Great book! I got tons out of it around age 19, which is just about the right time. After that, you sort of have to "make things your own" and go deep - which I encourage everyone to do with their own stuff, hopefully without going either full narcissist nor full nihilist, which I think are both dangers.
Regarding dogma. I say run with whatever you're smoking. Just come out of it occasionally to talk with the rest of us, and be sure not to run all the stop signs.
Re: the dysregulation. I’m not trying to be too mean here. That was directed at the Europeans who did not grow up with this stuff and might look at it through rose-tinted glasses. I know to those in more traditional, conservative countries, American-style paganism sounds super great, the "do whatever" and "free love."
And I’d say those folks could probably benefit from some of the Southern California (1930s to 1990s) arts culture where all that super loopy material comes from and was drip fed into the global over-culture : sci-fi, comics, the space program, and pulp fiction men's adventure stories. Think of Ray Bradbury, who was friends with Jack Parsons. There is a neat stuff there, but there are also negatives. But it will localize differently for you all in other cultures.
For a snapshot of 1960's to 2025 (very 'Neptune in Pisces' , with two main cycles, the last one which is now ending) Boomer Occultism, see Peter Grey's excellent unpacking of a key thread that run through that mess:
Taking the Abyss trip
Grady McMurtry’s Caliphornia dreaming
