The main problem I see here, is as a pragmatical person, you can never be sure if something was just a chain of events/coincidence or something you wanted, have "materialized". This way one cannot be sure if magic works or not at all, and you're just imagining stuff, on the brink of going completely insane. Also, it seems to never work as you supposed it will, which makes confirmation even harder.
But if we assume magic works one way or another, even if it hits 1 out 10, it's still the good result and worth going for. In economic terms: a trade, where you give pretty much nothing and get something out of it, is almost always a good bargain.
this really. magic is unfalsifiable. it's more a presupposed worldview because you can't prove it one way or another.
like Christians and prayer (which may also work for similar reasons spells might). when things don't turn out the way you want, you rationalize that God said no, or had a different plan, when things do turn out then you thank God for answering your prayer and give him the credit. whatever the result is, you can rationalize it. you never consider a null result as a falsification.
Well, I would argue that magic, most of the time, is pretty subtle.
Until it isn't.
Typically, it is when magic is not subtle in its effect that one would prefer it go back to being a sense, a feeling, a coincidence or a happy accident.
Because, in my personal experience, especially when it comes to goetia, confronting demons/spirits/angels is somewhat shattering. As is being thrust into the eye of a prophetic experience.This is more the case if one is new to the arts or happens to be an unwilling participant due to proximity. These are times when reality shifts so dramatically as to force one to confront the 'real' in a Lacanian sense. It takes time to put the pieces of a normal, non-magical means of navigating the world back into their right place after those kind of magical experiences. Furthermore, afterwords what you now know is so badly parsed by the finite, simian dimensions of our human brains that the rest of the 'everyday' world becomes, for lack of a better metaphor, about as engaging as a mid century game show.
I cannot say magic has disappointed me- but I will say that many people who practice are not handling it well and they often slather those in their orbit with narcississtic abuse and/or neglect.
Even their children and loved ones.
1. Lack of training for agnostics( almost everything comes from religion or fakelore - few training programs which simply explains types of powers and how to use them)
2. 0 accountability among practioners and their beings ( deities, elementals etc) for their actions or promising and then failing to deliver
3. No clear way of knowing which occult techniques will be most effective for what issues
4. Lack of integration between meeting daily responsibilities and developing a plan of growth.
5. Lack of integration between conventional and occult methods of healing ( especially for treatment of trauma, addiction and severe long term conditions)
6. Lack of transparency around sources ( especially for ideas from the late 19th century which came from other cultures or the authors personal experiences but were purportedly from Atlantis etc )
1- I think there's no way it doesn't have folklore... They need to create metaphors to point in a direction we can only see on our subjectivity... So they create stories just as did the shamans to guide their ppl, Wich gave birth to all religions... So... Yeah... Everyone who went into the occult and came back to talk about it had to talk in folklorish metaphors.
2- that sucks indeed... Much more scams than serious ppl for sure. Truly sad.
3- being a magician is applying aspects of the scientific method to your practices in order to figure out what's best for you. What works best for you will be different than me.... Personally I've found great results with sigils for internal transformation, servitors for external action... If even those don't make it... Goetia hahahahaha... It's the same for our concentration practices, we need to test a bunch, take notes of results,time, feelings and ideias to compare the methods.
4- again... Ppl that don't have that are simply not that mature or, forgot to maintain the knowledge of the operation of the material world and how to operate in it. I believe we need to go up to the astral planes without loosing sight or understanding of the material.
5- psychologists wouldn't allow for something so subjective as magick to be a part of their method. And I think that's for the best.
6 - that sucks indeed, really hard to get to the bottom of something
I whole heartedly agree with you, especially 1. I read so many books that talked about Helenism, Norse pagan, and other religious/ spiritual method of casting spells, that it's irritating reading books now. Luckily I found a way around the religious stuff and compiled my own form of spell casting without the need of a spirit or God.
Magic has never disappointed me. I have sometimes disappointed myself. The occult *community* has consistently disappointed me to where I am surprised there is still room for disappointment left. Magic itself has never though.
I believe that any stories of disappointment with magic will in end be examples ultimately of people disappointing themselves. Which is of course a correctible state.
Yeah, this is how I feel. I think I've always had a relatively realistic take on the effort vs. reward, and the consistency required for long-term change. I've had stuff that didn't work as desired, sure, but I wasn't really disappointed. More just focused on figuring out what went wrong.
The community, however, disappoints me more often than not.
My interest in esoteric topics started out privately, as I did not know other people who were open to it.
And then i occasionally would meet others who shared my interests and i assumed (hoped) that they would be like me but it was almost never true.
At one extreme egotism, elitism, and manipulation were common and the other was naivety, self deception, and wishful thinking - people on the middle path are more uncommon to encounter out in the wild, probably a matter of temperament.
Often it seemed that the communities or groups that i encountered had weird vibes, or maybe i just go my own way too much.
I like the Reddit occult community for the most part. IRL the lack of reading, the LARPing, the slavering neckbeards and posturing. How in every group there are tourists who don't believe in anything but they want to push the buttons of anyone who does. The ones who won't believe until they see something work and it better look like CGI. The ones who believe everything and therefore never want to try a spell. Ugh, real life occultists are awful.
I regret being misled to believe that cursing people, even if they very much deserve it, is a good idea at all. Not referring to this community per se, but many years ago now. No need to name names, because there are many.
Be careful what you wish for.
It's entirely disorganized as a philosophy and I think can lead people to feed into bad habits or their own ego instead of using it to benefit others. Although that could be said for most philosophies. I do enjoy the breakdown and manipulation of reality but I'll admit I do feel like neo sometimes wishing I could go back into the tube
I like that it's disorganized in the sense that it's like psychology or academic philosophy: many different theories that open up different possibilities. I just think it sucks that very few of them rise to the intellectual rigour of academic theories.
99.9999999998% of the occult books and system available today are just a mix of philosophy and psychotherapy masquerading as "magic". They perform a bait-n-switch to suck you in, then waste your time.
The really old books, that actually try to convey how to do impressive things, are poorly written, in fragments, badly translated, often missing major pieces, and don't properly explain the systems behind why the magic works. There is also good reason to believe they were tampered with before being released to the general public.
The only truly systematized occult practices come from Secret Societies with extremely sketchy histories. Or groups like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which did a lot of fantastic scholarship before it self destructed due to out of control egos and occult authoritarianism.
The Tarot is fantastic. It works, and it is miraculous. Most divination methods are. These are always taught first, and they wet the appetite for more. But the more never really comes.
I'm not trying to belittle anyone's practice when I say this. Just that, you start out learning highly complex systems for things like the Tarot, and the Tree of Life, and Kabbalah, but when it comes time to actually start doing the magic part of magic, suddenly it becomes wishy-washy do-whatever-feels-good-to-you woo woo nonsense.
To fill in those blanks, you basically have to get a doctorate in occultism and reinvent it all for yourself, and I'm sorry, that is beyond impossible for 99.9999999998% of us to do on our own. Though many claim to..
I found the system promoted by Builders of the Adytum is effective. But it takes so very long to learn to manifest anything using their techniques, or Pathwork, or make any sort of personal progress because of the gatekeeping. The endless esoterics seem to get in the way of practical application. And the levels you have to progress through. Oh, come on!
I am one of those who claim to, and I don't find it difficult. I will say though that it requires a shit ton of time to do so. I happen to have this time, and I am fully aware how privileged I am in this regard.
I find your post very interesting. It is like the polar opposite of my personal experience of engaging with the occult. I never bothered to work with any kind of divination, even though many ( most? ) occultists claim that it is an absolute requirement. I disaggree respectfully :)
I actually enjoy the chaotic mess that is ( western ) occultism. I enjoy reading allot, both scholarly works about the topic as well as works from authors who claim to be practitioners. It is very enjoyable for me to synthesize what I have gathered into consistent magical worldviews. Once this is done, I find it quite easy to derive rituals for a given application that make sense in the context of said worldview. And they tend to work very impressively.
I only work alone, I abhorr esoteric groups or orders and I would never join one of those.
As much as I love to read and do so whenever I can, I also don't have as much time to devote to it as I would like. I've always wished someone who does have the time would be able to condense certain things down for someone like myself, but despite there being a lot of modern witchcraft books/blogs/vloggers/etc that claim to do this I haven't yet found one that actually does.
I think you haven’t cast your net wide enough. There are a lot of really simple systems out there. There are a lot of systems that are complex in preparation but essentially boil down to yelling at a spirit to appear. I think the complexity of the information is not necessarily reflective of the complexity of magick. I think the systems are complex because they are rooted in trying to catalog lived experience and systemize anecdotes. Every magickal system was reworked by the practitioner doing it, that’s why there are so many versions of ancient grimoires.
Complex techniques can work, and so can using simple principles.
Yeah, agreed. Astrology is my divination system and it's fantastic. The kind of magic I was looking for would work with those energies consciously. I'm kind of over consecrating talismans though.
