Casting Curricular Circles, or The Sorcerer, the Phantom and the Troubadour

Even a top-shelf shaman needs a spell. As any curandera knows, invoking a spirit or opening a door to the unknowable requires ritual order—celestial scope and sequence— struck against the anomie of deep disorder. The magic resides in the sympathetic interaction between the incantation and its performance, and in the tense transaction among form and content. Scientists and teachers know this too. What follows is a vignette describing a particular sequence of curricular rituals involving people who are scientists and teachers both, trying to bring forth knowledge that is at once old and new.