is the modern occult community getting too soft?

[Kepler]

Right, but would you agree that you would cringe at WitchToks and at the same time WitchToks are pretty much what OP was talking about and you chose to die on a weird hill?

No, I wouldn't but you ran pretty far on your own imagining that I would.
But occultists demonstrating obvious mental health issues by strongly insisting that their imagined "other people" they're pointing at are the ones that have them do though.

The closest I may have come to Witchtok was when there was a discussion here about online witches organizing to do spells against individuals in their government that they considered were destroying their country.
The Book of Overthrowing Apophis seemed more suitable for any aligned with Ra/Maat as it would address the entire issue and reinforce the country in their interests. Rather than only addressing individuals acting as extensions of Apophis. They didn't seem soft to me, only unaware about scaling to address the issue.

You know... I was born an occultist, and the first thing I did was peel my face off. If you look at Harry Potter, he also has a scar. The difference is, he got his from another hand. But I see some similarities, like being a softy in the beginning and later becoming a tough Harry. So I think what you mean by the occult becoming “softer” is that the occult isn’t really the occult anymore, and it’s becoming “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”

 

[solxyz]

Hmmm. Maybe? It has been softened to try appeal to the widest audience... everyone. And with that comes more people with severe mental illness.

Certainly a lot of people come to the occult trying in part to address what are often called 'mental health' challenges. I'm a little dubious that the broadening appeal of the occult is causing the scene to catch more such people. On the contrary, I would figure that those who are most driven to seek out exotic spiritual knowledge are, on average, the most in need. If the occult scene is seeing more mental unwellness these days, I think it is because humanity as a whole, at least in the western world, is facing greater struggles, as the materialist/modernist project makes the world increasingly inhospitable to human flourishing.

I also think 'mental health struggles' are a very legitimate motivation for interest in the occult. It is reminiscent of the much romanticized "shamanic illness." In order to heal deep psychic wounds, one must learn to delve into and work with the deep psychic forces, thus - if the healing is actually accomplished instead of just massively armored over and bypassed - becoming one who is henceforth in touch with those realms and able to work with them in a variety of ways.

I don't think that "mental health challenges" are just personal, intra-psychic phenomena. Certainly their manifestation in our psyche is where we most intimately experience and care about them, and where we must first address them, but they represent various forms of wounding that run through our culture, often representing deep metaphysical or structural error and wound/harm that is inherent to our social mode. That is to say, we live in a sick society. Those who experience this sickness most keenly and would become unsick are charged not just with remedial self-healing, but with finding a healthier root for their being, thus delving into metaphysical-type questions.

 

[MorganBlack]

I see where you're coming from regarding societal stress, but I think we’re looking at a structural issue specific to modern Anglo-American occultism rather than a universal rule about spirituality.

Western Anglo esotericism developed within hyper-individualistic, post-Industrial societies. In the English-speaking world practicing magic requires a choice to step outside the societal norm. Whereas in many indegenous, oral or non-Western cultures, what we call "esoteric" or spiritual practices are just integrated into daily community life and part of the culture. There is no "magic" there because it is all magic. These aren't isolated in counter-cultures, and people aren't turning to them out of individual mental distress.

Not to make it sound all terrible, but turning all of this into an IRL skill-tree called "magic" just seems to stress everyone out on top of everything else. My main issue with modern Anglo occultism is that it strips away community and replaces "grace" and "blessing" with technical skill. (Which has some merit in some contexts. )

But it mostly looks to me like just another high-stakes arena in a late-stage capitalist dystopia where you have to perform, acquire knowledge, and compete online, prove your worth, and be a 'winner.' Let's see. Now you have to seek total wisdom and enlightenment. become literally immortal in the flesh, or somehwo manage to ascend to Gnostic (Platonic) heaven past the Archons that are creeping around everywhere to trap you in matter - or be completely obliterated in a pagan Second Death. Of course people are freaked out and loopy ! It's not helping. It's just created an exhausting, high-pressure environment of maximum stakes. It recreates all the worst aspects of Protestantism: there is no love, only the work ethic, and a whole lot of aggro.

 

[Zelator2148]

I see where you're coming from regarding societal stress, but I think we’re looking at a structural issue specific to modern Anglo-American occultism rather than a universal rule about spirituality.

Western Anglo esotericism developed within hyper-individualistic, post-Industrial societies. In the English-speaking world practicing magic requires a choice to step outside the societal norm. Whereas in many indegenous, oral or non-Western cultures, what we call "esoteric" or spiritual practices are just integrated into daily community life and part of the culture. There is no "magic" there because it is all magic. These aren't isolated in counter-cultures, and people aren't turning to them out of individual mental distress.

