religions that the poster found particularly useful for understanding the texture of his or her life. Another, named “Kyrin Wyldstar,” compared Jediism to “Christian Gnosticism,

Buddhism, Hinduism, the teachings of `Abdu'l-Bahá,” and even other “invented” religions like “Matrixism,” all of which cast some new light or new insight on the movement.189 One of the most interesting “threads” on the Temple of the Jedi Order website – “Jedi Books” – even shows respondents explicitly pointing towards the host of intellectual sources they saw informing their own version of Jediism, works ranging from the explicitly religious – Zen and the Art of Archery, the Vedas and the Daodejing (which one user wrote “reads directly as a

Jedi text” if you replace the word “Dao” with “Force”) – to the explicitly secular and philosophical – Heidegger’s Being and Time and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-

189 Forum Post, Kyrin Wyldstar on Temple of the Jedi Order, December 27, 2016 at 9:57 pm, accessed February 12, 2017. . Walker 67

Philosophicus.190 But in every case it was clear that the Jedi understood their own philosophy as essentially pastiche. As aforementioned Marie-Ora de Villiers stated: “Jediism has a lot in common with Buddhism and Christian[ity] and other Mystical traditions, even Nietzsche – in fact, I would describe it as a distillation and simplification of . . . [all of] mystical thought.”191

In sum, while each Jedi might not have the same philosophical or personal reason for accepting the Jedi cosmology, we could fairly say that almost all practicing Jedi are interested in using a variety of sources or religious antecedents in order to respond to their particular personal crises and problems. Put more simply, the “engine” that draws the Jedi to Jediism appears to be some sort of personal/existential anxiety, coupled with an interest in the

“universalizing,” and “amalgamating” qualities of this particularly open and creative cosmology.

What are the Ethics of Jediism?

Of course, understanding the characteristics and sources of different versions of

Jediism is one thing. But it’s something else entirely to examine the way those principles actually operate within the lives of actual Jedi practitioners. Therefore, this third section will tie the abstract cosmology of the Jedi to their ethical activity and philosophies – to identify examples of demonstrable, ethical behavior motivated by interaction with Jediism.

Unfortunately, this particular area is even more difficult to grasp than the abstract qualitative categories we investigated earlier. In fact, perhaps the only common thread between different Jedi ethical activities is their orientation towards non-aggression and compassion – the sort of generalized “peacefulness” advocated by most major religious traditions. In spite of that philosophical non-centrality, it would seem like the Jedi are

190 Forum Post, Kai-An Tatok on Temple of the Jedi Order, November 17, 2014 at 10:17 pm, accessed February 12, 2017. . 191 Marie-Ora de Villiers, email-message to the author, November 25, 2014. Walker 68 nevertheless concerned with implementing their diffuse “philosophy” in a variety of different ways, a feature which, in-and-of-itself, demands further attention.

Take, as an initial case study, The Temple of the Jedi Order’s “den385,” whose forum-thread “Jedi Moments,” has the express purpose of “link[ing]” Jediism “with real life.”192 In his or her own, initial post, “den385” describes how:

Me and my co-workers were exiting the office building after . . . [a] small office party. And here we saw a guy firing automatic weapon across the street. Most of us thought he was firing blanks but none wanted to do something about it. I insisted that my colleague called the police and both of us were giving testimonies and . . . filing police papers till 4 am. One moment I had to describe what I saw in front of the guy who fired the weapon. Then I felt my Jedi moment. I was in the now and I felt invincible 193

Several things should immediately strike us about “den385’s” description of his or her ethical action. The first, and most apparent, is how superficially ordinary it seems. Despite the

“vigilante” justice we might expect from someone attempting to live out the ethics of Star

Wars, this poster’s sacrifice was primarily one of convenience – giving “testimony” to the police meant that he or she had to stay out “filing papers till 4 am.”

