I gotta say

[HoldAll]

To be fair, this forum does have a Religion, Spirituality and Meditation as well as a Philosophy and Psychology section. Staff doesn't enforce compartmentalisation too strictly and usually only intervenes in clearcut cases, e.g. when somebody's looking for book recommendations in General Occult Discussion where such posts don't belong. In theory, you could simply ignore the forum sections you're not interested in but I have to admit that there've been posts in General Occult Discussion that don't really belong there. It should be readily apparent from the respective thread titles (ahem) which posts are specifically about occult subjects, are idle speculation pure philosphy, or discuss spiritual systems but it's the nature of the beast that borderlines become frequently blurred.

Posts such as yours are important. We need to be reminded that our flights of fancy have to end somewhere and that it's always a good idea to keep your epiphanies to yourself as per the "Keep silent" rule, or start a forum journal if you feel absolutely compelled to tell the world (it may make for embarrassing reading in a year or two though). There has also been vociferous pushback on occasion whenever somebody chose to reveal to us The One Unassailable Truth. It all evens out eventually. There'll always be factions as soon as you begin a dialogue with a larger number of people. I may indulge in all sorts of of philosophising privately but I'm always prepared to join the utilitarian camp publicly .

Post automatically merged: Friday at 11:03 AM

Or rather 'utilitarian-ish', I realise now that I'm guilty of having written philosophising replies myself.

 

[MorganBlack]

Holy moly, ahathoor, those are some of the most insightful observations about online esoteric discussion dynamics I have ever read. I will be thinking about this for a while.

(and oregano, thank you for shearing too! I know we value the individual effort, while we also try to speak to an ideal group we all have in our heads. This stuff can be a lonely path, sometimes.)

Like ewiz, I was on Yahoo Groups as we had more sharing of... and let's call it for now: narrow-band, focused speculation based on shared experiences and boots-in-the-circle experimentation.

Years ago, there was a forum where people signed on to a short-term experiment and just did the Headless Rite for a month, and then reported back in to compare ritual notes. With no pre-programming from anyone's personal framework of what they would experience, aside from existing esoteric literature. More of that please.

Now we have WitchTok and other pay-to-play esoteric groups or forums, who all act like there are no longer any open questions. Instant enlightenment, and infinite magic power SOLVED for all time! (Thank God for these wise, and benevolent sages and witches in our midst.) So pack it up folks! Job's done. Nothing further to add.

 

[Frater M.M.]

Yep, yep. I wish I could track down the quote, but I think it was chaos magican-animist Gordon White who said:

"When in ceremony, treat it all literally; when out of ceremony, treat it all as metaphor."

This is what I did early on, even as as a secular-brained person. Fully step into the mythos. Treat spirits, demons, saints, and forces as objective, living entities. For me this was in the 1990's with the Grimorium Verum - long before any of the excellent academic knowledge we have now on the history of the "true nature' (cough) of the GV daimons. Dumb GV works just as well. Full faith, imagination, and immersion just works. Even if you have to fake it.

I think what we're trying to get at is that all this snarky, post-modern detachment or suspicion inside ceremony kills the necessary state of focus and right-brain immersion.

That's a nice quote. It's quite artistic as well. I personally prefer the word "hypothesis" instead of "metaphor" but the sentiment is pretty close either way. [Sidenote: I only discovered last week that both White and Carroll had sadly died this year -- a great loss for the magick world, IMO].

Yeah, for sure, all that snark and suspicion inside the ritual leads to a dead end, IMO. I would add, I've sometimes found results with sincerity and an open mind but I think this is different to just fooling around in a ceremony.

To expand with an example (as others have been good enough to share their experiences on this site/thread):

This year I have been getting into working with Greek deities and I began asking for daily advice (in a sincere and open way) from them via daily (3-card) tarot draws. I've discussed readings on ChatGPT and got it to create me a journal with all the draws as entries, to extract trends and to build up a dictionary of my meanings for each card. The data never really shows predictions but a lot of very on the nose synchronicities in draws and solid advice have appeared, and trends show a fair amount of similar cards re-appearing in similar positions/orientations with consistent themes for advice, etc.