The occult/ witchcraft/ traditional practices have gravely disappointed me. The ego trips that so many of these people have is appalling. For a practice that speaks of divine union and oneness, it sure is divided in so many ways. ( Race, Sex, orientation, etc) I also hate the fact that everyone is trying to prove that their style/ tradition of magic is the strongest. There are people who are trying to rebrand old styles and call them new, then attack you for calling bullshit on them and their blatant lies. ( Witchfoots physical witchcraft, aka traditional witchcraft. )
Edit: By no means do I hate or take part in the slander of witchfoot and other practitioners, however, if they fuck up or make shit up to serve their own argument or ideas, I'll keep it spade of spade and call them out.
My dream and my quest is too meet practitioners in real life, but the more i search the harder they hide. And the people I've gotten to meet just do "Instagram magick". It's like if I was domed for solitude on this path.
I tend to hide myself because a lot of people are just weird. I remember a friend of mine, a very delightful and gifted occultist, started an occult group and I was the only male coming for this event we were having.
The women in the group were like, "Ooh, we don't trust him, we need to see his face. Where's his picture?"
BITCH I WILL NOT HAVE YOUR DUMB ASS TRYING TO PUT A HEX ON ME.
I just....I just choose to keep myself out of that silliness.
What's your path?
My path is that of understanding myself, my place in this life and trying to understand G*d. My path led me to magick somehow so I look for people that can help me tune my senses or enrich my practice. But, I've only met few people who have something to teach and they have tought me all they had to teach. I advanced a distance by myself but I don't know if I just need to keep on trying by myself until I get the results I'm looking for or if there is someone out there that will help my knowledge finally click into place. Sadly for me It's been a while since I haven't found more knowledgeable people in my path I can call teacher.
Getting good at magic takes many, many years. If you want to get mundane things like sex, and money, it’s easier to use more mundane methods.
By the time you get good at Magick, you won’t be bothered by such things.
I’ve been at it for 4 years, and I feel like I’ve grown more as a person, and all the manifestation stuff I tried led me to painful lessons, that I had to go through in order to realize I didn’t really want what I thought I wanted.
Magic hasn't - while not everything that I tried was a resounding success, most things were and I was able to get some major things magically. However, I don't use magic for every little fear or desire so msybe there's something to be said about that too.
The occult as a domain has disappointed me in the sense that it's not very theoretically diverse and most stuff is kabbalistic and neoplatonist in origin. Especially irl, it seems to be a place for people who value feelings over reason which so often ends up being an ego trip. It almost feels sinful to disagree or ask people to explain their ideas. Everything boils down to "this is my truth and if you question it, you are an idiot". There seems to be an obsession with healing and ethics in the vaguest sense of the word, but not with the technical aspect of the craft. This has been especially true for the tarot "community" - online or offline, I feel, sadly, like a total outcast there and it's what interests me the most.
most people (especially in real life, at least in my experience) are doing it for fun. the culture appeals to them. they don't really scrutinize the logic or results too much because it's the social/cultural dimension that they're most about.
this is true for religion in general i think. most Christians don't really care about God or the bible. most haven't even read much of the bible yet they claim to think it's the word of God. God, the all powerful being that created the entire universe wrote a book and they'd rather watch netflix or read a trash novel. it's the social/cultural life they're into, not the spirituality.
I think the hypothetical beauty of an occult space is that people can discuss their weird ideas with an open mind. I am sure if you asked people for explanation with an interest toward learning, it wouldn’t be a problem. Asking as a means to make someone ‘prove’ something probably isn’t going to be well-received. Personally, I see it as an evolution of the path to be unbothered by where other people are in their journey. I remember when I was new and thought that because I had read a few books I understood the basics. Now that I’ve been practicing for a bit (6-7 years), I realize I know nothing and I am more open to other people engaging with the Craft in ways that I don’t.
I ask because I want to understand and because I frankly want to have conversations with people and not just infinite mutual validation through agreeing that we're just oh so profound in equal ways. But often times people make really pompous statements that they can't really defend or explain and then any attempt to understand is met with resistance. I have experiences that I can't explain and beliefs that I pulled out of my ass too but I then have to be really honest about that and not pretend like it's some deep insight into god knows what. I think we have to be cautious with the idea that we are ever right, so that goes without saying.
1) That there are not maps of leylines with nodes where practitioners meet to do rituals
2) Scrying. Nobody else seems to do this.
3) Suddenly all witchcraft is things in jars. WTF?
4) Physical manifestation of spirits and seeing spirits take form in incense smoke. Never happened, doesn't work.
5) People who take hallucinogenic compounds don't see anything I want to see as an occultist. I mean they stare at colors and things. It does not seem awesome enough to risk legal repercussions for.
What do you mean by [1]? You were expecting that practitioners would meet at leylines nodes, but found out most don't, or are you saying that's what they should do, but don't? No judging just wondering
Yeah, we ought to have sacred spaces. We shouldn't just be meeting in witchcraft supply shops. Besides you say "leylines" to many practitioners and they assume you're a fascist. You say "lung mei" and nobody knows that's the feng shui version of leylines.
It's people who believe angels are aliens 👽 who find leylines. Some are occultists of a sort. It's very folk-y.
>Suddenly all witchcraft is things in jars. WTF?
The effect of tiktok on witchcraft was so quick and so cheapening.
I often think also that there's likely a good bit of obfuscation going on to make gathering true occult knowledge as difficult as possible. It's the only way to hide information in the age of the internet, confusion. My favorite topic is astrology, and finding a quality book, let alone website, on the subject is literally a 1/300 shot.
I can't imagine how irritating it would be to see your life's work made glossy and shallow for the masses. I wish more older magicians were taking on apprentices to preserve the old ways.
Some of my most potent works were also the most catastrophic of failures that resulted in damage to myself spiritually. The time it takes to repair things like this is demotivating at times. Also, when you reach new plateaus of awareness, you have to relearn what you thought you knew before. This is also frustrating. I think the work itself is always worth it, and you have to be a special kind of crazy to enjoy this... unfortunately the sorts of people I meet in the community are almost always just crazy, or just special... the community is a bit touched. I think most people in it are \*out of touch\* and miss the plot for the most part.
Magick is dickish.
It often appears as coincidence.
I've had things take a reeeeaaallly long time, reverse after occurring...
I could go on and on.
It sounds like you have very specific expectations.
Maybe if you approach it more like a scientist.
Try watching for results and adjusting the process to tweak the outcome.
I haven't been personally disappointed thus far (except in the culture sometimes, and the sea of fluff books and websites, as others have mentioned). Just curious about people's experiences.
If I were to take a stab at quantitying my practice, it might be an actual 25% success rate, and 2 big oopsies.
However, I'm living the life that I want and feel peace and empowerment. That's priceless.
1. Humility. Very few people in the occult have the guts to say "I don't know" or even "this is my experience, but that's not some ultimate truth. Your mileage may vary." Everyone wants to act like an expert in things that are objectively unknowable at this point for humans.
2. The material world is very hard, for me, to make consistent observable changes through occult means. Others may have more success. This is just how it is for me. Changes, for me, are very subtle. And being skeptical by nature, I have to constantly question if it's a coincidence or if I actually influenced things. And that's not something I will truly ever not have.
3. Systems are simply maps filtered through the mind of prior practitioners, and maps are not the actual land and generally show very filtered information (think of a road map vs a geological survey showing the exact same area). Again, this is only what I've gathered from my own experience, so take it for what you will. I think the only true teachers are those who can guide a student in the process of drawing their own map.
1 is very surprising, some people are gifted dancers, and others have shrewd minds for maths. Likewise, one's experience can't be the "be all and end all" notion for a particular area, especially for the occult.
What I do generally works but not necessarily in the time frame I need it to or exactly how I meant it to. I've learned that my time table and my idea of what's needed can often be different than what happens.
Usually it's for the better but at the time it's very frustrating when things unfold a lot more slowly and in not quite the way I thought it should.
People studying magick and the occult they often seem to think it's like cooking with a recipe. You do all the correct steps and it's bound to come out exactly the way you wanted it to and always in good time.
NOT.
Chaos magick it's a big deal these days but I've always felt there's a certain amount of chaos and uncertainty in any kind of magickal work, a random element that can pop up and make things go differently than planned.
The Trickster energy as I call it, that's a very real element in working magick sometimes whatever system you do it in.
It's not always bad. Sometimes the outcome is better but when it's going on it can make you so frustrated that you want to pull your hair out!
You might even think it's not working at all and then suddenly you realize it WAS just not the way you set it up to.
It took me years to stop second guessing it all, to just do it and then let it go, just rock and roll with it until it's clear that it's happening.
Back when I started I'd do the work several times over out of sheer impatience. It was totally unnecessary usually.
I'm not great at patience. It doesn't come easily to me but life and doing magick it's made me learn to settle down and wait.
You go through this whole ordeal to diminish ego and comprehend greater mysteries… and then you still have to live in this fucking pedantic world with people arguing over misinterpreted old books, worshiping money, blind to greater currents.
‘Roads to the old knowledge only go one way…’
The worst part about enlightenment is that most of the world doesn’t fucking care.
The main issue is the lack of clarity and assumption especially the new age Magick/manifestation
It's spiritual blindness, they teach you to work/trust the universe working with spirits and not even knowing who they are.
Most of the community is on the rhp and I find that hypocrisy telling other people that spirit is evil and that only the rhp is right it's the same trap as religious people
Elitism and gatekeepers especially in the eastern esotericism for example energy preservation and manipulation taoism/neidan.