Even in spite of the fairly blasé nature of this episode, it seems to have yielded some sort of genuine experience of transcendence: “Then I felt my Jedi moment. I was in the now and I felt invincible.” Therefore, if we were to take this incident as a model, we might say that “Jedi Moments,” or manifestations of ethical Jedi action, involve small acts of selflessness that yield profound experiences of cosmic wholeness and personal power. Far from the “Jedi Knights” of the Star Wars films, real-life Jedi appear to direct their efforts towards activity that fits within the realm of the everyday; rather than engaging explicitly in the complex, contradictory ethical formulations Star Wars presents (the formulations

192 Forum Post, den385 on Temple of the Jedi Order, January 30, 2017 at 9:46 pm, accessed February 25, 2017. . 193 Forum Post, den385 on Temple of the Jedi Order, January 30, 2017 at 9:51 pm, accessed February 25, 2017. . Walker 69 examined extensively in our first chapter), the Jedi accept inherited Judeo-Christian or

Buddhist ethical emphases on compassion, non-aggression, and altruism.

What’s more “den385’s” experience is hardly unique. On the contrary, both elements of his or her description – a small act of decency, followed by a feeling of transcendence or cosmic wholeness – map fairly ubiquitously onto most self-consciously “ethical” Jedi behavior. A Temple of the Jedi Order user named “Menbl,” for instance, describes how his or her priority is the cultivation of “patience,” a skill developed when “Tak[ing] the time . . . to focus on relaxing. Yes, things take time to complete, [but] running around yelling ‘COME

ON’ isn't going to hurry things up. This is when you must relax your mind and body, and breathe slowly. Take deep breaths, and clear the mind of hate. Perhaps focus on something peaceful.”194 Indeed, when “Menbl” “lets go,” he or she believes one can finally “become one with the force . . . [and] let go of any emotions you are feeling when impatient.”195 The

“mindfulness” provided by tolerance helps order and assuage the anxiety of “Menbl” as an ethical actor.

The Jedi fixation on managing anger seems to be pointing in a similar direction. One

Jedi Church member named “Jax Crowley,” noted that “it seems alot of us lately have forgotten what the main perpous of being a jedi. Being at peace with ourselves and being at peace with the world around us [sic],” a process that comes through “doing your part and what you can.”196 A Temple of the Jedi Order member called “OB1 Shinobi” concurs, noting that: “there are better and worse ways of handling your emotions, the short version being that the ‘better’ ways are healthier and the ‘worse’ ways will consistently produce more problems in your life . . . the ways that we CHOOSE to deal with our emotions is the where distinction

194 Forum Post, Menbl on Temple of the Jedi Order, January 28, 2017 at 7:27 am, accessed February 25, 2017. . 195 Ibid. 196 Facebook Post, Jax Crowley on Jedi Church (The Original), February 8, 2017 at 10:37pm, accessed February 25, 2017. Walker 70 between ‘light’ and ‘dark’ is made.”197 However, for both members, the ethical imperative of the Jedi remains a kind of “impulse control;”198 the very same sort of “mindfulness” and

“selflessness” that we’ve seen cropping up throughout Jedi philosophy and cosmology.

However, as we might expect given the expansiveness and diversity of the Jedi phenomenon, there are no concrete parameters for what specifically constitutes an “ethical”

Jedi action. On the contrary, one of the most active and divisive debates I encountered through this research was a thread created by the afore-mentioned Temple of the Jedi Order user “Korvus” entitled: “Jedi: Pacifists or Guardians?” Despite Jediism’s dependence on

“Hinduism and Buddhism,” Korvus does not believe in absolute “pacificism.” On the contrary, he or she admits: “I personally practice self defense, and have my entire life. I believe it is my duty to defend those who cannot defend themselves. Not like a police, but as a man looking after his fellow man. As a result, I carry a handgun, and I have since I was 18 years old.”199 Another respondent to the thread, “Trisskar,” appears to agree: “I believe in always being prepared. I also believe that if it do[e]sn't hurt you, then its worth learning. All knowledge is worth having. I trained in wado ryu, Tai Chi, Yoga, Concealed Carry, Rifle,

Japanese sword. I may never ever be in a position that will require me to use it. But by learning it, [I] have learned more about myself [sic].”200

Even members from different areas of the Jedi community seem to be invested in the issue. A Temple of the Jedi Order member named “Dano Ori” described how his or her training in Taekwondo, Jujitso, and semi-automatic handguns, could exemplify the sort of

