UNM’s Megatherium Club is as mysterious as its name suggests.
The only on-campus group devoted to the study of esotericism is named after a prehistoric sloth that weighed 8 tons, the megatherium.
After a cursory glance the club looks like the zaniest UNM has to offer, but in reality there is substantial depth to it.
Marita Campos-Melady, co-chair of the Megatherium Club, said that esotericism, unlike systems of organized religion, is a spiritual study that transcends all religions.
“Esotericism is the idea that there’s an underlying symbolism, an underlying way that people relate to religions or to magic, and some people can understand that underlying symbolism,” she said.
The purpose of the club is to promote the academic study of esotericism while still maintaining the light-hearted atmosphere the club’s name suggests, she said.
This group isn’t the first to be named after the 8-ton sloth.
The first Megatherium Club was composed of a group of Smithsonian scientists who worked on classifying species of animals. They were known not only for their academic knowledge but for their mischievous pranks and sense of humor, Campos-Melady said.
“To me that was just a fun way to say ‘We’re going to have fun with philosophy and with history and all of it.’”
The group balances fun with serious discussion. Spirituality is often ignored by today’s scientists, and yet it has been one of the biggest draws for people — including scientists — throughout history, she said. Campos-Melady considers herself a scientist in the traditional sense.
“I think that to understand human beings and the human experience, you have to understand how they make meaning, how they understand symbolism, how that affects their behavior and their societies,” she said.
George Sieg, the club’s faculty adviser, said the study of esotericism is not considered to be very important in the United States, although it has piqued interest in Europe.
“The significance of esotericism has often been undervalued in Western scholarship until recently,” Sieg said. “For a while these traditions were defined by their marginality, defined as heresies, and this has really been a great disservice in significance to the general continuum of Western thought and philosophy.”
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He said comprehending esotericism is a fundamental part of understanding many modern religious movements, and that this knowledge applies to other unexpected parts of society as well.
“Even when you look at pop culture, the idea of esotericism as the doctrine of philosophy behind ideas of magic is accurate,” he said. “The very fact that average school children and teenagers watch “Harry Potter” and want to be wizards suggests that some of these traditions have symbolic elements that appear in modern times. It’s good to be able to see how they relate and also differ from mainstream religious practices.”
Campos-Melady said students seem to perceive the club in a negative, unfounded light.
“Sometimes we’ve tabled on campus and people have come up to us and said, ‘Do you guys worship the devil?’ And I’m like, ‘No, we’re just reading books, sorry to disappoint.’” she said.
This negative hype is detrimental to the club’s mission.
“It’s a passion of mine to bring the practicality back to spirituality and recognize that it is part of our human experience,” she said. “People can sometimes get very sensational about the occult and magic, very superstitious, and that’s scary to me. It’s a dangerous human tendency to get sensational about other people’s beliefs, because it’s really just part of psychology.”