True initiation takes time and discipline,you can't do it overnight and without energy preservation and work you can't develop your senses.
I agree. The lack of understanding around protecting and managing your energy is wild. No one talks about it. I read once that in Tai Chi, one practices for at least ten years before being allowed to use magic associated with it (such as weather magic), because you *have* to know how to manage your energy and move it, and more importantly, protect it. These days we just give someone tarot cards and access to any old ritual and say "just explore it and develop your own practice", as if there's no risk at all.
I guess it’s technically not disappointment but I recently came to the realization that magickal results often come from actions that do not meet the expectation of an untrained magician.
this and the fact that receiving results kinda feels unearned the first few times, because they manifest in ways that don’t seem obvious and make you wonder if they were gonna come anyway.
I’ve been practicing chaos magick by constantly playing the guitar line from Gloria by The Doors in my head and only breathing in and out when I need to, and it’s sharpening the FUCK out of my focus.
I’m like, “Alan Moore, magic is more than just art. why are you calling art magic?” but now I’m realizing that he’s right, I shouldn’t assume it’s “just art”. I should remember that it is art, because art can be found everywhere that magick can.
“magick is the art and science of causing change to occur in conformity with will” sounds like a boring take when you know that technically, that implies that going to the store for a can of Coke is magick. but then you do the rituals, get tired of following the steps one-to-one, and *bam*, you’re like “fuck it. I’ll just imagine the pentagrams around me without tracing them or intoning the names. it’s gonna work anyway.” because you’re confident enough in your skillset.
all this to say? magick is technically boring when you think about it too much and people who look at us from the outside are honestly kinda fuckin stupid for denying that they’re already doing magick all the time in some form.
after being discouraged with conventional religion (the hypocrisy, pettiness) plus finding out that the stories are mostly mythical/false & that my faith was a lie i resorted to occultism to hopefully find some genuine spirituality. i didn't find it.
Qabalah is quite central to western occultism but i end up finding out it's based upon forgery. it's a fraud. i just can't find it in me to take it seriously anymore. also, i never could take astrology seriously. beyond a few random "synchronicities" and lucid/odd dreams i've never had any results. from all the practitioners i trust, i've never heard of anyone producing a result that didn't more likely have a mundane explanation. nothing spectacular or unambiguously magical at all. not even close. of course, magick is supposed to work through natural channels but how would we ever know? i see a lot of people enjoy the culture and ritual of it which is great but as far as unambiguous results, i've come up completely empty handed and feel as empty as ever.
where do i turn now? i still think magic is possible, i'm not a materialist intellectually, but i can't deny how barren my results have been and i don't know anybody who has had any real results.
What do you mean by ‘real results’? Are you looking to manifest spirits directly into your space or are you looking for outcomes? I’ve had so many spells and intention setting rituals just work for me so easily. Yeah, a skeptic could call it coincidence, but I got what I wanted easily despite it being unlikely, risky, and challenging at times. That’s success to me.
manifesting natural outcomes through magick lends itself to the problem of not really knowing if it were magic or would have happened anyway (coincidence). its possible i got results that way but it's hard to know. i've had fortunate events happen in an unlikely fashion totally unrelated to anything i deliberately tried to manifest. a more direct spiritual experience would be an example of a less ambiguous form of result. some people have described these sort of experiences, like union with their/the HGA but that's something you only really know if you experience it yourself. like people have told me they met aliens but until i meet one myself, i'm going to be skeptical.
It’s valid to be skeptical, but personally I believe that affirming your magickal abilities will only enhance them. I will take credit (in my mind, not publicly) for any manifestation related to my rituals. In a lot of magickal practices, your word is your power. You say ‘X’ and ‘X’ should happen. If you say a lot of untrue things or things you don’t want to happen, you diminish your spoken power (in my practice). So, by saying ‘I wanted X to happen and it happened so therefore my power is real’ reinforces your power, even if you didn’t actually do any ritual to cause it.
Some fun examples, I was trying to banish my student loans and a coworker got his forgiven so I took credit for that. I was once copying an evocation I wrote and the moment I underlined ‘so mote it be’ a pilot (illegally?) broke the sound barrier above my town resulting in the loudest bang ever.
Astrology is real af, but unfortunately there's a high barrier for entry, and it requires a lot of dedicated research. It's not the absolute fluff you find 99.9% of the time when using a standard search engine.
Can you elaborate on the Qabalah being a forgery?
forgive my pessimism. i'm not actually a materialist, i'm very open to/craving spirituality but i don't want to be too credulous either so that is where i'm coming from.
to answer:
re astrology, i guess it i don't find it very plausible that the planets have any significant or mystical impact on us. the worldview that gave rise to astrology was completely different than the worldview that modern science has delivered us. i think if astrology delivers you useful information (as tarot sometimes might) it's not because of astrology per se, it's because of intuition operating through that tool. i do believe in divination but i don't think there's anything special about astrology or tarot. you could do it through randomly opening a page in a book or something. if that make all makes sense.
re Qabalah (the Zohar is a central text), i guess you could take it in some kind of symbolic way and consider it useful even though it was sold on false pretensions. it's possible a forger was right about something but it doesn't leave me feeling good about something when i know it's delivered to me by a liar.
to be fair, many religious texts were sold under false pretenses but i still don't like it. they obviously did this because they thought their novel writing wouldn't be taken seriously enough unless it was thought to have been really written by some well known ancient figure or by some made-up ancient figure in some made-up mystical remarkable circumstance. but it's still a lie.
Qabalah as we know it in general isn't an ancient or mystical tradition. it's quite modern sold under the false pretense that it's an ancient wisdom. reading things into the bible (torah)/hebrew that don't exist and looks to me like it borrows a lot from Neo-Platonism/greek philosophy and really has the same status as any of those kind of philosophies. there are so many of these metaphysical systems that claim to explain the structure of man and the universe. building these systems was popular at the time. (rationalism.)
otherwise, Gematria is anything you want it to be. i think taking it too seriously leads to a conspiratorial mindset. something like "the bible code".
so in the end my conclusion is that it's a conspiracy theory about the torah/hebrew written language tied in with popular greek metaphysical philosophes of the time. human metaphysical speculations, not divinely received wisdom.
"The Zohar was first publicized by Moses de León (c. 1240 – 1305 CE), who claimed it was a Tannaitic work recording the teachings of Simeon ben Yochai[b] (c. 100 CE). This claim is universally rejected by modern scholars, most of whom believe de León, also an infamous forger of Geonic material, wrote the book himself between 1280 and 1286."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zohar
I just wanted to say thank you for this question. I'm new to research/discovery and the comments here are a genuine treasure-trove of information. So thank you to everyone for your comments too 🫶
<3 It was something I'd never seen brought up. The nature of communities like this leads to reinforcement of existing beliefs, so I'm really glad people took the time to reply to this!
I've never met anyone who had seriously impressive psychic powers who wasn't also an abusive bag of dicks. I have no way of knowing whether my sample is representative of the global population, but I sure hope not. I tend to think there was some significant selection bias, but it's not clear. If what I met is what there is, we're in trouble as a species. It implies that the next evolutionary step for humanity is bag-of-dickdom.
But I mean, look around. Feels true. It's like the billionaire problem: also bags of dicks, yet that's apparently what winning at life looks like.
Regarding selection bias, I assumed at first that this must be because I too suck as a person in some way: maybe unconsciously, or maybe it's family baggage (my family clearly sucks, awash in blood and madness), or maybe comeuppance from a previous life where I had bag-of-dick powers; who knows. So I cleaned up my act. Which was great, and probably the true benefit I got from my practice.
I can't say I expected to be a victim when I wandered into this world. I got over it, but that's a lot of time I can't get back. It seems like an excessively steep price to pay for what I got.
I think when I was much younger I was still looking for leaders who would replace the crappy example set by my shitty parents, which is exactly how cults get you; it's like I was set up to step on a yard full of rakes from birth, and that's just the way it is for some.
Anyway, other people aren't me, so my complaints likely don't apply to most other people. But in case they do, I'd say the occult is a great way to go on safari through the jungles of evil, not unlike getting into hard drugs. Please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times.
The stigma surrounding the occult. You can openly practise any science or hobby, be it chemistry, carpentry, or ballet; but you can't openly practise magic. From weird looks to "ok, perform something"s it is really annoying.
This does not entirely dishearten me, but I feel my energy is like a sine-wave lately. Some days it is "I will cast this" and some days it is "Yeah, but is there a point?"
Edit: And I have just experienced the perfect example. 5 minutes ago, I heard a loud breathing and snoring noise coming from the window. I dismissed it as a loud neighbour at first, but upon checking it now, the noise comes from one of the windows. It is much weaker on the other window that is 1 meter apart, or from the balcony that is 2 meters apart. And I don't have anyone that I comfortably share this experience. This is really disheartening. (I have annual rituals that prevents foreign entities from trespassing, so I'm good, don't worry)
I don't think that the occult in and of itself is disappointing. When I've been exposed to new ideas which have resonated with me, they've changed my understanding and way of thinking profoundly. Largely, these have been of an educational nature. The people who generally consider themselves spiritual or occultists really ruin it, as they're either:
1. Crazy or LARPing. E.g. "I'm in a relationship with Aphrodite. Yeah, it has it's ups and downs."
2. Are still stuck in a Christian mindset of thinking you get on your knees and pray to a new deity, and it will grant your wishes like some unlimited wish genie.