197 Forum Post, OB1Shinobi on Temple of the Jedi Order, February 16, 2017 at 4:39 pm, accessed February 25, 2017. . 198 Ibid. 199 Forum Post, Trisskar on Temple of the Jedi Order, January 9, 2017 at 7:45 pm, accessed February 25, 2017. . 200 Ibid. Walker 71

“martial art” training that “should be incorporated” into Jediism.201 The aforementioned

Trevor MacDonald took it even further. As he wrote:

Should I simply accept . . . that others do, good or bad, and walk along with a quiet smile on my face, because I am at peace with them no matter what? Shall I turn my back when there is harm to the weak? Shall I look a different way when terrorism is employed? Shall I thus allow all people to be all things, because it is Jedi? No. Because that is Not Jedi.202

In other words, despite a general interest in “ethical” behavior, not all Jedi view their “ethics” in exactly the same way. On the contrary, many seem explicitly interested in a more violent, and active version of ethical activity, one that does not “turn [its] back” to suffering and pain.

Despite that (admittedly substantial) division between pacifism and the express cultivation of martial skill, we would maintain that even the more bellicose Jedi see their activity as essentially ethical and non-violent. In the very “comment” that started this debate,

“Korvus” maintains that: “I am [never] actively looking for a fight. In my entire life, I have only had to defend myself twice. Any other situation that has arise[n] in the past I have managed to de-esc[a]late using conversation.”203 Likewise, the well-trained “Dano Ori,” insists that his or her martial ability “has [no]thing to do with my Jedi path as it was all commenced before I began my current journey.”204 Perhaps another Temple of the Jedi Order user put it most clearly, when he or she remarked: “I define [pacifists] as adherents of the process of pacification . . . pacification being the an attempt to create or maintain peace. A

[martial Jedi] could from that point of view be a pacifist or not, [since] those terms might not be equivalent enough to be directly comparable.”205

201 Forum Post, Dano Ori on Temple of the Jedi Order, January 27, 2017 at 2:01 pm, accessed February 25, 2017. . 202 Facebook Comment on Jax Crowley’s Facebook Post, Trevor MacDonald, February 9, 2017 at 10:02pm, accessed February 25, 2017. 203 Forum Post, Korvus on Temple of the Jedi Order, January 9, 2017 at 8:48 am, accessed February 25, 2017. . 204 Forum Post, Dano Ori. 205Forum Post, Adder on Temple of the Jedi Order, January 10, 2017 at 1:34 am, accessed February 25, 2017. . Walker 72

In effect, granting the notable dissimilarities between the way the Jedi choose to cultivate their ethical worldviews, we would maintain that a general emphasis on living out a

“path” of peacefulness, meditation, and moral rectitude characterizes most of mainstream

Jedi experience. Despite the necessarily “insular” connotations of posting on forums, watching fantasy films, and debating invented cosmologies, most Jedi seem expressly (if not primarily) concerned with actualizing their ethics in the real world, a characteristic that paradoxically sets them apart from many adherents of so-called “traditional” religious movements.

Why Jediism?

However, even if we understand the practical and philosophical parameters of the movement known as “Jediism,” the motivating question of our investigation still remains:

“why Jediism?” Or, framed differently, “what distinguishes Jediism as a particularly potent or appropriate mode of self-expression and self-representation.” Interestingly, despite the centrality of this concern, the Jedi self-consciously engage with this issue less extensively. In fact, in many ways, the very nature of the Jedi forums and Churches undermine the question, implicitly assuming the significance of Jediism, rather than investigating it or questioning it with any rigor or scholarly objectivity. Nevertheless, despite the elusiveness of this final issue, we can use several tangential posts and statements to try to puzzle together the beginnings of an explanation.