Not to make it sound all terrible, but turning all of this into an IRL skill-tree called "magic" just seems to stress everyone out on top of everything else. My main issue with modern Anglo occultism is that it strips away community and replaces "grace" and "blessing" with technical skill. (Which has some merit in some contexts. )

But it mostly looks to me like just another high-stakes arena in a late-stage capitalist dystopia where you have to perform, acquire knowledge, and compete online, prove your worth, and be a 'winner.' Let's see. Now you have to seek total wisdom and enlightenment. become literally immortal in the flesh, or somehwo manage to ascend to Gnostic (Platonic) heaven past the Archons that are creeping around everywhere to trap you in matter - or be completely obliterated in a pagan Second Death. Of course people are freaked out and loopy ! It's not helping. It's just created an exhausting, high-pressure environment of maximum stakes. It recreates all the worst aspects of Protestantism: there is no love, only the work ethic, and a whole lot of aggro.

I think I'm an outlier in this debate because I learned the ropes long before there was an internet and every occult scene was local where you attended meetings and talked to people one-on-one and face-to-face. I've almost always been a solitary practitioner since the few local groups that came along in the last 20 years were either stillborn due to lack of interest or soon splintered. So the only person I have to prove anything to is myself (which is hard enough). I don't count online communication because so much of it is idle chatter or metaphysical flexing.

 

[solxyz]

Western Anglo esotericism developed within hyper-individualistic, post-Industrial societies. In the English-speaking world practicing magic requires a choice to step outside the societal norm. ... Not to make it sound all terrible, but turning all of this into an IRL skill-tree called "magic" just seems to stress everyone out on top of everything else. My main issue with modern Anglo occultism is that it strips away community and replaces "grace" and "blessing" with technical skill. (Which has some merit in some contexts. )
But it mostly looks to me like just another high-stakes arena in a late-stage capitalist dystopia where you have to perform, acquire knowledge, and compete online, prove your worth, and be a 'winner.' Let's see. Now you have to seek total wisdom and enlightenment. become literally immortal in the flesh, or somehwo manage to ascend to Gnostic (Platonic) heaven past the Archons that are creeping around everywhere to trap you in matter - or be completely obliterated in a pagan Second Death.

I hear you on all of these concerns. I don't think any of these conditions are great. However, some of them are inherent in our material situation and wider cultural context, and thus inescapable, while others are issues that could be at least ameliorated by a different model of what engaging with the occult looks like.

I'd love it if we lived in a world where a deep sense of communion with one's society, an ever-present spirit realm, and a universal ground of being was a natural and normal part of life - a world where one could find well-being simply through trusting in the supportive, life-giving ways into which one was born. But the reality of the situation is that we are actually fragmented, stranded, and trained into single vision and denial of our own inner life. And sticking with any mainstream cultural program (to the extent that such a thing even exists anymore) offers little to repair that harm. It is thus inevitable that we are going to have to engage in some kind of "optional" individual seeking.

And because we have been trained out of the modes of perception and subtle awareness which an active spiritual life calls for, we are inevitably going to have to train and practice those skills. This doesn't mean that we all have to be bad-ass astral projectors or 10,000 kilowatt energy healers just to be mature and fulfilled spiritual beings, but even in traditional cultures there were specialists who focused on those kinds of skills, and those specialists did have to be good at it in order to fulfill their function. It seems rather natural that many of us who have had to consciously develop these skills would choose to keep going with it and develop more-than-baseline competence in these matters, just as there are in fact spiritual specialists in every culture, with people often pushing themselves to extremes in order to fulfill that role well.

That said, I am rather anti-Neoplatonic. I am opposed to both the notion that there is anything fundamentally wrong or deficient in normal, biological life (that our being needs to be overcome or transformed on any fundamental level) and to any kind of vertical hierarchy of being which one is supposed to ascend in order to achieve the truth. I think we would be much better served by a model which points us toward an ever-present wholeness of being which one is ever deepening in their ability to recognize, inhabit, and life forth. So I do think that the occult world would be a healthier happier place if this kind of model were more prevalent.