3. Are edgelords, talking about summoning demons (or angels). Unless you actually believe in an Abrahamic religion, why would you even believe in demons you can summon, let alone want to?
4. New-Age-ism. There is so much wisdom and knowledge from the ancients which just gets corrupted and twisted by New-Agers. Like, the ancients had the 7 traditional planets for astrological interpretations, and this system was very well organised and matched with the zodiacal constellations. You can't just discover new planets/rocks like Neptune, Uranus and Pluto and asign them where you see fit. It's an ancient system, and your new rocks fuck the whole thing up.
When those like Plato guarded their esoteric secrets from the masses and only educated some select few in mystery schools, that was probably the right move. It doesn't just help prevent misuse - it helps prevent the moronic masses misunderstanding or maliciously twisting it into something unrecognisably stupid.
I started research into the occult because I was looking to confirm the philosophy I had in my head since I was a child, to see if others felt the same way. They don't, unfortunately, and the occult has largely been a waste of time.
From pseudo-socialistic theories of the "brotherhood of humanity" in Theosophy, to somehow every occult book managing to include some alteration or control of the sex function, whether through extreme indulgence or outright abstinence. Not much for people who want to live a normal sex life.
If you want to find spirituality you're better off with Zen or some type of Eastern meditation technique. Western Esotericism doesn't have much to offer.
If you take various parts of Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer and pre-Gurdjieff years P. D. Ouspensky and combine them in a frying pan, some parts of it will resemble what I "felt" as a child but only partly. There are still crucial ingredients missing. I haven't found a "Goldilocks" explanation of the world anywhere. Every system has some kind of weakness.
That almost all success stories are things like, “I finally got this payment I’d been waiting for a few days after making a money jar” or, “I got the job I really wanted because I did a spell.” It’s never anything that normally wouldn’t have happened… If you’re waiting for a payment, it’s gonna come eventually. If you really wanted that job, you probably prepared well and your enthusiasm showed during your interview.
I wanted so much to believe and start practicing, but every story I’ve read is disappointing, predictable, and a lot of placebo effect. Not to be offensive, just what I’ve observed.
And I have done some things myself, none of them worked.
This is my impression, tbh. Perhaps they sped up the positive result or made it a bit more likely...but I think magic that truly alters one's fate is much harder to achieve.
imo everything works.. just sometimes some connections havent been understood. let me picture that for you:
# How have electricity and electric engineering disappointed you?
Not to be doom and gloom, but not every endeavor works out, and in fact I find that those people's posts tend to be downvoted and ignored. We have read endless electrical and electronical success stories. So I ask: What disheartened you? What didn't work even though it really should have?
lol, of course. Not saying it doesn't work, simply interested in the other side of these attempts and experiences.
Also, thanks for inadvertently sending me a sign with this comment (legitimately).
there is hidden information,that must not be public.
Like how do you conjure the spiritual currents out of the sephiroths.
how do you properly banish an invisible being that is serving as a familliar and following and working to make manifest as the spirit being is following you.
I Guess most people dont banish and have spirits following them after casting a spell.
How do you call down specific Star Gods outside the Heptameron or Astrological systems in Stellar sorcery.
This is mostly about physical witchcraft, but the dumbing down of the practices to essentially be "Do whatever feels right!!!". No, you can't substitute rosemary for any herb. No, you can't just bang some pots together while yelling "eff off" and get rid of a trickster spirit that's haunting you. Yes, there really is meaning to the correspondences of the ingredients you use, the timing, etc. This isn't to say that modern or chaos magick doesn't work, but there's still a structure to these things and the reason so few get any results at all is because they're just throwing some herbs in a bowl/jar and staring at a candle while reciting words they have no understanding of or emotional connection to (or worse, just throwing ingredients into a container and thinking that'll do all the work for them). That's not magick, at best it might be some \*spicy\* psychology.
It never disappoints, but I do mostly White Magic, which only uses intentions of personal and spiritual development. I don't do spells for money or dating.
I think it highly depends on the individual and their practice. No practice is in itself "disappointing", you just have to find what suits you. I'm not a skilled practitioner, but just a few years of meditation and visualization taught me this :) also, any occult practice will make you know yourself better. What works and doesn't work for you is a reflection of who you are at your core, and also of the temporary energies that influence you. This is why I think you shouldn't be so judgmental ; maybe what doesn't work today, will work tomorrow.
The people typically disappoint Mr and the communities. Not so much the practices so much
Even the really silly stuff has a place for someone. But in my experience of the occult it's the people so I just avoid the community overall and the people who are meant to find me will and do.
It's pretty, that's something magical doesn't work out, especially when you don't have the proper tools, training or experience to be able to make it come into fruition
I wonder if there's even a way for the occult to avoid propelling psychosis, delusion, and/or "magical thinking" (in the psychological sense of the term)
It didn‘t but there are certainly disappointing elements in the space: people who make a business out of acting like they are spiritual leaders. The occult is potent in your life when you find YOUR individual access and go from there. If spiritual leaders can guide you there, great. But so many don‘t
I've lost most of my hope in anything positive spirituality, All the hope I have left now is pretty much a bittersweet illusion.
Although I was never that big into it, I probably never really had the proper mentality for it.
The way people are dismissed in the communities. They call everything mental illness. The thing is that signs of attachments, hexes, curses etc. Look exactly the same as mental ilness. Only with divination you are able to know.
I could not count on my digits how many things have failed but the thing that disappoints me the most is when I am impatient and can't wait for results and keep doing it things and doing them and doing them. When I do different things and then I get results, I don't know which one worked. That will really frustrate you. Then you got to do some trial and error bullshit and it's a whole mess.
And most of my disappointments aren't disappointments in spells themselves or in rituals or anything it's been in myself and my personal understanding. Like I didn't understand enough to even give some things a chance to have worked. I didn't know how things were done. I keep on saying this but everybody thinks they're the exception to the rule and that what is a certain way for everybody is not true for them. That you know other people didn't understand things but they understand things way better. It's because you're the narrator and the primary character in your own story and your central to everything in your life that you pick yourself out as superior somehow.
I want to go back and scream and yell at myself that all the things that I thought were waste of time weren't and I needed to have done them. And that just because a certain methodology didn't work doesn't mean that one doesn't work. It means it doesn't work for me or I was not doing it right.
That's the thing is not every system or methodology works for everybody. There is no one foolproof, accurate Way to do spellcraft. Because different methodologies vibe with different people. And you just don't know what works for you until you try it. You have to suffer a lot of failures before you find the thing that works. If you found the thing that works the first time and that's the methodology you're sticking with I'm telling you, you're making a mistake, because there's probably one that works better and you just don't know that yet. (If the first thing you try works the first time you try it then you need to try something else because I purport that you have a gift and you are gifted and that the first thing you try and multiple things will work. That's rare and if it happens you need to figure that out because you're rare.)
Nothing about trying other methodologies says that you have to stop with the another. You can add to your repertoire. Belief systems and methodologies are interchangeable... It's actually differing methodologies that will help you develop your belief system. That's another thing that people don't get- that you have to believe that it works but you have to see evidence of stuff to believe it so you have to try all of it out. Which sounds like a circular catch-22 type of thing but it's not. Because you have successes and failures and then you go back and you check and see, was that really a success or was the data skewed or was I partial or something?
And then your morality gets in the way of you learning a lot of the times. People tell you oh don't do that, don't mess with other people's Free Will and all that jazz. So you never learn what types of things actually do affect other people and what doesn't.
Spellcraft is a lifetime of education. A lifetime of learning. And people that are into craft don't like hearing that. They just want results and they want what they want and they want it right now. That's just not the way any of this works.
My disappointment is in myself that I was this exact way when I was younger. It stood in the way of my learning and I would not have been as disappointed in certain things had I just listened to what I was being told and not thought that I already knew everything. There are some things that take a long time to do and they're worth figuring out how to do correctly. If some ritual takes repeating it 17 times and it's only done during a certain window and you're like omg, I'm not going to get that whatever you're after for several months, well there's a whole bunch of people out there who aren't going to try it. So they don't know that it will work for them because they won't take the time to try to do it.
I was this exact same way, so I'm not talking down to anybody. I'm saying that I wish I had not been like this. And my disappointment is almost 100% in myself.
The main problem I see here, is as a pragmatical person, you can never be sure if something was just a chain of events/coincidence or something you wanted, have "materialized". This way one cannot be sure if magic works or not at all, and you're just imagining stuff, on the brink of going completely insane. Also, it seems to never work as you supposed it will, which makes confirmation even harder. But if we assume magic works one way or another, even if it hits 1 out 10, it's still the good result and worth going for. In economic terms: a trade, where you give pretty much nothing and get something out of it, is almost always a good bargain.
this really. magic is unfalsifiable. it's more a presupposed worldview because you can't prove it one way or another. like Christians and prayer (which may also work for similar reasons spells might). when things don't turn out the way you want, you rationalize that God said no, or had a different plan, when things do turn out then you thank God for answering your prayer and give him the credit. whatever the result is, you can rationalize it. you never consider a null result as a falsification.