Some of our greatest, evidence here will be omission. In particular, the surprisingly small amount of space the Jedi reserve for discussing the Star Wars films themselves.206 For instance, on the Temple of the Jedi Order forum, only around 235 of 7131 (or around 3%) of open threads are explicitly about the Star Wars franchise; that’s opposed to 898 open threads

206 In a strange sort of way, this is in keeping with the ethics of the films themselves. Indeed, the Jedi do not necessarily identify with Star Wars as much as they identify with the “Jedi Order” within Star Wars. Their practice, then, will necessarily focus on extra-canonical material. Rather than living out the ethics of Star Wars, these individuals are attempting to live out the imaginary “Jedi Path.” Walker 73 on “humor,” 508 topics on “Health, physical fitness, and wellbeing,” and 1197 on “Jediism” outright.207 Likewise, as of February 25, 2017, only two of the past 100 posts on the

Facebook homepage of the Jedi Church were actually about the Star Wars films – one of which advertised possible “conspiracy theories” within the films, and another which linked a video of George Lucas giving a speech about his own philosophy of life.208 Whatever Jediism is, then, it is not merely obsessive exegesis of a popular film franchise. On the contrary, the clear emphasis seems to be pointing away from Star Wars, and towards a dialogue about religious pluralism, universalism, and the creation of a manifest ethics.

How, then, do we see the Jedi incorporating the Star Wars mythos into their own ethical/philosophical worldviews? Several of the most obvious methods have already been discussed at length. The notion of “The Force,” for instance, comes directly from the franchise, as does the (admittedly extra-canonical) “Jedi Code.” What’s more, many Jedi community-members frequently draw on quotations and situations from the films in order to prove their points. Yoda, in particular, is often cited as a font of mystical wisdom;209 similarly, Anakin Skywalker’s fall from grace is used to illustrate the dangers of certain psychological states and behaviors.210 And yet, as we have implicitly demonstrated heretofore, those references are not necessary for any given Jedi forum post or conversation.

Phrased differently: while different Jedi certainly reference the movies and their stories, those references are not more frequent than the allusions to any of the other “sources” (Daoism,

Buddhism, Christianity, etc), that we’ve traced so far.

207 “Forum,” Temple of the Jedi Order, accessed February 12, 2017. . 208 Jedi Church (The Original), accessed February 25, 2017. It’s also worth noting, in both of the cases in which Star Wars was referenced by a “forum-poster,” it was acknowledged, either by that poster or by another member of the community, that the Jedi Church was not an appropriate place for discussion of the Star Wars films. 209 Forum Post, GreyJedi30 on Temple of the Jedi Order, February 3, 2017 at 8:48 am, accessed February 25, 2017. . 210 Forum Post, droberts4317 on Temple of the Jedi Order, January 8, 2017 at 1:47 am, accessed February 25, 2017. . Walker 74

Despite the absence of any definitive or empirically sound answer to the question

“what distinguishes Jediism?” some Jedi still seem self-consciously aware of the superficial strangeness of their spiritual entanglement with Star Wars. One post on the Jedi Church

Facebook page by a practitioner named Greg Charteris makes this explicit. As Greg asks his fellow community-members:

What do you do when your family thinks your Jedi beliefs are fictions of children? when they see you as a cosplay fan of the film's And books when you are not one. how do you explain the force and Jediism when you are only an apprentice in need of training [sic]?211

The range of responses to this post might reveal, at least in some way, the diverse reasons that individual practitioners have come to this fictional religion. Our correspondent Bill

Nault, for instance, emphasized the significance of Jediism’s religious “universalism:”

“remember, Luc[as] came up with Jediism by bringing together several religions into 1,” a statement which clearly underscores the synthetic and constructed nature of the Jedi

“religion.”212 Ally Thompson, another respondent, emphasized the importance of “The

Force” as a structuring metaphysical entity – in her comment, she encouraged Charteris to explain the way “The Force” operates in order to account for, and even proselytize, the Jedi faith.213 However, the most representative and most succinct answer came from a Jedi named

Bill Chapman, when he wrote: “Cosplay is cosplay, Jediism is a mindset. Be the difference.”214 In other words, the real power of Jediism comes in its philosophical sophistication, a characteristic that can and should be made manifest through action and participation in the world. As another respondent, Manuel Baquerizo Suraty put it: “Jediism

211 Facebook Post, Greg Charteris on Jedi Church (The Original), February 11, 2017 at 4:13am, accessed February 25, 2017. 212 Facebook Comment on Greg Charteris’ Facebook Post, Bill Nault, February 11, 2017 at 11:14am, accessed February 25, 2017. 213 Facebook Comment on Greg Charteris’ Facebook Post, Ally Thompson, February 11, 2017 at 3:00pm, accessed February 25, 2017. 214 Facebook Comment on Greg Charteris’ Facebook Post, Bill Chapman, February 12, 2017 at 10:06am, accessed February 25, 2017. Walker 75 is show, not tell.”215 The unique characteristic of this philosophy is the way its ethical system can be developed and put into practice by a group of interested and spiritually connected participants. Its very “impelementability” is its most salient feature.