 

[L’chaimGoldberg]

Modern society is soft, to the point where people argue with one another over who’s more “oppressed” and who gets more “victim” points. I look at that sort of thing and remember growing up with communism where your number one concern was getting fed and not being murdered by the secret police.
We live in the most materially prosperous time in history and the most spiritually empty as well. Families in western countries have been under relentless assaults for over 70 years now and whole generations have grown up without both parents in the home. Our “food” and most of the “medicine” is pure poison. people are falling apart physically and spiritually and living in dystopian nightmares, it’s almost inevitable that people will be chaotic and disorganized and their lives will be a train wreck.

the other thing is that for every actual magical practitioner Ive met, there’s been literally dozens if not hundreds of clown ass posers. Ive met real sorcerers and never once has anyone of them talked about how much “power” they had or how enlightened they were, they were just doing their thing. In fact nearly all of them keep to themselves, even people in my village who are professional brujos don’t go around flaunting the fact.

We see this sort of fluffery in western countries that are, by every single measurable metric, gasping their last breaths as a civilization, we don’t see it in islamist countries where witchcraft is a capital crime and people are executed for magic.

we live during the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and just like Ancient Rome was a debauched Babylon full of soyboys, so our current epoch is one of decay and weakness and rot, sadly. It’s just a symptom-sign of the times, oy vey.

 

[ahathoor]

As they say, if you mudwrestle a pig, you will both get dirty - but the pig will enjoy it...

Still, this thread has given rise to some great discussion too. I'd be sad if things like @Rynnshng's posts on political / Anarchist magic hadn't happened, but I wonder if

 

[Rynnshng]

Tsk. I think the CIA got ahathoor mid-sentence.

 

[ahathoor]

i was taken to a room, given LSD while a man in a suit was reading a script to me in a monotone voice...

sorry, the part missing was I wonder if the meaningful discussions could warrant their own threads without the less noble parts of this one

 

[Kepler]

Modern society is soft, to the point where people argue with one another over who’s more “oppressed” and who gets more “victim” points.

Where you're from sounds terrible.

I look at that sort of thing and remember growing up with communism where your number one concern was getting fed and not being murdered by the secret police.

Are those your "oppressed" and "victim" points to compare with others?

We live in the most materially prosperous time in history and the most spiritually empty as well.

Spiritually empty for you and your people perhaps, not everyone is that way. Materially prosperous but all food and most medicine is poison?
Except for what food/meds you or whatever your authority might approves of? They don't approve of psyche meds do they? That's poison the voices say to you?

Families in western countries have been under relentless assaults for over 70 years now and whole generations have grown up without both parents in the home. Our “food” and most of the “medicine” is pure poison. people are falling apart physically and spiritually and living in dystopian nightmares, it’s almost inevitable that people will be chaotic and disorganized and their lives will be a train wreck.

What happened 70 years ago that triggered you to believing this?

the other thing is that for every actual magical practitioner Ive met, there’s been literally dozens if not hundreds of clown ass posers.

Yeah, I get the impression you've seen one in the mirror.

Ive met real sorcerers

Sure you have.

and never once has anyone of them talked about how much “power” they had or how enlightened they were, they were just doing their thing. In fact nearly all of them keep to themselves, even people in my village who are professional brujos don’t go around flaunting the fact.

that sounds real.

We see this sort of fluffery in western countries that are, by every single measurable metric, gasping their last breaths as a civilization, we don’t see it in islamist countries where witchcraft is a capital crime and people are executed for magic.

every single metric eh...wow you're so smort

we live during the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and just like Ancient Rome was a debauched Babylon full of soyboys, so our current epoch is one of decay and weakness and rot, sadly. It’s just a symptom-sign of the times, oy vey.

The Roman Empire is falling because the soyboys. You symptoms are a sign of the times.

Post automatically merged: Today at 9:16 AM

This experiment of being stricter with the softies is producing good results.

 

[Lu_CiD]

Honest question for the older folks here because something has been bothering me lately.

it feels like the definition of being awakened or spiritually aware has completely changed over the last few years. everywhere i look people are talking about high vibrations, ascending, and living in pure light. but when you actually talk to them their physical lives are a mess. they cannot hold down a normal job, they are terrified of leaving the house because they feel negative energy everywhere, and they cry if someone looks at them the wrong way at the grocery store. that is not an awakening. that is just a nervous system breakdown wrapped in fancy words.

where i come from we were taught the exact opposite. if your magic makes you weaker in the physical world you are doing it wrong. period. if you cannot handle a stressful conversation at work without panicking about bad vibes then your energy work is just a coping mechanism for unhealed trauma. if you cannot walk into a crowded room without feeling completely drained your wards are useless. true power is supposed to make you boring. it makes you grounded. it makes you quiet because you no longer react to every little thing.