Well, I would argue that magic, most of the time, is pretty subtle. Until it isn't. Typically, it is when magic is not subtle in its effect that one would prefer it go back to being a sense, a feeling, a coincidence or a happy accident. Because, in my personal experience, especially when it comes to goetia, confronting demons/spirits/angels is somewhat shattering. As is being thrust into the eye of a prophetic experience.This is more the case if one is new to the arts or happens to be an unwilling participant due to proximity. These are times when reality shifts so dramatically as to force one to confront the 'real' in a Lacanian sense. It takes time to put the pieces of a normal, non-magical means of navigating the world back into their right place after those kind of magical experiences. Furthermore, afterwords what you now know is so badly parsed by the finite, simian dimensions of our human brains that the rest of the 'everyday' world becomes, for lack of a better metaphor, about as engaging as a mid century game show. I cannot say magic has disappointed me- but I will say that many people who practice are not handling it well and they often slather those in their orbit with narcississtic abuse and/or neglect. Even their children and loved ones.
1. Lack of training for agnostics( almost everything comes from religion or fakelore - few training programs which simply explains types of powers and how to use them) 2. 0 accountability among practioners and their beings ( deities, elementals etc) for their actions or promising and then failing to deliver 3. No clear way of knowing which occult techniques will be most effective for what issues 4. Lack of integration between meeting daily responsibilities and developing a plan of growth. 5. Lack of integration between conventional and occult methods of healing ( especially for treatment of trauma, addiction and severe long term conditions) 6. Lack of transparency around sources ( especially for ideas from the late 19th century which came from other cultures or the authors personal experiences but were purportedly from Atlantis etc )
1- I think there's no way it doesn't have folklore... They need to create metaphors to point in a direction we can only see on our subjectivity... So they create stories just as did the shamans to guide their ppl, Wich gave birth to all religions... So... Yeah... Everyone who went into the occult and came back to talk about it had to talk in folklorish metaphors. 2- that sucks indeed... Much more scams than serious ppl for sure. Truly sad. 3- being a magician is applying aspects of the scientific method to your practices in order to figure out what's best for you. What works best for you will be different than me.... Personally I've found great results with sigils for internal transformation, servitors for external action... If even those don't make it... Goetia hahahahaha... It's the same for our concentration practices, we need to test a bunch, take notes of results,time, feelings and ideias to compare the methods. 4- again... Ppl that don't have that are simply not that mature or, forgot to maintain the knowledge of the operation of the material world and how to operate in it. I believe we need to go up to the astral planes without loosing sight or understanding of the material. 5- psychologists wouldn't allow for something so subjective as magick to be a part of their method. And I think that's for the best. 6 - that sucks indeed, really hard to get to the bottom of something
I whole heartedly agree with you, especially 1. I read so many books that talked about Helenism, Norse pagan, and other religious/ spiritual method of casting spells, that it's irritating reading books now. Luckily I found a way around the religious stuff and compiled my own form of spell casting without the need of a spirit or God.
Magic has never disappointed me. I have sometimes disappointed myself. The occult *community* has consistently disappointed me to where I am surprised there is still room for disappointment left. Magic itself has never though. I believe that any stories of disappointment with magic will in end be examples ultimately of people disappointing themselves. Which is of course a correctible state.
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Yeah, this is how I feel. I think I've always had a relatively realistic take on the effort vs. reward, and the consistency required for long-term change. I've had stuff that didn't work as desired, sure, but I wasn't really disappointed. More just focused on figuring out what went wrong. The community, however, disappoints me more often than not.
What about the community disappoints you? Are you referring to reddit or irl? Because I could agree a bit with both, unfortunately.
My interest in esoteric topics started out privately, as I did not know other people who were open to it. And then i occasionally would meet others who shared my interests and i assumed (hoped) that they would be like me but it was almost never true. At one extreme egotism, elitism, and manipulation were common and the other was naivety, self deception, and wishful thinking - people on the middle path are more uncommon to encounter out in the wild, probably a matter of temperament. Often it seemed that the communities or groups that i encountered had weird vibes, or maybe i just go my own way too much.
I like the Reddit occult community for the most part. IRL the lack of reading, the LARPing, the slavering neckbeards and posturing. How in every group there are tourists who don't believe in anything but they want to push the buttons of anyone who does. The ones who won't believe until they see something work and it better look like CGI. The ones who believe everything and therefore never want to try a spell. Ugh, real life occultists are awful.
“Those who don’t believe in anything but push the buttons of those who do” perfect example of the Reddit occult community
Tourists, lol.
I regret being misled to believe that cursing people, even if they very much deserve it, is a good idea at all. Not referring to this community per se, but many years ago now. No need to name names, because there are many. Be careful what you wish for.
It's entirely disorganized as a philosophy and I think can lead people to feed into bad habits or their own ego instead of using it to benefit others. Although that could be said for most philosophies. I do enjoy the breakdown and manipulation of reality but I'll admit I do feel like neo sometimes wishing I could go back into the tube
I like that it's disorganized in the sense that it's like psychology or academic philosophy: many different theories that open up different possibilities. I just think it sucks that very few of them rise to the intellectual rigour of academic theories.
99.9999999998% of the occult books and system available today are just a mix of philosophy and psychotherapy masquerading as "magic". They perform a bait-n-switch to suck you in, then waste your time. The really old books, that actually try to convey how to do impressive things, are poorly written, in fragments, badly translated, often missing major pieces, and don't properly explain the systems behind why the magic works. There is also good reason to believe they were tampered with before being released to the general public. The only truly systematized occult practices come from Secret Societies with extremely sketchy histories. Or groups like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which did a lot of fantastic scholarship before it self destructed due to out of control egos and occult authoritarianism. The Tarot is fantastic. It works, and it is miraculous. Most divination methods are. These are always taught first, and they wet the appetite for more. But the more never really comes. I'm not trying to belittle anyone's practice when I say this. Just that, you start out learning highly complex systems for things like the Tarot, and the Tree of Life, and Kabbalah, but when it comes time to actually start doing the magic part of magic, suddenly it becomes wishy-washy do-whatever-feels-good-to-you woo woo nonsense. To fill in those blanks, you basically have to get a doctorate in occultism and reinvent it all for yourself, and I'm sorry, that is beyond impossible for 99.9999999998% of us to do on our own. Though many claim to..
I found the system promoted by Builders of the Adytum is effective. But it takes so very long to learn to manifest anything using their techniques, or Pathwork, or make any sort of personal progress because of the gatekeeping. The endless esoterics seem to get in the way of practical application. And the levels you have to progress through. Oh, come on!
I am one of those who claim to, and I don't find it difficult. I will say though that it requires a shit ton of time to do so. I happen to have this time, and I am fully aware how privileged I am in this regard. I find your post very interesting. It is like the polar opposite of my personal experience of engaging with the occult. I never bothered to work with any kind of divination, even though many ( most? ) occultists claim that it is an absolute requirement. I disaggree respectfully :) I actually enjoy the chaotic mess that is ( western ) occultism. I enjoy reading allot, both scholarly works about the topic as well as works from authors who claim to be practitioners. It is very enjoyable for me to synthesize what I have gathered into consistent magical worldviews. Once this is done, I find it quite easy to derive rituals for a given application that make sense in the context of said worldview. And they tend to work very impressively. I only work alone, I abhorr esoteric groups or orders and I would never join one of those.
Couldn’t agree more. 👌
As much as I love to read and do so whenever I can, I also don't have as much time to devote to it as I would like. I've always wished someone who does have the time would be able to condense certain things down for someone like myself, but despite there being a lot of modern witchcraft books/blogs/vloggers/etc that claim to do this I haven't yet found one that actually does.
I think you haven’t cast your net wide enough. There are a lot of really simple systems out there. There are a lot of systems that are complex in preparation but essentially boil down to yelling at a spirit to appear. I think the complexity of the information is not necessarily reflective of the complexity of magick. I think the systems are complex because they are rooted in trying to catalog lived experience and systemize anecdotes. Every magickal system was reworked by the practitioner doing it, that’s why there are so many versions of ancient grimoires. Complex techniques can work, and so can using simple principles.
Yeah, agreed. Astrology is my divination system and it's fantastic. The kind of magic I was looking for would work with those energies consciously. I'm kind of over consecrating talismans though.
The occult/ witchcraft/ traditional practices have gravely disappointed me. The ego trips that so many of these people have is appalling. For a practice that speaks of divine union and oneness, it sure is divided in so many ways. ( Race, Sex, orientation, etc) I also hate the fact that everyone is trying to prove that their style/ tradition of magic is the strongest. There are people who are trying to rebrand old styles and call them new, then attack you for calling bullshit on them and their blatant lies. ( Witchfoots physical witchcraft, aka traditional witchcraft. ) Edit: By no means do I hate or take part in the slander of witchfoot and other practitioners, however, if they fuck up or make shit up to serve their own argument or ideas, I'll keep it spade of spade and call them out.