In the end, then, while individual Jedi might not self-consciously explicate their specific attraction to the Star Wars mythology, they do articulate the benefit of a rich and philosophically multiple mythological architecture that they can build onto. If we were going to hypothesize about the characteristics that make Star Wars uniquely suitable for religious- interaction, we might say that it has to do with its intellectual broadness, its open-ended ambiguity, and its pragmatic orientation, all features which, in one way or another, help bring these Jedi to their new, conspicuously “universal” community.

THE CONSTRUCTIVE ETHICS OF JEDIISM

Wrapping Things Up

In sum, although we are still far from tracing all the discursive differences and delineations of each Jedi “church,” organization, and philosophical subset, we were able to use a sort of bricolage online ethnography in order to trace some major nerves of the contemporary Jedi movement. In particular, we have constructed one representation of

Jediism as a philosophy centering around a belief in “The Force,” and an ordering “Jedi

Code,” tools which explicitly draw on a whole host of religious and philosophical traditions in order to form highly customized and customizable moral systems. But despite the abstraction of that intellectual activity, many Jedi emphasize the pragmatism and practicability of their movement, attempting to “live out” the ethics of their personal creed in whatever way they see fit.

215 Facebook Comment on Greg Charteris’ Facebook Post, Manuel Baquerizo Suraty, February 11, 2017 at 8:32am, accessed February 25, 2017. Walker 76

Consequently, although the significance of this version of Jediism might extend far beyond the boundaries set by the Star Wars films, it is clear that the ethical “mirror” provided by those movies has had a major affect on entire swaths of their audience. Indeed, the pastiche of the Star Wars franchise seems to have encouraged one community of like-minded viewers to take Lucas’s process even further, developing an invented philosophical infrastructure from the historical texts of a “long time ago,” and the fantastic world of the

“galaxy far, far away.” Despite their departure from the source-films, then, we can comfortably assert that Jediism – at least as it exists in the lives of the individuals we studied and conversed with – speaks to the heart of the Star Wars story. Just like Han, Luke, Leia, and even Anakin before them, the living Jedi try to leverage their intellectual and physical resources in order to make their lives, and their world, a better place.

And so, while the task of the Jedi might not be unified in the way of a traditional

“religious” movement – while it might be disjointed, imperfect, and take tremendous license with the historical, religious, and cinematic canon – it is also an undeniably meaningful effort to turn these movies into an actual, manifest change in the “galaxy,” a quality that we would have to recognize, at the very least, as importantly earnest and surprisingly genuine.

Walker 77

Drawing Conclusions

Thus far, we have explored the religious ethics of Star Wars in two very different ways. First, we took the films seriously as quasi-religious texts. We examined the way the

Star Wars saga collects material from the Daoist, Buddhist, Esoteric, and Christian traditions, and ties them together in a unique ethical model that values detachment but also acknowledges the human need for personal and familial connection. Next, we examined the invented religious movement of Jediism, and the way it cosmologically builds upon George

Lucas’ original mythological framework. In particular, we constructed a diffuse online ethnography in order to identify the key tenets of Jediism: its orientation towards a rational- scientific “Force” and the “Jedi Code” that springs from it, its consolidation of a variety mythological and religious sources, and its explicit focus on pragmatic, this-worldly ethics.

But despite that constructive work, we have not yet attempted to synthesize or compare these two religious “perspectives” on the Star Wars phenomenon in any meaningful way. Phrased differently, while we might understand how the ethics of Star Wars act in the scholarly abstract, as well as in the lives of particular practicing Jedi, we have not yet answered our broader question: what about the Star Wars series makes it a particularly compelling site for religious and ethical activity? It will, then, be the purpose of this brief conclusion to compare the “applied” and “theoretical” models we have traced thus-far – to attempt to uncover and get under what sticks, what doesn’t, and what all this might mean, anyway.

