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Pragmatic occult theory?

oregano

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I'm wondering if there's anything like a book or series of books that delineates an "occult theory", but not one that is claiming any kind of objective, physical, nor metaphysical truth.

Rather, a theory that comes from a vast set of experiences in many different occult traditions and practices from around the world, and is motivated to draw parallels between them and describe a set of general principles that most if not all systems have.

This would equip a student with a practical working model that would enable critical thought about how to approach novel problems with an occult lens.

Not a philosophy, a praxeology informed by many worldwide historical practices. Can you think of anything like that?
 

Robert Ramsay

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I've written one, but you'll hate it.
 

oregano

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I have something that is working for me that seems similar to what you are describing. BOTA Is an occult school that offers lessons either by download or through the mail. One lesson a week, and yes there is a cost involved. I have been doing it for 2 1/2 years and some weeks the pace seems agonizingly slow. Other weeks it seems like no matter how hard I try I will not master this weeks‘ lesson in only seven days. It focuses on building magical skills at a slow and methodical pace. The slow pace is designed to help prevent the magician from getting into trouble by using skills that are only half-baked and summoning something they can’t control. If you are looking for a system that produces specific results in a short period of time this is probably not the system for you.
 

luotenrati

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Chaos magick is extremely practically oriented. I believe it is very much in line with what you are looking for.

For something even more pragmatic, there is psychonetics, a Russian method for creating operational phenomologies directed to specific tasks. It was developed with an eye towards military usage, so that soldiers could deal more efficiently with extreme situations. Recent research has shown that with those techniques, a soldier can maneuver a drone with his mind, while receiving instructions, and preparing a meal at the same time. They are working towards them maneuvering several drones at once, as the idea of holistic objects allows one to manage multiple ideas at the same time.

The main idea is that you create local mental environments (LME) in which perception is different from everyday reality. The basis for creating such is deconcentration, where one engages with the entire field of perception all at once, allowing one to deal with more information than would be possible otherwise. LMEs are usually built out of concentration, deconcentration, and a sensory modality. By employing the method of convolution-deployment, they are able to condense an idea into its subrepresentational state, what is called a 'pure concept' (convolution). Those pure concepts can then once again be represented within a given modality (deployment). In this manner, you can take the concept of a chair, convolute it into a pure concept, and deploy it again as a color or a sound (gestaltization). Those deployed concepts can then be placed inside local volumes of attention (LVA) which is a sphere of attention, created by concentration within a deconcentrated space. The combination of such LVAs and the space surrounding it is called a holistic object. There are many such things one can do with holistic objects, such as creating organismic holistic objects out of them, by imbuing them with the pure concept of personal will.

In my opinion, this is the most pragmatic practice there is. It is completely non-denominational and does not make any metaphysical assumptions. Instead, it starts from direct experience and phenomenology, and develops its theories and methods from there. It does use philosophical theories, like the Leibnizean Monadology, Gestalt psychology or Buddhist phenomenology (someone called it 'pragmatic samatha' once and I think this description is adequate). It is a rigorous technology and every one of its statements can be experientially verified.

Combining it with chaos magick, especially sigils, would be extremely powerful in my opinion.
 

HoldAll

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There is a huge gap between useful books about actual magical practice and theoretical works, and I don't think anyone has ever achieved an acceptable synthesis that holds up to rigorous standards (but I could be wrong here). As regards theory, I only trust books written by anthropologists, historians, and scholars of religion. As soon as amateur 'occult philosophers' enter the picture, all is lost. More often than not, the result will be universalist garbage claiming that all magical practices around the world followed the same principles, repeatedly lapsing into scientism (e.g. misapplying the jargon of mainstream physics, poorly or completely misunderstood, while borrowing their prestige), cherrypicking doctrines from ancient civilizations to fit the authors' agenda, etc. Focussing too heavily on commonalities at the expense of differences has become a major intellectual crime in academic circles studying esotericism, and it was high time, too.