So, during the ceremony I am nowadays fully immersed into communicating with the deities, am grateful and consider the advice seriously. However, in the cold light of the day, post-ceremony, I have various concurrent hypotheses about the data:

(1) chance/luck,
(2) psychological projection onto interpretation and significance of cards,
(3) contact with archetypes/higher-self/alien entity dressed as the Greek pantheon,
(4) brain psi powers activated by ritual,
(5) contact with the actual Greek pantheon, etc.

As I collect more data, some of these may look more likely than others. However, the real measure for me is: does this practice help me move towards my values or not, am I getting the results I want? The answer is yes, so I keep doing it. The ritual certainly feels real in the moment now, but if somehow all this turned out to be explained by one of the first 4 options, that wouldn't make the practice worthless to me if it kept producing results.

Personally, I like just being a regular person most of the time, and maintaining a 24/7 religious devotion or alt-lifestyle wackiness is not fun for me. I have morning and evening prayers to maintain connection with my allies and the living reality of my mythic-religious framework. But for most of the time, I am just me. A regular, if a bit spooky dude.

....

I highly recommend paranormal writer Joshua Cutchin's work on the fluid and liminal nature of the paranormal / sublunar reality.

Yeah, my take on things is that I don't really see a separation between sacred/spiritual and profane/mundane. So tidying my room or going to the gym could be an act of devotion or an offering if I want it to be. However, that doesn't mean when I go to do my groceries in the afternoon, I walk down the road to Tesco in a toga wielding a caduceus in one hand and singing hymns to Hermes. And also, like you, most of the time I'm busy working, watching TV, reading or paying bills, etc.

Thanks for the recommendation on Cutchin. I'll check him out.

 

[Kepler]

a lot of occult discussion both here and elsewhere online reads like an amateur philosophy debate forum. This is not how I generally conceive of magick.

Part of my understanding of the spiritual path as it relates to the archetype of The Wizard is that at a certain point, what was once called "knowledge", ie the theories, propositions, hypothesis, models, philosophies, frameworks, etc that are discussed and debated as a search for some kind of universal truth, eventually fade away into the background and are no longer the focus of the wizard's endeavors. They become a means rather than an end. The time for analytical thought for the purpose of discovering what is "the truth" has ended, and the time for action and experimentation has begun. In other words, you've done enough "finding out" and now it's time to "fuck around".

I'm not saying that philosophizing and debating about philosophizing is any kind of bad thing per ce. Just that it's not the focus I'd expect a magick group to have.

Am I way off base?

There seems to be some confusion between the beginner state of choosing a path and studying it for basic modification to even begin experimentation, and the path at a stage of mastery where the best efforts of the Wizard have been codified through experience and detached from when encountering the Abyss.
In Fallibilism there's never a guarantee to possess the absolute truth, only increasingly better approximations of it. Have you considered that maybe there's adjustments from experience being worked out?

 

[Nembra]

Personally I'm not interested, I will skip threads about "The Universal Truth about the Universe and Everything" and prefer practical discussions, sharing resources and helping others out in specific matters, but to each its own.

I love them, that's where the most deliciously deranged takes are.

 

[Keldan]

You’re not entirely off base, but you’re looking at only one side of what serious magick practice requires. A lot of occult discussion online does devolve into endless theory. Some who never move beyond concepts and frameworks, for whom magick remains an intellectual hobby rather than an actual path. But discussion, theory, and debate are not misplaced in a magick group. The problem isn’t the presence of theory, it’s the absence of discernment and practice.

Magick especially as lived by working practitioners becomes experience first. You do the work, you have tangible encounters and phenomena, your life changes, and you learn from what actually happens, not from what sounds cool in a thread.

Yes, there is a lot of theory everywhere, not just on one forum. But because I actively practice, I can discern which posts are pure speculation and which are real, lived experience. That’s the big difference. I practice spirit work and I work with a ton of spirits, all of them are all outside grimoires, so my base of experience is already different from those whose framework is based on grimoires. I respond to threads that arise from practice and to those where practitioners are asking for methods or techniques born out of direct work.

There are entire layers of magick you simply cannot understand without practice. If you haven’t done the work, then no amount of reading or exposure to practitioner accounts will change the fact that their reports will tend to be dismissed as “just theory,” or misunderstood, overlooked, or written off as crazy ideas. If your exposure is mainly to grimoire spirits and discourse around them, you simply won’t have access to many of the currents and spirits that practitioners like me are engaging with. So when we share certain experiences, if your practice hasn’t touched those currents, they may look theoretical or philosophical to you, even though they are verifiable practitioner experience.