Ethical Dissonances

Interestingly, many of the most striking features of comparison arise from the incongruities between the ethics of Star Wars and the ethics of the practicing Jedi. At first blush, it seems like the theoretical and applied moralities we’ve traced are more different than they are similar. Walker 78

The dissimilarities in re “The Force,” for instance, are particularly notable. As we explicated through our analysis of the original Star Wars trilogy, in the context of the films

“The Force” is meant to be explicitly supernatural. It’s not just a metaphorical substance that

“binds” human souls together in some obtuse or indefinite way, but a genuine mystical material – a tangible “thing” that has the power to lift X-Wings, pull forth light sabers, and manipulate the “weak” minds of meddling storm-troopers. For the practicing Jedi, on the other hand, “The Force” is most useful in terms of its non-competition with scientific or empirical epistemology. As both Trever McaDonald and John Mark Adams explain, if “The

Force” exists in some sort of definite way, it must subscribe to the same empirical rules as all other, temporal phenomena. Far from its original resonance with Mesmerism or the “Astral

Light,” then, modern day Jedi have reformulated “The Force” to subscribe to rational ways of seeing and knowing.216 As MacDonald put it in his correspondence with me: “if Gods, or if

The Force, is real, there will be a means in which they can be scientifically explained, and proven.”217

So, too, with the Jedi “code.” In particular, although no “code” is explicitly stated or laid out in the films, some version of an invented statement of principle has been taken up by almost all of the real-life Jedi I spoke with. Once again, then, rather than exclusively using material, dialogue, or situations from the movies themselves to illustrate ethical points, the

Jedi often turn to their own discovered or constructed material, emphasizing the non-binding, imaginative element of their ethical system. As a forum-poster named “Edan” put it: “what we tell you you are is completely irrelevant... if you follow the doctrine, you call yourself a

216 This more “scientific” reading of “The Force” is gestured towards in the films with the much-derided discussion of “midi-chlorians” from Episode I: The Phantom Menace. However, given the brevity and isolation of that reference, it is not enough to sustain a persuasive interpretation of the saga. See Footnote 61. 217 Talon Trevor MacDonald, email-message to the author, November 22, 2014. Walker 79

Jedi, not nobody can tell you otherwise.”218 In effect, part of the appeal of Jediism (at least for Edan) is its lack of organizing dogma or specific cinematic referents.

However, perhaps the most striking discontinuity between the ethics of Star Wars and the ethics of Jediism comes in the strange way the Jedi disregard the message that we identified as most crucial to these films. Indeed, as we explicated in the first chapter of this thesis, the most significant and complicated ethical idea Star Wars puts forth is the incompatability of the Buddhist notion of “detachment” with the more cinematic and contemporary emphases on familial and individual conncetion. Consequently, while Star

Wars certainly advocates for a controlled “mindfulness” and universal “compassion” it also acknowledges that those virtues, when pushed past their breaking point, can lead to ruin and devestation. The sophistication of the ethical pastiche we saw Star Wars modelling operated almost entirely in the way certain “Eastern” sources were combined and contradicted by their more familiar “Western” counterparts.

Such a reading, however, seems to have little-to-no purchase on the actual practice of

Jediism. Indeed, not only do the Jedi make infrequent reference to the ethical dilemmas posed by the films – they actively ignore the contradictions and complexities framed so eloquently by Lucas’s saga. Instead, actual Jedi practicioners seem more concerned with classic, and essentially straightforward ethical problems like how to control anger, how to cultivate patience, or how to express kindness towards strangers. Rather than using Star Wars as a rigorously Wimbush-ian “mirror,” the Jedi concern themselves primarily with quotidian ethical questions and objectives – their morality seems to spring less from explicit reference to Lucas’ cinematic saga, and more out of a sense of common decency and impulse control.

218 Forum Post, Edan on Temple of the Jedi Order. Walker 80

Ethical Resonances

Although there are many notable ways in which Jediism seems to have very little to do with the version of Star Wars we’ve constructed heretofore, there are also some important resonances between the ethics of Jediism and the ethics of Star Wars writ large.