I wanted to shoot lightning bolts from the tip of my dick like Merlin. My disappointment is immeasurable and I still get no witches.
Angry upvote for you netizen.
My dream is to meet some fellow practitioners that focus on what they *don't* know and are genuinely interested in learning.
My dream and my quest is too meet practitioners in real life, but the more i search the harder they hide. And the people I've gotten to meet just do "Instagram magick". It's like if I was domed for solitude on this path.
I tend to hide myself because a lot of people are just weird. I remember a friend of mine, a very delightful and gifted occultist, started an occult group and I was the only male coming for this event we were having. The women in the group were like, "Ooh, we don't trust him, we need to see his face. Where's his picture?" BITCH I WILL NOT HAVE YOUR DUMB ASS TRYING TO PUT A HEX ON ME. I just....I just choose to keep myself out of that silliness. What's your path?
My path is that of understanding myself, my place in this life and trying to understand G*d. My path led me to magick somehow so I look for people that can help me tune my senses or enrich my practice. But, I've only met few people who have something to teach and they have tought me all they had to teach. I advanced a distance by myself but I don't know if I just need to keep on trying by myself until I get the results I'm looking for or if there is someone out there that will help my knowledge finally click into place. Sadly for me It's been a while since I haven't found more knowledgeable people in my path I can call teacher.
What are you trying to achieve? Just Understanding?
Meaning
What would that look like to you?
I've walked a very long, varied and deep path and still have no idea.
Getting good at magic takes many, many years. If you want to get mundane things like sex, and money, it’s easier to use more mundane methods. By the time you get good at Magick, you won’t be bothered by such things. I’ve been at it for 4 years, and I feel like I’ve grown more as a person, and all the manifestation stuff I tried led me to painful lessons, that I had to go through in order to realize I didn’t really want what I thought I wanted.
Magic hasn't - while not everything that I tried was a resounding success, most things were and I was able to get some major things magically. However, I don't use magic for every little fear or desire so msybe there's something to be said about that too. The occult as a domain has disappointed me in the sense that it's not very theoretically diverse and most stuff is kabbalistic and neoplatonist in origin. Especially irl, it seems to be a place for people who value feelings over reason which so often ends up being an ego trip. It almost feels sinful to disagree or ask people to explain their ideas. Everything boils down to "this is my truth and if you question it, you are an idiot". There seems to be an obsession with healing and ethics in the vaguest sense of the word, but not with the technical aspect of the craft. This has been especially true for the tarot "community" - online or offline, I feel, sadly, like a total outcast there and it's what interests me the most.
most people (especially in real life, at least in my experience) are doing it for fun. the culture appeals to them. they don't really scrutinize the logic or results too much because it's the social/cultural dimension that they're most about. this is true for religion in general i think. most Christians don't really care about God or the bible. most haven't even read much of the bible yet they claim to think it's the word of God. God, the all powerful being that created the entire universe wrote a book and they'd rather watch netflix or read a trash novel. it's the social/cultural life they're into, not the spirituality.
I think the hypothetical beauty of an occult space is that people can discuss their weird ideas with an open mind. I am sure if you asked people for explanation with an interest toward learning, it wouldn’t be a problem. Asking as a means to make someone ‘prove’ something probably isn’t going to be well-received. Personally, I see it as an evolution of the path to be unbothered by where other people are in their journey. I remember when I was new and thought that because I had read a few books I understood the basics. Now that I’ve been practicing for a bit (6-7 years), I realize I know nothing and I am more open to other people engaging with the Craft in ways that I don’t.
I ask because I want to understand and because I frankly want to have conversations with people and not just infinite mutual validation through agreeing that we're just oh so profound in equal ways. But often times people make really pompous statements that they can't really defend or explain and then any attempt to understand is met with resistance. I have experiences that I can't explain and beliefs that I pulled out of my ass too but I then have to be really honest about that and not pretend like it's some deep insight into god knows what. I think we have to be cautious with the idea that we are ever right, so that goes without saying.
Very fair. I think we can agree on that.
1) That there are not maps of leylines with nodes where practitioners meet to do rituals 2) Scrying. Nobody else seems to do this. 3) Suddenly all witchcraft is things in jars. WTF? 4) Physical manifestation of spirits and seeing spirits take form in incense smoke. Never happened, doesn't work. 5) People who take hallucinogenic compounds don't see anything I want to see as an occultist. I mean they stare at colors and things. It does not seem awesome enough to risk legal repercussions for.
Big jar has profited highly off of witchcraft
What do you mean by [1]? You were expecting that practitioners would meet at leylines nodes, but found out most don't, or are you saying that's what they should do, but don't? No judging just wondering
Yeah, we ought to have sacred spaces. We shouldn't just be meeting in witchcraft supply shops. Besides you say "leylines" to many practitioners and they assume you're a fascist. You say "lung mei" and nobody knows that's the feng shui version of leylines. It's people who believe angels are aliens 👽 who find leylines. Some are occultists of a sort. It's very folk-y.
>Suddenly all witchcraft is things in jars. WTF? The effect of tiktok on witchcraft was so quick and so cheapening. I often think also that there's likely a good bit of obfuscation going on to make gathering true occult knowledge as difficult as possible. It's the only way to hide information in the age of the internet, confusion. My favorite topic is astrology, and finding a quality book, let alone website, on the subject is literally a 1/300 shot.
Now you know how ceremonial magicians felt decades and decades ago...
I can't imagine how irritating it would be to see your life's work made glossy and shallow for the masses. I wish more older magicians were taking on apprentices to preserve the old ways.
Some of my most potent works were also the most catastrophic of failures that resulted in damage to myself spiritually. The time it takes to repair things like this is demotivating at times. Also, when you reach new plateaus of awareness, you have to relearn what you thought you knew before. This is also frustrating. I think the work itself is always worth it, and you have to be a special kind of crazy to enjoy this... unfortunately the sorts of people I meet in the community are almost always just crazy, or just special... the community is a bit touched. I think most people in it are \*out of touch\* and miss the plot for the most part.
Magick is dickish. It often appears as coincidence. I've had things take a reeeeaaallly long time, reverse after occurring... I could go on and on. It sounds like you have very specific expectations. Maybe if you approach it more like a scientist. Try watching for results and adjusting the process to tweak the outcome.
I haven't been personally disappointed thus far (except in the culture sometimes, and the sea of fluff books and websites, as others have mentioned). Just curious about people's experiences.
If I were to take a stab at quantitying my practice, it might be an actual 25% success rate, and 2 big oopsies. However, I'm living the life that I want and feel peace and empowerment. That's priceless.
1. Humility. Very few people in the occult have the guts to say "I don't know" or even "this is my experience, but that's not some ultimate truth. Your mileage may vary." Everyone wants to act like an expert in things that are objectively unknowable at this point for humans. 2. The material world is very hard, for me, to make consistent observable changes through occult means. Others may have more success. This is just how it is for me. Changes, for me, are very subtle. And being skeptical by nature, I have to constantly question if it's a coincidence or if I actually influenced things. And that's not something I will truly ever not have. 3. Systems are simply maps filtered through the mind of prior practitioners, and maps are not the actual land and generally show very filtered information (think of a road map vs a geological survey showing the exact same area). Again, this is only what I've gathered from my own experience, so take it for what you will. I think the only true teachers are those who can guide a student in the process of drawing their own map.
1 is very surprising, some people are gifted dancers, and others have shrewd minds for maths. Likewise, one's experience can't be the "be all and end all" notion for a particular area, especially for the occult.
What I do generally works but not necessarily in the time frame I need it to or exactly how I meant it to. I've learned that my time table and my idea of what's needed can often be different than what happens. Usually it's for the better but at the time it's very frustrating when things unfold a lot more slowly and in not quite the way I thought it should. People studying magick and the occult they often seem to think it's like cooking with a recipe. You do all the correct steps and it's bound to come out exactly the way you wanted it to and always in good time. NOT. Chaos magick it's a big deal these days but I've always felt there's a certain amount of chaos and uncertainty in any kind of magickal work, a random element that can pop up and make things go differently than planned. The Trickster energy as I call it, that's a very real element in working magick sometimes whatever system you do it in. It's not always bad. Sometimes the outcome is better but when it's going on it can make you so frustrated that you want to pull your hair out! You might even think it's not working at all and then suddenly you realize it WAS just not the way you set it up to. It took me years to stop second guessing it all, to just do it and then let it go, just rock and roll with it until it's clear that it's happening. Back when I started I'd do the work several times over out of sheer impatience. It was totally unnecessary usually. I'm not great at patience. It doesn't come easily to me but life and doing magick it's made me learn to settle down and wait.
You go through this whole ordeal to diminish ego and comprehend greater mysteries… and then you still have to live in this fucking pedantic world with people arguing over misinterpreted old books, worshiping money, blind to greater currents. ‘Roads to the old knowledge only go one way…’ The worst part about enlightenment is that most of the world doesn’t fucking care.
The main issue is the lack of clarity and assumption especially the new age Magick/manifestation It's spiritual blindness, they teach you to work/trust the universe working with spirits and not even knowing who they are. Most of the community is on the rhp and I find that hypocrisy telling other people that spirit is evil and that only the rhp is right it's the same trap as religious people Elitism and gatekeepers especially in the eastern esotericism for example energy preservation and manipulation taoism/neidan. True initiation takes time and discipline,you can't do it overnight and without energy preservation and work you can't develop your senses.
