When an Anthropologist Faces “Anthropologists”: On Being Admitted in an Esoteric Movement Amidst Epistemological Tension

In 2021, starting my doctoral research's fieldworks in Yaoundé (Cameroon), I met initiates of the Gnostic movement, an esoteric movement from Colombia. Trying to obtain their agreement to work with them, I said I am student in Anthropology, sparking an epistemological tension as the movement's initiates are (called) "anthropologists" too. I would like to examine how I gained acceptance from the initiates of this movement in order to conduct my research. I will revisit the difference between (academic) anthropologists and (esoteric) anthropologists. It will also allow me—drawing on Kirsten Hastrup’s “Symbolic violence” (1995) and Favret-Saada’s (1977, 1990) critical reflections on the place assignment in the field—to recall the importance of my role as a “sick anthropologist,”– a “neutral identity/status”—which was the position that allowed me to be “welcomed”, “accepted” and to truly integrate my field and continue my ethnography of that group of initiates.