but maybe i am just stuck in an old school mindset that does not apply anymore maybe the goal really is just to float around and feel good all day.

what do you guys think? am i being too harsh or has the spiritual community completely lost its teeth? how do you balance the unseen work with functioning like a normal adult in the real world?

this sounds like a fringe of the "new age" community in my experience ppl that act like that do so to get attention more than anything else. however it should in no way be used as an excuse to view in entire group that way. if anything its an overcorrection from being forced to bottle up things or never talk about an issue ever really. I know a cpl ppl that have been that way but allot of ppl fond their balance.
however there are ppl that do suffer from real conditions and imo the isolation of lockdown has made some.of the issue ppl have much worse I know we are far away from that but it happend during allot of ppls formative years as well.

 

[Kepler]

This experiment of being stricter with the softies is producing good results.

Oh, but maybe they meant those "other" softies they were referring to. Nah, they wouldn't suggest something they themselves wouldn't want to undergo in the same circumstances. That'd be weak.

 

[Rynnshng]

Which parts are they.

 

[Eris'AppleWorm.]

Depends on what you want out of occultism, if you want a bunch of guys in robes standing in a circle yelling about how hard they are I'd imagine its pretty soft. If you accept that most occultists are just people trying to understand the world and themselves then it feels about right.

 

[Zelator2148]

Modern society is soft, to the point where people argue with one another over who’s more “oppressed” and who gets more “victim” points. I look at that sort of thing and remember growing up with communism where your number one concern was getting fed and not being murdered by the secret police.
We live in the most materially prosperous time in history and the most spiritually empty as well. Families in western countries have been under relentless assaults for over 70 years now and whole generations have grown up without both parents in the home. Our “food” and most of the “medicine” is pure poison. people are falling apart physically and spiritually and living in dystopian nightmares, it’s almost inevitable that people will be chaotic and disorganized and their lives will be a train wreck.

the other thing is that for every actual magical practitioner Ive met, there’s been literally dozens if not hundreds of clown ass posers. Ive met real sorcerers and never once has anyone of them talked about how much “power” they had or how enlightened they were, they were just doing their thing. In fact nearly all of them keep to themselves, even people in my village who are professional brujos don’t go around flaunting the fact.

We see this sort of fluffery in western countries that are, by every single measurable metric, gasping their last breaths as a civilization, we don’t see it in islamist countries where witchcraft is a capital crime and people are executed for magic.

we live during the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and just like Ancient Rome was a debauched Babylon full of soyboys, so our current epoch is one of decay and weakness and rot, sadly. It’s just a symptom-sign of the times, oy vey.

Yup, we are bracing for the descent into "Idiocracy" (a movie well worth watching). I used this debate as the springboard for an expanded blog post on the subject.

 

[Pneuma_Purifier]

"it feels like the definition of being awakened or spiritually aware has completely changed over the last few years. everywhere i look people are talking about high vibrations, ascending, and living in pure light. but when you actually talk to them their physical lives are a mess. they cannot hold down a normal job, they are terrified of leaving the house because they feel negative energy everywhere, and they cry if someone looks at them the wrong way at the grocery store. that is not an awakening. that is just a nervous system breakdown wrapped in fancy words."

"i am not trying to control anyone's behavior. i am just pointing out that if your magic makes you too weak to walk into a grocery store without panicking, the work is failing you. you can call it a strawman if it makes the reality easier to swallow, but the fragility is still there."

"human vice has always existed in occult circles but there is a difference between a severe mage having a messy relationship with alcohol and a beginner using crystals as a shield to hide from the responsibilities of being an adult. one is a flawed human doing serious work, the other is a child playing dress up in the astral plane. glad to see i am not the only one noticing this pattern."

"my critique is aimed at the modern trend where the struggle is romanticized into a spiritual identity. there is a difference between a medieval mage doing planetary rituals to relieve depression so he can keep working his farm, and a modern practitioner using tarot as an excuse to never leave their apartment because the world is too loud. one uses magic as a tool to survive reality. the other uses magic to escape it entirely."

What you’re describing isn’t being awakened or spiritually aware and it isn’t a failure of magic. It’s the predictable collapse that happens when someone’s inner structures dissolve faster than they can rebuild them.

The Castilian mystics call it the dark night of the soul. It’s a phase where the floor drops out, values invert, and the person temporarily loses all orientation. It looks like panic, exhaustion, or hypersensitivity because the psyche is shedding old patterns that can’t survive the next stage of development.