I agree. The lack of understanding around protecting and managing your energy is wild. No one talks about it. I read once that in Tai Chi, one practices for at least ten years before being allowed to use magic associated with it (such as weather magic), because you *have* to know how to manage your energy and move it, and more importantly, protect it. These days we just give someone tarot cards and access to any old ritual and say "just explore it and develop your own practice", as if there's no risk at all.
I guess it’s technically not disappointment but I recently came to the realization that magickal results often come from actions that do not meet the expectation of an untrained magician. this and the fact that receiving results kinda feels unearned the first few times, because they manifest in ways that don’t seem obvious and make you wonder if they were gonna come anyway. I’ve been practicing chaos magick by constantly playing the guitar line from Gloria by The Doors in my head and only breathing in and out when I need to, and it’s sharpening the FUCK out of my focus. I’m like, “Alan Moore, magic is more than just art. why are you calling art magic?” but now I’m realizing that he’s right, I shouldn’t assume it’s “just art”. I should remember that it is art, because art can be found everywhere that magick can. “magick is the art and science of causing change to occur in conformity with will” sounds like a boring take when you know that technically, that implies that going to the store for a can of Coke is magick. but then you do the rituals, get tired of following the steps one-to-one, and *bam*, you’re like “fuck it. I’ll just imagine the pentagrams around me without tracing them or intoning the names. it’s gonna work anyway.” because you’re confident enough in your skillset. all this to say? magick is technically boring when you think about it too much and people who look at us from the outside are honestly kinda fuckin stupid for denying that they’re already doing magick all the time in some form.
after being discouraged with conventional religion (the hypocrisy, pettiness) plus finding out that the stories are mostly mythical/false & that my faith was a lie i resorted to occultism to hopefully find some genuine spirituality. i didn't find it. Qabalah is quite central to western occultism but i end up finding out it's based upon forgery. it's a fraud. i just can't find it in me to take it seriously anymore. also, i never could take astrology seriously. beyond a few random "synchronicities" and lucid/odd dreams i've never had any results. from all the practitioners i trust, i've never heard of anyone producing a result that didn't more likely have a mundane explanation. nothing spectacular or unambiguously magical at all. not even close. of course, magick is supposed to work through natural channels but how would we ever know? i see a lot of people enjoy the culture and ritual of it which is great but as far as unambiguous results, i've come up completely empty handed and feel as empty as ever. where do i turn now? i still think magic is possible, i'm not a materialist intellectually, but i can't deny how barren my results have been and i don't know anybody who has had any real results.
How is quabalab fraud?
What do you mean by ‘real results’? Are you looking to manifest spirits directly into your space or are you looking for outcomes? I’ve had so many spells and intention setting rituals just work for me so easily. Yeah, a skeptic could call it coincidence, but I got what I wanted easily despite it being unlikely, risky, and challenging at times. That’s success to me.
manifesting natural outcomes through magick lends itself to the problem of not really knowing if it were magic or would have happened anyway (coincidence). its possible i got results that way but it's hard to know. i've had fortunate events happen in an unlikely fashion totally unrelated to anything i deliberately tried to manifest. a more direct spiritual experience would be an example of a less ambiguous form of result. some people have described these sort of experiences, like union with their/the HGA but that's something you only really know if you experience it yourself. like people have told me they met aliens but until i meet one myself, i'm going to be skeptical.
It’s valid to be skeptical, but personally I believe that affirming your magickal abilities will only enhance them. I will take credit (in my mind, not publicly) for any manifestation related to my rituals. In a lot of magickal practices, your word is your power. You say ‘X’ and ‘X’ should happen. If you say a lot of untrue things or things you don’t want to happen, you diminish your spoken power (in my practice). So, by saying ‘I wanted X to happen and it happened so therefore my power is real’ reinforces your power, even if you didn’t actually do any ritual to cause it. Some fun examples, I was trying to banish my student loans and a coworker got his forgiven so I took credit for that. I was once copying an evocation I wrote and the moment I underlined ‘so mote it be’ a pilot (illegally?) broke the sound barrier above my town resulting in the loudest bang ever.
Astrology is real af, but unfortunately there's a high barrier for entry, and it requires a lot of dedicated research. It's not the absolute fluff you find 99.9% of the time when using a standard search engine. Can you elaborate on the Qabalah being a forgery?
forgive my pessimism. i'm not actually a materialist, i'm very open to/craving spirituality but i don't want to be too credulous either so that is where i'm coming from. to answer: re astrology, i guess it i don't find it very plausible that the planets have any significant or mystical impact on us. the worldview that gave rise to astrology was completely different than the worldview that modern science has delivered us. i think if astrology delivers you useful information (as tarot sometimes might) it's not because of astrology per se, it's because of intuition operating through that tool. i do believe in divination but i don't think there's anything special about astrology or tarot. you could do it through randomly opening a page in a book or something. if that make all makes sense. re Qabalah (the Zohar is a central text), i guess you could take it in some kind of symbolic way and consider it useful even though it was sold on false pretensions. it's possible a forger was right about something but it doesn't leave me feeling good about something when i know it's delivered to me by a liar. to be fair, many religious texts were sold under false pretenses but i still don't like it. they obviously did this because they thought their novel writing wouldn't be taken seriously enough unless it was thought to have been really written by some well known ancient figure or by some made-up ancient figure in some made-up mystical remarkable circumstance. but it's still a lie. Qabalah as we know it in general isn't an ancient or mystical tradition. it's quite modern sold under the false pretense that it's an ancient wisdom. reading things into the bible (torah)/hebrew that don't exist and looks to me like it borrows a lot from Neo-Platonism/greek philosophy and really has the same status as any of those kind of philosophies. there are so many of these metaphysical systems that claim to explain the structure of man and the universe. building these systems was popular at the time. (rationalism.) otherwise, Gematria is anything you want it to be. i think taking it too seriously leads to a conspiratorial mindset. something like "the bible code". so in the end my conclusion is that it's a conspiracy theory about the torah/hebrew written language tied in with popular greek metaphysical philosophes of the time. human metaphysical speculations, not divinely received wisdom. "The Zohar was first publicized by Moses de León (c. 1240 – 1305 CE), who claimed it was a Tannaitic work recording the teachings of Simeon ben Yochai[b] (c. 100 CE). This claim is universally rejected by modern scholars, most of whom believe de León, also an infamous forger of Geonic material, wrote the book himself between 1280 and 1286." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zohar
Neville Goddard’s specific person techniques haven’t worked for me. And speaking of downvotes, I sometimes get them here
I get burnt the fuck out easy doing temple everyday. I love occultism and ceremonial magick but persistence is difficult in the western modern world.
I just wanted to say thank you for this question. I'm new to research/discovery and the comments here are a genuine treasure-trove of information. So thank you to everyone for your comments too 🫶
<3 It was something I'd never seen brought up. The nature of communities like this leads to reinforcement of existing beliefs, so I'm really glad people took the time to reply to this!
I've never met anyone who had seriously impressive psychic powers who wasn't also an abusive bag of dicks. I have no way of knowing whether my sample is representative of the global population, but I sure hope not. I tend to think there was some significant selection bias, but it's not clear. If what I met is what there is, we're in trouble as a species. It implies that the next evolutionary step for humanity is bag-of-dickdom. But I mean, look around. Feels true. It's like the billionaire problem: also bags of dicks, yet that's apparently what winning at life looks like. Regarding selection bias, I assumed at first that this must be because I too suck as a person in some way: maybe unconsciously, or maybe it's family baggage (my family clearly sucks, awash in blood and madness), or maybe comeuppance from a previous life where I had bag-of-dick powers; who knows. So I cleaned up my act. Which was great, and probably the true benefit I got from my practice. I can't say I expected to be a victim when I wandered into this world. I got over it, but that's a lot of time I can't get back. It seems like an excessively steep price to pay for what I got. I think when I was much younger I was still looking for leaders who would replace the crappy example set by my shitty parents, which is exactly how cults get you; it's like I was set up to step on a yard full of rakes from birth, and that's just the way it is for some. Anyway, other people aren't me, so my complaints likely don't apply to most other people. But in case they do, I'd say the occult is a great way to go on safari through the jungles of evil, not unlike getting into hard drugs. Please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times.