If you want real knowledge, you need discernment. Discernment between speculation and experience, and discernment to recognize when someone is speaking from actual work, even if their vocabulary or framework differs from yours. With that discernment, it becomes straightforward to identify threads that contain usable methods and validated experience rather than just endless theorizing.

I tend to drop information in small, targeted ways rather than dumping everything at once. I share pieces of lived experience and method that will resonate with certain practitioners when they’re actually ready to do the work. The core skill here isn’t arguing better philosophy, it’s discernment. You’ll know exactly where the real magick is happening.

 

[r4zorenigma]

a lot of occult discussion both here and elsewhere online reads like an amateur philosophy debate forum. This is not how I generally conceive of magick.

Part of my understanding of the spiritual path as it relates to the archetype of The Wizard is that at a certain point, what was once called "knowledge", ie the theories, propositions, hypothesis, models, philosophies, frameworks, etc that are discussed and debated as a search for some kind of universal truth, eventually fade away into the background and are no longer the focus of the wizard's endeavors. They become a means rather than an end. The time for analytical thought for the purpose of discovering what is "the truth" has ended, and the time for action and experimentation has begun. In other words, you've done enough "finding out" and now it's time to "fuck around".

I'm not saying that philosophizing and debating about philosophizing is any kind of bad thing per ce. Just that it's not the focus I'd expect a magick group to have.

Am I way off base?

This isn't a magick group.. This is just a forum for magick related topics. I think you expected a bit too much from a forum online when forums are kinda dying out on the net.

I've been involved deeply with the occult for many years.. I have only gotten back into it recently as there have always been techniques, ideas, concepts that I've utilized throughout my time, even when I steered away from my major practices. Truth is most of us who have developed facultities to create great outcomes dont care to spend time on internet corners -- we usually have covens, temples or are apart of networks of friends/fellowship that we can relate to --rather than talk to some people who we know nothing about.. I no longer am apart of any network or covens related to my occult practices however, so i am here-- mostly just to share my experience and wisdom.. for those interested.

 

[MorganBlack]

This isn't a magick group.. This is just a forum for magick related topics. I think you expected a bit too much from a forum online when forums are kinda dying out on the net.

True, but I think at this time we can pretty confidently say Wizard Forums is having a massive and mostly positive effect on the study and knowledge of the practice of, lets call it practical spirituality ( "magic" is not a universal word), and esotericism overall.

Part of my job in the video games industry and tech is public sentiment analysis, and I think we can say that, judging by the conversations here on the forum, the very intelligent and well-educated comments.

As Gen-X, I remember when only a handful of people cared about this stuff. I had to figure things out pretty much by myself. Then there was the dark times from about 2005 to 2025 after enough folks had figured out just enough to begin writing books of beginner material. But once something is published it traps everyone in that time.

But also juding from the types and kinds of books that consistently get boosted to the top of the Book Shares here of WF, I don't think I'm being too optimistic to say the future is bright.

Consider this.

I very much encourage people spend some time seeing what types of books get consistently boosted to the top. Do it NOW or SOON before it gets manipuated by grifters trying to extend the lifespan their garbage.

Take a look and notice all the garbage that is just... missing. Pretty much gone.

In place of neopagan witch-slop, you have Conjure, Brujeríia, Hoodoo, and what I think of as Witchcraft v2.0.

In place of Kenneth Grant hysteria and Dark Fluff talk about the "Dark Light of Satan's Abyssal Testicles," you have measured grimoire tradition authors.

In place of culty MK-Ultra-ish invasiveness concern-trolling with what is going on in your own head to scan for "wrong-think," or "egregores" you have Chaos Magic and Goddardian New Thought.

And we have simplified conjuring methods which I hear are effective for some folk, and I welcome as part of the folk magic side of the grimoire tradition.

These are all very positive developments. But even all the stupid, harmful low-information bad ideas all probably started out 20 to 80 years ago as a way to get former normies to "believe," but then became a straitjacket and were made into progressively stupider and stupider religions and "traditions." But they appear to be dead or dying.