In my opinion, a good theoretical book on magic focusses on a single current or culture only, while a practical one deals with theory in the first few chapter. We don't need any more top-heavy tomes of 'occult philosophy' based on the apples = oranges = chalk = cheese formula.
 

oregano

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sorry - I just assumed that you would not be looking for a materialist explanation :)

So, ok, you might not hate it 😁
for me, part of letting go of dogma was returning to what one previously believed dogmatically and welcoming it again as yet another lens with which to view the Dao

when I read stuff like this in any belief system, i try to pay more attention to the structure being presented so that it does not matter what concrete metaphysical claim is being made, if any.

so no, I wouldn't hate it simply by virtue of it being materialist, I'd probably get a lot out of it. people often appear subconsciously disappointed when i don't immediately replace my mind's operating system with their particular favorite set of memetic associations though.
Post automatically merged:

Chaos magick is extremely practically oriented. I believe it is very much in line with what you are looking for.

For something even more pragmatic, there is psychonetics, a Russian method for creating operational phenomologies directed to specific tasks. It was developed with an eye towards military usage, so that soldiers could deal more efficiently with extreme situations. Recent research has shown that with those techniques, a soldier can maneuver a drone with his mind, while receiving instructions, and preparing a meal at the same time. They are working towards them maneuvering several drones at once, as the idea of holistic objects allows one to manage multiple ideas at the same time.

The main idea is that you create local mental environments (LME) in which perception is different from everyday reality. The basis for creating such is deconcentration, where one engages with the entire field of perception all at once, allowing one to deal with more information than would be possible otherwise. LMEs are usually built out of concentration, deconcentration, and a sensory modality. By employing the method of convolution-deployment, they are able to condense an idea into its subrepresentational state, what is called a 'pure concept' (convolution). Those pure concepts can then once again be represented within a given modality (deployment). In this manner, you can take the concept of a chair, convolute it into a pure concept, and deploy it again as a color or a sound (gestaltization). Those deployed concepts can then be placed inside local volumes of attention (LVA) which is a sphere of attention, created by concentration within a deconcentrated space. The combination of such LVAs and the space surrounding it is called a holistic object. There are many such things one can do with holistic objects, such as creating organismic holistic objects out of them, by imbuing them with the pure concept of personal will.

In my opinion, this is the most pragmatic practice there is. It is completely non-denominational and does not make any metaphysical assumptions. Instead, it starts from direct experience and phenomenology, and develops its theories and methods from there. It does use philosophical theories, like the Leibnizean Monadology, Gestalt psychology or Buddhist phenomenology (someone called it 'pragmatic samatha' once and I think this description is adequate). It is a rigorous technology and every one of its statements can be experientially verified.

Combining it with chaos magick, especially sigils, would be extremely powerful in my opinion.
this "psychonetics" sounds legitimately interesting

i'm definitely going to do some research on it, but if you have any resources you know that you can point me in the direction of that'd be chill
 

Frater M.M.

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Chaos magick is extremely practically oriented. I believe it is very much in line with what you are looking for.

Yeah, the first thing that sprang to my mind was this. People like Chapman, Fries, Hine, Frater U.D., etc.

For something even more pragmatic, there is psychonetics,

This sounds fascinating. Never heard of this before.

As soon as amateur 'occult philosophers' enter the picture, all is lost. More often than not, the result will be universalist garbage claiming that all magical practices around the world followed the same principles, repeatedly lapsing into scientism (e.g. misapplying the jargon of mainstream physics, poorly or completely misunderstood, while borrowing their prestige), cherrypicking doctrines from ancient civilizations to fit the authors' agenda, etc. Focussing too heavily on commonalities at the expense of differences has become a major intellectual crime in academic circles studying esotericism, and it was high time, too.

Yeah, the other thing I thought of was looking at books within a particular area that try to extract common techniques. For example, Harner and his idea of core shamanism. Of course, with approaches like that you immediately run into some of the problems HoldAll raises about flattening differences in order to find the commonalities.
 
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