Probably the most obvious comes in the pastiche quality of both the films and practiced Jediism. For instance, though the Jedi might not rigorously examine the way that mythological and religious referents are combined and pressed against each other in the Star

Wars saga, they certainly have a general interest in the varied and multiple religious sources of that cinematic canon. In the aforementeioned forum thread, “Jedi Books,” different Jedi explicitly acknowledge their spiritual indebtedness to a variety of different cultural, philosophical, and religious texts: from the Vedas to the Daodejing to Wittgentsein’s

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.219 Likewise, in the formal bid for the Temple of the Jedi

Order’s charity status, petitioners emphasized the way their “religion” draws on “Hinduism and Christianity, and on ‘the existential phenomenology of Heidegger, Kierkegaard and

Buber’” in order to create their own ethical and philosophical system.220 Consequently, although they might not use pastiche in the same way as the films, the practicing Jedi care deeply about the diversity, multiplicity, and range of references Jediism uses to build its cosmology.

Similarly, both the films and lived Jediism emphasize a sort of openness to construction and invention. One of the most salient features of the practicing Jedi is their profound skepticism towards anything even resembling close-minded dogmatics. As one of my correspondents Bill Nault put it, Jediism explicitly “take[s] out the things that don't make sense” in “organized religion,” like “the unnecessary dogma and the he-said-she-said storylines” and replaces it with an assimilation of world religions – a multi-faith spirituality

219 Forum Post, Kai-An Tatok on Temple of the Jedi Order. 220 Shea, “Bid for ‘Star Wars’ Religion Is Shot Down,” New York Times, December 19, 2016. Walker 81 that is able to act practically in the lives of its believers, without the frustrating theological stickiness of a single tradition.221 Marie-Ora de Villiers agrees, noting that she “hand pick[s]

[her] beliefs according to what make sense to [her], and can therefore never fully embrace any religion or code.”222 In a sense, then, while Jediism does not reflect the self-conscious critique of Buddhist detachment encased in Lucas’ franchise, it does preserve, and in fact, internalize, a sort of hesitancy to accept rules inflexibely or on the basis of “mere faith.”223

Although the Jedi might not actively reflect on the role that institutional “religion” plays in

Anakin Skywalker’s turn to the dark side, they intuitively preserve a preference for individuality, openness, and personally-constructed spirituality: the same tendency that characterizes recent American religious history writ large. In a sense, then, as scholar Kerry

Mitchell would put, Jediism acts as a component part of the “major . . . American” trend towards “spiritual . . . religious individualism;” Star Wars becomes a new site for rehearsing contemporary American movements towards pluralism and univeralism more generally.224

Finally, the overriding Jedi concern with ethics and manifesting substantive behavioral change acts in fundamental concert with both the form and the authorial intention of the Star Wars films. As George Lucas remarks in the aforementioned Bill Moyers

Mythology of Star Wars special: “what these films deal with is the fact that we all have good and evil inside of us and we can choose the way we want the balance to go . . . the issues of friendship and your obligation to your fellow man and other people that around you.”225 The fact, then, that the Jedi would devote so much time and textual space to thinking about how to control their anger, or how to properly express love and kindness for their family members, shows rigorous and genuine engagement with the spirit, if not the particularities, of the Star

221 Bill Nault, Facebook-message to the author, February 3, 2017. 222 Marie-Ora de Villiers, email-message to the author, November 25, 2014. 223 The Jedi emphasis on “rationalism,” particularly in relationship to “The Force,” could be interpreted as an extension of this wariness about dogmatic or anti-modern religious traditions. 224 Kerry Mitchell, “The Politics of Spirituality: Liberalizing the Definition of Religion,” in Secularism and Religion Making, ed. Markus Dressler et al (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 128 225 The Mythology of Star Wars, 2:50. Walker 82

Wars franchise. Even though these religious actors might not always use the story of Han,

Luke, Leia and Anakin to navigate their ethical world, they have taken the Star Wars series as a sort of jumping-off point for their own, practical ethical engagement – the very objective that Lucas professes as the self-conscious goal of the Star Wars films.