While I do miss the more experimental forums. We will not know if people are putting to use what they have been studying until they report back in. And i see some exellent experimentation going on.

And the hour is young, and I expect very, very good things from the young folks. You guys honestly make me far more optimistic that i was evenjust a few years ago! Seriously!

 

[r4zorenigma]

True, but I think at this time we can pretty confidently say Wizard Forums is having a massive and mostly positive effect on the study and knowledge of the practice of, lets call it practical spirituality ( "magic" is not a universal word), and esotericism overall.

Part of my job in the video games industry and tech is public sentiment analysis, and I think we can say that, judging by the conversations here on the forum, the very intelligent and well-educated comments.

As Gen-X, I remember when only a handful of people cared about this stuff. I had to figure things out pretty much by myself. Then there was the dark times from about 2005 to 2025 after enough folks had figured out just enough to begin writing books of beginner material. But once something is published it traps everyone in that time.

But also juding from the types and kinds of books that consistently get boosted to the top of the Book Shares here of WF, I don't think I'm being too optimistic to say the future is bright.

Consider this.

I very much encourage people spend some time seeing what types of books get consistently boosted to the top. Do it NOW or SOON before it gets manipuated by grifters trying to extend the lifespan their garbage.

Take a look and notice all the garbage that is just... missing. Pretty much gone.

In place of neopagan witch-slop, you have Conjure, Brujeríia, Hoodoo, and what I think of as Witchcraft v2.0.

In place of Kenneth Grant hysteria and Dark Fluff talk about the "Dark Light of Satan's Abyssal Testicles," you have measured grimoire tradition authors.

In place of culty MK-Ultra-ish invasiveness concern-trolling with what is going on in your own head to scan for "wrong-think," or "egregores" you have Chaos Magic and Goddardian New Thought.

And we have simplified conjuring methods which I hear are effective for some folk, and I welcome as part of the folk magic side of the grimoire tradition.

These are all very positive developments. But even all the stupid, harmful low-information bad ideas all probably started out 20 to 80 years ago as a way to get former normies to "believe," but then became a straitjacket and were made into progressively stupider and stupider religions and "traditions." But they appear to be dead or dying.

While I do miss the more experimental forums. We will not know if people are putting to use what they have been studying until they report back in. And i see some exellent experimentation going on.

And the hour is young, and I expect very, very good things from the young folks. You guys honestly make me far more optimistic that i was evenjust a few years ago! Seriously!

Strangely enough your response here gives me a good bit of insight to these forums as I'm new here. I just don't expec as much from forums as the OP would have liked to see because I came from circles where everything was taught by a mentor.. we pretty much took on whatever the mentors philosophies and ideas were at first..a nd then coming into contact with other people within my circle/coven and other covens in our network, you took on new ideas.. I'm not embarrassed to say but I honestly have not read many books on magick for this reason.. I do nowadays read some but I don't regret diving head first into the deep end when I first started as learning directly from people and being super hands on brought me alot of solace and confidence later in my practices.. I was at least happy to be apart of a network wehre they took on ideas from many different philosophies rather than just one system of magick.

At the end of the day, forums attract alot of beginners and people who might have simple questions rather than be ready for deeper philosophical discussions such as the OP might be looking for. I'm sure there are deeper insights and discussions here but I'm sure thats probably a fraction of the overall posts.

 

[Zelator2148]

I walked away from the performance of ceremonial magic in the '80s (I was never any great shakes of a magician anyway) to devote myself entirely to the study and practice of esoteric divination. Before that I had been pouring most of my occult inspiration into my artwork, and afterward I eventually wound up in what I call "action-and-event-oriented" prediction (aka fortune-telling with a psycho-spiritual twist). At that time I distanced myself even further from the New Age Jungian theorists who seem to be experiencing a revival in the social-media boom. I'm afraid I snipe at them a lot in my blog because so much of it is lightweight gibberish. I have a lot to say in my blog essays about the occult philosophy behind what I do, and I offer it gratis to anyone who finds their way there. But I don't share it here because I don't want to retype or copy-and-paste everything.

 

[solxyz]

Years ago, there was a forum where people signed on to a short-term experiment and just did the Headless Rite for a month, and then reported back in to compare ritual notes. With no pre-programming from anyone's personal framework of what they would experience, aside from existing esoteric literature. More of that please.