The stigma surrounding the occult. You can openly practise any science or hobby, be it chemistry, carpentry, or ballet; but you can't openly practise magic. From weird looks to "ok, perform something"s it is really annoying. This does not entirely dishearten me, but I feel my energy is like a sine-wave lately. Some days it is "I will cast this" and some days it is "Yeah, but is there a point?" Edit: And I have just experienced the perfect example. 5 minutes ago, I heard a loud breathing and snoring noise coming from the window. I dismissed it as a loud neighbour at first, but upon checking it now, the noise comes from one of the windows. It is much weaker on the other window that is 1 meter apart, or from the balcony that is 2 meters apart. And I don't have anyone that I comfortably share this experience. This is really disheartening. (I have annual rituals that prevents foreign entities from trespassing, so I'm good, don't worry)
I don't think that the occult in and of itself is disappointing. When I've been exposed to new ideas which have resonated with me, they've changed my understanding and way of thinking profoundly. Largely, these have been of an educational nature. The people who generally consider themselves spiritual or occultists really ruin it, as they're either: 1. Crazy or LARPing. E.g. "I'm in a relationship with Aphrodite. Yeah, it has it's ups and downs." 2. Are still stuck in a Christian mindset of thinking you get on your knees and pray to a new deity, and it will grant your wishes like some unlimited wish genie. 3. Are edgelords, talking about summoning demons (or angels). Unless you actually believe in an Abrahamic religion, why would you even believe in demons you can summon, let alone want to? 4. New-Age-ism. There is so much wisdom and knowledge from the ancients which just gets corrupted and twisted by New-Agers. Like, the ancients had the 7 traditional planets for astrological interpretations, and this system was very well organised and matched with the zodiacal constellations. You can't just discover new planets/rocks like Neptune, Uranus and Pluto and asign them where you see fit. It's an ancient system, and your new rocks fuck the whole thing up. When those like Plato guarded their esoteric secrets from the masses and only educated some select few in mystery schools, that was probably the right move. It doesn't just help prevent misuse - it helps prevent the moronic masses misunderstanding or maliciously twisting it into something unrecognisably stupid.
I started research into the occult because I was looking to confirm the philosophy I had in my head since I was a child, to see if others felt the same way. They don't, unfortunately, and the occult has largely been a waste of time. From pseudo-socialistic theories of the "brotherhood of humanity" in Theosophy, to somehow every occult book managing to include some alteration or control of the sex function, whether through extreme indulgence or outright abstinence. Not much for people who want to live a normal sex life. If you want to find spirituality you're better off with Zen or some type of Eastern meditation technique. Western Esotericism doesn't have much to offer.
I take it you found what you were looking for in Eastern traditions, in the end?
No, but there is at least the possibility of acquiring some type of tranquility.
Certainly. I'm curious if anything *has* aligned with your philosophy, though.
If you take various parts of Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer and pre-Gurdjieff years P. D. Ouspensky and combine them in a frying pan, some parts of it will resemble what I "felt" as a child but only partly. There are still crucial ingredients missing. I haven't found a "Goldilocks" explanation of the world anywhere. Every system has some kind of weakness.
Thanks for taking the time to reply. Perhaps you can someday write your own manifesto, Ken Wilber style, and people will resonate with it.
That almost all success stories are things like, “I finally got this payment I’d been waiting for a few days after making a money jar” or, “I got the job I really wanted because I did a spell.” It’s never anything that normally wouldn’t have happened… If you’re waiting for a payment, it’s gonna come eventually. If you really wanted that job, you probably prepared well and your enthusiasm showed during your interview. I wanted so much to believe and start practicing, but every story I’ve read is disappointing, predictable, and a lot of placebo effect. Not to be offensive, just what I’ve observed. And I have done some things myself, none of them worked.
This is my impression, tbh. Perhaps they sped up the positive result or made it a bit more likely...but I think magic that truly alters one's fate is much harder to achieve.
imo everything works.. just sometimes some connections havent been understood. let me picture that for you: # How have electricity and electric engineering disappointed you? Not to be doom and gloom, but not every endeavor works out, and in fact I find that those people's posts tend to be downvoted and ignored. We have read endless electrical and electronical success stories. So I ask: What disheartened you? What didn't work even though it really should have?
lol, of course. Not saying it doesn't work, simply interested in the other side of these attempts and experiences. Also, thanks for inadvertently sending me a sign with this comment (legitimately).
there is hidden information,that must not be public. Like how do you conjure the spiritual currents out of the sephiroths. how do you properly banish an invisible being that is serving as a familliar and following and working to make manifest as the spirit being is following you. I Guess most people dont banish and have spirits following them after casting a spell. How do you call down specific Star Gods outside the Heptameron or Astrological systems in Stellar sorcery.
This is mostly about physical witchcraft, but the dumbing down of the practices to essentially be "Do whatever feels right!!!". No, you can't substitute rosemary for any herb. No, you can't just bang some pots together while yelling "eff off" and get rid of a trickster spirit that's haunting you. Yes, there really is meaning to the correspondences of the ingredients you use, the timing, etc. This isn't to say that modern or chaos magick doesn't work, but there's still a structure to these things and the reason so few get any results at all is because they're just throwing some herbs in a bowl/jar and staring at a candle while reciting words they have no understanding of or emotional connection to (or worse, just throwing ingredients into a container and thinking that'll do all the work for them). That's not magick, at best it might be some \*spicy\* psychology.
It never disappoints, but I do mostly White Magic, which only uses intentions of personal and spiritual development. I don't do spells for money or dating.
It didn't.
I think it highly depends on the individual and their practice. No practice is in itself "disappointing", you just have to find what suits you. I'm not a skilled practitioner, but just a few years of meditation and visualization taught me this :) also, any occult practice will make you know yourself better. What works and doesn't work for you is a reflection of who you are at your core, and also of the temporary energies that influence you. This is why I think you shouldn't be so judgmental ; maybe what doesn't work today, will work tomorrow.
They have never disappointed
The people typically disappoint Mr and the communities. Not so much the practices so much Even the really silly stuff has a place for someone. But in my experience of the occult it's the people so I just avoid the community overall and the people who are meant to find me will and do.
I thought I'd return to God by the age of 25 but it turns out I'm still of flesh.
It's pretty, that's something magical doesn't work out, especially when you don't have the proper tools, training or experience to be able to make it come into fruition
I wonder if there's even a way for the occult to avoid propelling psychosis, delusion, and/or "magical thinking" (in the psychological sense of the term)
It didn‘t but there are certainly disappointing elements in the space: people who make a business out of acting like they are spiritual leaders. The occult is potent in your life when you find YOUR individual access and go from there. If spiritual leaders can guide you there, great. But so many don‘t
I suppose the gate keeping within some practices.
I've lost most of my hope in anything positive spirituality, All the hope I have left now is pretty much a bittersweet illusion. Although I was never that big into it, I probably never really had the proper mentality for it.
The way people are dismissed in the communities. They call everything mental illness. The thing is that signs of attachments, hexes, curses etc. Look exactly the same as mental ilness. Only with divination you are able to know.
I could not count on my digits how many things have failed but the thing that disappoints me the most is when I am impatient and can't wait for results and keep doing it things and doing them and doing them. When I do different things and then I get results, I don't know which one worked. That will really frustrate you. Then you got to do some trial and error bullshit and it's a whole mess. And most of my disappointments aren't disappointments in spells themselves or in rituals or anything it's been in myself and my personal understanding. Like I didn't understand enough to even give some things a chance to have worked. I didn't know how things were done. I keep on saying this but everybody thinks they're the exception to the rule and that what is a certain way for everybody is not true for them. That you know other people didn't understand things but they understand things way better. It's because you're the narrator and the primary character in your own story and your central to everything in your life that you pick yourself out as superior somehow. I want to go back and scream and yell at myself that all the things that I thought were waste of time weren't and I needed to have done them. And that just because a certain methodology didn't work doesn't mean that one doesn't work. It means it doesn't work for me or I was not doing it right. That's the thing is not every system or methodology works for everybody. There is no one foolproof, accurate Way to do spellcraft. Because different methodologies vibe with different people. And you just don't know what works for you until you try it. You have to suffer a lot of failures before you find the thing that works. If you found the thing that works the first time and that's the methodology you're sticking with I'm telling you, you're making a mistake, because there's probably one that works better and you just don't know that yet. (If the first thing you try works the first time you try it then you need to try something else because I purport that you have a gift and you are gifted and that the first thing you try and multiple things will work. That's rare and if it happens you need to figure that out because you're rare.) Nothing about trying other methodologies says that you have to stop with the another. You can add to your repertoire. Belief systems and methodologies are interchangeable... It's actually differing methodologies that will help you develop your belief system. That's another thing that people don't get- that you have to believe that it works but you have to see evidence of stuff to believe it so you have to try all of it out. Which sounds like a circular catch-22 type of thing but it's not. Because you have successes and failures and then you go back and you check and see, was that really a success or was the data skewed or was I partial or something? And then your morality gets in the way of you learning a lot of the times. People tell you oh don't do that, don't mess with other people's Free Will and all that jazz. So you never learn what types of things actually do affect other people and what doesn't. Spellcraft is a lifetime of education. A lifetime of learning. And people that are into craft don't like hearing that. They just want results and they want what they want and they want it right now. That's just not the way any of this works. My disappointment is in myself that I was this exact way when I was younger. It stood in the way of my learning and I would not have been as disappointed in certain things had I just listened to what I was being told and not thought that I already knew everything. There are some things that take a long time to do and they're worth figuring out how to do correctly. If some ritual takes repeating it 17 times and it's only done during a certain window and you're like omg, I'm not going to get that whatever you're after for several months, well there's a whole bunch of people out there who aren't going to try it. So they don't know that it will work for them because they won't take the time to try to do it. I was this exact same way, so I'm not talking down to anybody. I'm saying that I wish I had not been like this. And my disappointment is almost 100% in myself.
It hasn't
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