Consequently, while the films themselves might not always be the ethical “mirror” we referred to earlier in this thesis, they certainly act as a kind of motivating agent: encouraging certain elements of their audience to go out and try to live in the inherited forms of

“spiritualism” or “universalism.” Even though the practicing Jedi might not enact the literal ethics of the cinematic saga that we identified earlier, their spirit is nevertheless in concert with the “galaxy far, far away” – while the details might be different, almost all the Jedi preserve a set of non-dogmatic, individually-oriented questions about how to live ethically in our own, very real world.

These Are Your First Steps…

But even if we’ve begun to come to terms with the possible and actualized ethical significance of Star Wars, the question remains: to what extent can it resolve the problem posed by Weber at the beginning of this thesis? To what extent does Star Wars act as a genuine form of “enchantment?”

In many ways, this project leaves us with more questions than answers. We can’t be sure, for instance, why certain sources were selected for use in both the Star Wars films and the Jedi community while others weren’t – what made Buddhism a clear reference point for the films, Hinduism a clear reference point for the Jedi practitioners, and Christian

Gnosticism a clear reference point for both. We also can’t know where and whether the bright-line exists between a “fan” of Star Wars and an actual, self-conscious Jedi practitioner

– whether there are certain rites, or levels of academic intensity that differentiate between mere enthusiasts and actual religious adherents. And, perhaps most importantly, we can’t be Walker 83 sure why all of this religious activity, interest, and scholarship is centered around Star Wars in the first place: why Lucas’ franchise been the subject of so much explicit religious fervor, where other popular fantastical worlds, like Tolkein’s “Middle Earth,” and J.K. Rowling’s

“Wizarding World,” have not.

However, while we have admittedly just scratched the surface of possible research areas, it seems as though there are already hints of ways in which these films – and other imaginaries like them – might act as an appropriate “first step” towards a broader recognition of an “enchanted” modernity. It would be hard to deny, for instance, that Star Wars has provided millions of people with a mythologically potent central narrative – a world by which they can clarify, relativize, and understand their own experience. Similarly, despite major ethical disconnects, the films seem to have unambiguously galvanized actual moral action: encouraging certain viewers to enact compassion, non-aggression, and altruistic selflessness in their own lived experience. And, undoubtedly, they have fostered a sense of community, establishing hundreds of webspaces with thousands of individual participants worldwide, all of which are committed to improving their own social and personal lives in measurable and important ways.

It is our hope, then, that this paper will act as an appropriate jumping-off point, not only to more serious religious analysis of Star Wars, but also to the ways in which “low” or

“mass” commercial culture might provide a potent and genuine solvent for the problems of modernity. In particular, by treating the films, and the community that has built around them as a valuable object of study in their own right, we have demonstrated how religious pastiche and constructed, invented cosmologies might work together to produce real and original existential meaning. Far from a contemporary manifestation of the well-worn Campbellian

“mythic method,” or a curiosity of contemporary sociology, these films, and the people who take them seriously, are genuinely religious insofar they seek to “make a difference . . . in the Walker 84 construction of our societies and the way our societies work”226 – insofar as they attempt to model and enact real ethical change in the world. Therefore, while the story of Star Wars might take place “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” its audience and adherents work, live, and make meaning in our own very real present moment: a promising, if not unqualified, stay against the dehumanizing forces of Weber’s immanent modernity.

226 Mack, “How Myths Work,” 56. Walker 85

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Acknowledgments

As with any project this size, there are a huge number of people to thank and acknowledge. First and foremost, my adviser, Professor Josephson-Storm, whose guidance through this thesis, and the religion major more generally, has been absolutely invaluable. I came into college preparing to declare Econ and Poli Sci, but after Prof. Josephson-Storm’s

REL 250 class in my freshman fall, I immediately switched to Religion and haven’t regretted it since. Thank you so much, Professor, for all your help and support (and for giving me permission to do this project in the first place!)

I also want to thank my second reader, Professor Jacqueline Hidalgo, for going through a huge number of (much weaker) drafts of this project. Your insight into the writing process was absolutely invaluable and produced a thesis that is (hopefully!) much more academically sound and argumentatively stable than anything I could have constructed on my own.

I also want to acknowledge my family, for sending me to a school so great I can write a thesis on Star Wars, and all of my friends, who have listened to me talk about this project for the past three years and feigned interest surprisingly effectively. Without your support, this wouldn’t have been possible. Thank you so much!