Recently a friend engaged in a philosophical discussion with me asked why I would affiliate this site with Jediism, in name and in spirit. He suggested that the term "Jedi" evokes Star Wars, George Lucas, and a complex and possibly distracting set of science fiction and pop culture baggage—rightfully so. This led to some soul-searching and reflection upon the initial reasoning process that went into choosing a site domain. Perhaps it will be useful to share this perspective so that anyone who happens across this site and wonders why they are reading (hopefully) thought-provoking articles and forum discussions attached to a term that they previously saw only in Star Wars movies and fiction books will be able to review the reasoning that went into this choice of affiliation with Jediism.

The very short answer is that Jediism is a good idea, and that George Lucas didn't coin the term in a vacuum. Rather, he did quite a lot of religious and spiritual research, including consulting that 20th century master of myth, Joseph Campbell, in order to create what he considered to be the first modern mythology. That is, a mythology and plausible spirituality current with science rather than contradicting or distracting from science. This is a huge breakthrough in disguise. Forty years later, we have visionaries such as Dr. Edgar Mitchell (aerospace engineer, consciousness researcher, former astronaut) and Dr. Brian Swimme (cosmologist) discussing the need for a New Story of Civilization, and working to define it. In essence, Jediism is the first systematic, concerted vision of what an evolutionary, scientific spirituality might look like in motion. In my humble opinion, that alone deserves some credit.

Excerpts from the Wikipedia entry on Joseph Campbell:

George Lucas was the first Hollywood filmmaker to credit Campbell's influence. Lucas stated following the release of the first Star Wars film in 1977 that its story was shaped, in part, by ideas described in The Hero With a Thousand Faces and other works of Campbell's. The linkage between Star Wars and Campbell was further reinforced when later reprints of Campbell's book used the image of Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker on the cover.^[24] Lucas discusses this influence at great length in the authorized biography of Joseph Campbell, A Fire in the Mind:

I [Lucas] came to the conclusion after American Graffiti that what's valuable for me is to set standards, not to show people the world the way it is...around the period of this realization...it came to me that there really was no modern use of mythology...The Western was possibly the last generically American fairy tale, telling us about our values. And once the Western disappeared, nothing has ever taken its place. In literature we were going off into science fiction...so that's when I started doing more strenuous research on fairy tales, folklore, and mythology, and I started reading Joe's books. Before that I hadn't read any of Joe's books...It was very eerie because in reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces I began to realize that my first draft of Star Wars was following classic motifs...so I modified my next draft [of Star Wars] according to what I'd been learning about classical motifs and made it a little bit more consistent...I went on to read 'The Masks of God' and many other books.^[25]

 

In addition, the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution sponsored an exhibit during the late 1990s called Star Wars: The Magic of Myth, which discussed the ways in which Campbell's work shaped the Star Wars films.^[28] A companion guide of the same name was published in 1997.

I am not 100 percent convinced of anything. I view trust as a luxury with attached liabilities, not as a virtue. There seems to be always some room for doubt, especially in a system as crazy and as subject to sudden change and evolutionary pressure as life as a human in modern times. Prior to buying the domain, my group of related terms from which to make a selection was something like: lightworker, rainbow warrior, indigo child, monk, Zen, Jedi, druid, mage and priest. Each of these carries with it a unique set of connotations and a distinct cultural flavor.  In the end this process came down to a tug-of-war between "Noetic Jedi" and "Noetic Magi". Magi and Jedi were close calls, but Jedi seemed more forward-looking.

Eventually I realized that Jedi is a subset of magi, and that some of the connotations attached to the broader term "magi' weren't as compatible with my vision for the site. Jediism is seemingly an ethically-inclined subset of magi where universal consciousness, perception, meditation and, at least in the case of Yoda, considerations of ecology and perhaps sustainability (a hut in the swamp instead of a palace, a tiny space ship that doubtless gets great gas mileage) feature highly. By contrast, the term magi apparently refers to traveling astrologers and Zoroastrians in Greek antiquity. The term magi is further conditioned by visions of pointy hats, illusionists, conjurers, alchemists and eccentrics who busy themselves learning arcane mysteries for the purpose of either the pursuit of knowledge or for personal gain and power. While knowledge is excellent and needed, it would seem that today our civilization has an abundance of knowledge and not much wisdom regarding what to do with it.

In the Star Wars stories, one gains a sense that the Jedi are not prostyletizers, televangelists or a rigidly hierarchical church entity with one prophet or so-called "true leader". Rather, the role of Jediism in the Star Wars universe appears to be pursuit of individual wisdom in a greater, shared context, as well as defense of civilization as expressed by knights dispatched on various missions to ensure democracy and the balance of power. In the case of Star Wars, democracy is visualized as a representative republic, much like the United States of America—well, no story is perfect. These days, most are prone to confuse plutocracy with democracy because we're told that representative plutocracy is the only form of "democracy" that really works, but that's another matter.

I hope this serves as some justification for my reasoning. A switch to Noetic Magi has not been ruled out, if compelling reasons emerge.