Yes indeed! More of that please.

For a while now I have had a dream of a having a group of fellow practitioners that would spend several months at a time successively working its way through the curricula of a number of different occult systems and then comparing notes on their relative strengths and the different kinds of occult experiences and perspectives that each one induces. I started to launch this in the form of a podcast co-hosted with one other guy I met online, with the idea that the podcast would galvanize a somewhat wider community which could then communicate and collaborate through a discord channel or the like. We recorded a couple of episodes, but lost steam when facing the challenges involved in producing a collaborative podcast like that. I still like the idea though, so if anyone reading this is highly motivated to create this with me, get in touch.

Of course for a context like this it would be much more feasible to do focus on individual stand-alone practices. Maybe we could brainstorm a list of such practices and think more about how to structure this.

 

[ahathoor]

I guess my point was, if that is the kind of work and discussion you want to see, you have to create appropriate space for it. You need a consecrated space for consecrated work. It's the whole purpose of initiatory orders.

One can say we want the same dynamics and ways of working that we had when we were kids, but public online spaces aren't the same thing as they were back then.

 

[Soror Epihania]

Yes indeed! More of that please.

For a while now I have had a dream of a having a group of fellow practitioners that would spend several months at a time successively working its way through the curricula of a number of different occult systems and then comparing notes on their relative strengths and the different kinds of occult experiences and perspectives that each one induces. I started to launch this in the form of a podcast co-hosted with one other guy I met online, with the idea that the podcast would galvanize a somewhat wider community which could then communicate and collaborate through a discord channel or the like. We recorded a couple of episodes, but lost steam when facing the challenges involved in producing a collaborative podcast like that. I still like the idea though, so if anyone reading this is highly motivated to create this with me, get in touch.

Of course for a context like this it would be much more feasible to do focus on individual stand-alone practices. Maybe we could brainstorm a list of such practices and think more about how to structure this.

That's a wonderful vision, I share the desire for a collective working group. I've made a couple attempts at partnerships and groups irl. In my experience it's hard finding people willing to commit to serious group work. Even getting a book club composed of working adults to meet weekly is a challenge.

What material did you try working together in this group?

 

[MorganBlack]

I have had a dream of a having a group of fellow practitioners that would spend several months at a time successively working its way through the curricula of a number of different occult systems

Love it!

I swear many of the local bodies of 1990s O.T.O. was this! Not the over-concern with Crowleyan interpretation of Liber AL, the real action was in the many side groups in the Order that worked sort of like specialist guilds. This was not always a easy relationship . You can see this now with B.J. Swain keeping of daimon in a container at William Blake Lodge and how this upsets some the higher degrees.

The real action was the friends you made along the way (heh) inside an informal 'working guild.' I was in a sort of Goetia Guild with a few of my brothers that was just pure experimentation, with or without the Thelemic god-names. I keep meaning to write up an easrly conjuration of Bune we did in the 1990's. That was very interesting.

Eventually, even the Order changed. Wiccans joined up - a bunch of women (not being sexist, just reporting) - who got tired of only having three degrees to status-climb, so they joined an org with eleven.

Most of all the stupid wheeze younger folks have to fight through now started back then - as the internet came online -attracing normies. Sameinthe order, just regularnormaies with a cutre pet interests and qwirks, who joined and would hyperventilate about the upper degrees as "master magicians" in worshipful tones. I had to explain that Masonic degree titles do not translate into being a sorcerer of respect and power.

Then the over-concern with formal degrees came in. I was at a very beginner degree, but none of the higher degrees, like a K.E.W. who was in our goetia -focused guild, treated me badly or lesser, and gave a a certain amount of clout and status. Street-cred beats paper degrees in a real fight.

It only got worse over the years with the internet esoteric-net kept spreading wider and wider . When people fight over the "real" traditions or get confused by unsupported truth claims of being a "real" tradition, everyone just tries to min-max their way through. Themost gain for the least benefit. Tey are always looking over their shoulder for the "real" teacher and never make any progress.

WF is a huge help here because it pretty much says, no fucking secrecy! And lays it all out and poke holes in all the windbags. With no filtering, sure, but one thing I learned in the Order I carry to this day: sink or swim. You just gotta do it.