The problem isn’t that these people are fragile. The problem is that they’ve hit the part of the path where everything dies before anything new is born. It’s an initiatory crisis, not a lifestyle. And while it can be mistaken for a nervous system breakdown, it’s caused by the internal dismantling that precedes real transformation.

The old self is collapsing, and the new one hasn’t formed yet. It’s agonizing, but it’s also necessary. And there is always a way through it.

 

[Accipeveldare]

Honest question for the older folks here because something has been bothering me lately.

it feels like the definition of being awakened or spiritually aware has completely changed over the last few years. everywhere i look people are talking about high vibrations, ascending, and living in pure light. but when you actually talk to them their physical lives are a mess. they cannot hold down a normal job, they are terrified of leaving the house because they feel negative energy everywhere, and they cry if someone looks at them the wrong way at the grocery store. that is not an awakening. that is just a nervous system breakdown wrapped in fancy words.

where i come from we were taught the exact opposite. if your magic makes you weaker in the physical world you are doing it wrong. period. if you cannot handle a stressful conversation at work without panicking about bad vibes then your energy work is just a coping mechanism for unhealed trauma. if you cannot walk into a crowded room without feeling completely drained your wards are useless. true power is supposed to make you boring. it makes you grounded. it makes you quiet because you no longer react to every little thing.

but maybe i am just stuck in an old school mindset that does not apply anymore maybe the goal really is just to float around and feel good all day.

what do you guys think? am i being too harsh or has the spiritual community completely lost its teeth? how do you balance the unseen work with functioning like a normal adult in the real world?

I think it is that the definition has not changed. It is just people who are not truly awakened doing what they have been since forever. People want to look like they are awakened, most dont actually want to do the work to become awakened. Therefore, they put on a costume and pretend that they have already done the work. This is to the absolute sorrow or even amusement of those that are, truly awakened. So it isnt that the definition has changed. The definition is the exact same for those that actually do the work, but those that dont will mold it into whatever they want to hear, as always.

 

[Swampdweller900]

I think a lot of people are sort of hitting around a few relevant points here. @Ombriel 's post does, in my opinion, share some parallels with Western Society in general. Maybe not quite to the extent that @L'chaimGoldberg feels, but I can see where they're coming from in terms of sentiment. It's sort of that adage "strong times make strong people, strong people make good times, good times make soft people, soft people make bad times,"

In terms of "love&light" new agers and mental health, the occult isn't by any means the only magnet for that. Large corporations, governments, celebrities, etc. all pull their fair share of people with mental health issues. Posers, and the perfectly termed Clown-ass posers, are also everywhere, in every aspect of society. Not just the occult. How many people went to a drum circle once and start calling themselves a shaman? Thousands, probably. Maybe tens of thousands. Zero percent of which are real shamans.The occult has no standards, no governing body, no hard rules. Even evidence of someone being an occultist is hard to really pin down. So it's also a zero-barriers place to "be fringe" and just be an angsty teen without needing to really do much other than talk one's self up. Certainly doesn't help us that really practice.

And to Ombriel's point, both within the occult and outside of it, how many people "just can't even" lately? Sure, the internet isn't a place for extroverts to get proper representation. And as much as I'm an introvert some days, it seems like lots of people have trained themselves to simply be agoraphobic or something, and need perfect homeostasis and chicken tendies in order to survive.

 

[MorganBlack]

That said, I am rather anti-Neoplatonic. I am opposed to both the notion that there is anything fundamentally wrong or deficient in normal, biological life (that our being needs to be overcome or transformed on any fundamental level) and to any kind of vertical hierarchy of being which one is supposed to ascend in order to achieve the truth.

Damn! Brilliantly said and totally agreed, Solxyz.

And for all the folks here demanding the 'right to fight '- to be "hard" - no worries - and not saying you need to lean back, go soft, and be dissolved into White Light of love and harmony. All good. Not taking that away here. Fight on!

Also making a note here that Anglo-Occultism "magic" communities are hostile and aggressive in character. (And there is a place for that. All things in their season, and all). But I've also noticed in Goddardian / New Thought communities, there is none of this spirit of dog-eat-dog competition. The striving and fighting itself creates distance from your wish, in their view. Sorcery can powered with 'negative 'emotions just fine. If you want. No need to become a saint first - but there are issues, you will find.

I agree Neoplatonism needs modulation for a more non-dual expression. Iamblichus does this well, in my view, and we magicians are more aligned with him. Sorcerers weaponize non-duality for our dualist desires.

Speaking personally, my inner sense and personal mystical visions align pretty much with what Patrick Harpur writes about in his book, The Secret Tradition of the Soul. Highly recommend for better information about these "mysteries. " They're the most fraught and squabble-generating. I will keep metioning him for all these reasons and why he helps reconcile dualism and non-dualism via the Daimonc middle bridge (again see Iamblichus).

Book – EPUB/MOBI - Patrick Harpur - The Secret Tradition of the Soul (2011)

Patrick Harpur's 'The Secret Tradition of the Soul' is a book I feel it should be read by all occultists, and magicians, including neopagans, and anyone who works in Mythic Space. This book ideally should be read along with Harpur's book 'Daimonic Reality,' and Karen Armstrong's excellent 'A...

wizardforums.com

Speaking personally some more. I am a pantheist (non-dual), but I mostly "work" in a Folk Catholic mythic framework, which is widely seen as dualist, which I'd like to challenge a little here. To any Anti-Catholics , I am not recruiting and very much support other mythic fameworks. I don't wish to alienate the anti-Catholic magicians or those with legitimate Jesus-trauma, so Kashmir Shaivism will have to do.

An argument can me made that the cosmological view of classical Catholicism, as articulated by Thomas Aquinas, is nearly identical to Kashmir Shaivism (cultural language aside). For Aquinas, whom I loathed for many years, God is not a being among other beings, but Ipsum Esse Subsistens - the ground of Being itself, and nothing exists outside of Being.

Kashmir Shaivism, a form of Hinduism, is the realization that the whole universe, with all its beauty, pain, and material world, is not an illusion, but a dancing expression of consciousness itself. God is not a distant being in the sky, but the infinite liveliness experiencing itself through your own eyes, thoughts, and feelings. Human limitation in duality is a playful game of the divine that that hides itself and forgets itself in the dance and density of matter. The Daimonic can help us remember or forget. It's up to you. It's meant to be fun, in game developer view of why we are even here.

A non-dual vision is the goal, but we start as hyper-individualists in a dualist cosmology. I certainly did when young and much more "Luciferian / Satanic" for lack of a better word. We can use the various myths, and they should be treated as metaphors - except when we are in ritual, ceremony, and observation, where we must take them very literally. If you can’t get behind your practice and take it seriously, it won't 'stick' and become a form of theurgy so you can see the "Big Picture.

Some people just come here seeing the big picture from birth... and we.... kill those people.

(From the late great mystic, Texan, and commedian Bill Hicks.)

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[L’chaimGoldberg]

i was taken to a room, given LSD while a man in a suit was reading a script to me in a monotone voice...

sorry, the part missing was I wonder if the meaningful discussions could warrant their own threads without the less noble parts of this one

Yup, we are bracing for the descent into "Idiocracy" (a movie well worth watching). I used this debate as the springboard for an expanded blog post on the subject.

I remember seeing that movie when it first came out and thinking, that’s not the future, that’s NOW! in 2026 it looks like a nostalgic movie about a better time, like watching andy griffith. Anyone who looks at the drooling child sniffer and the current clown in chief and doesn’t see President Mountain Dew is part of the movie.

Post automatically merged: Today at 3:35 PM

I think a lot of people are sort of hitting around a few relevant points here. @Ombriel 's post does, in my opinion, share some parallels with Western Society in general. Maybe not quite to the extent that @L'chaimGoldberg feels, but I can see where they're coming from in terms of sentiment. It's sort of that adage "strong times make strong people, strong people make good times, good times make soft people, soft people make bad times,"

In terms of "love&light" new agers and mental health, the occult isn't by any means the only magnet for that. Large corporations, governments, celebrities, etc. all pull their fair share of people with mental health issues. Posers, and the perfectly termed Clown-ass posers, are also everywhere, in every aspect of society. Not just the occult. How many people went to a drum circle once and start calling themselves a shaman? Thousands, probably. Maybe tens of thousands. Zero percent of which are real shamans.The occult has no standards, no governing body, no hard rules. Even evidence of someone being an occultist is hard to really pin down. So it's also a zero-barriers place to "be fringe" and just be an angsty teen without needing to really do much other than talk one's self up. Certainly doesn't help us that really practice.

And to Ombriel's point, both within the occult and outside of it, how many people "just can't even" lately? Sure, the internet isn't a place for extroverts to get proper representation. And as much as I'm an introvert some days, it seems like lots of people have trained themselves to simply be agoraphobic or something, and need perfect homeostasis and chicken tendies in order to survive.

This really sums it up