The Occult
Regarded by some as ‘The work of the Devil’, ‘The source of pure evil’, and feared by many, The Occult is a collection of writings, rituals and beliefs kept hidden throughout the centuries. The teachings of the ancient mystery schools, once reserved exclusively for selected students, carefully guarded by them, (spilling the beans was punishable with death at one time), are all now available online. You will find books on witchcraft, wizardry, magic, telepathy, and everything from astrology to alchemy. If you’ve ever wanted to see what the craic is and ‘Dabble in the Occult’, now is your chance.
I was recently doing some research for a novel I am planning to write, involving the occult, and I came across a website with a library consisting of thousands of texts on the subject, most of which are available in pdf form for free download. You can find this extensive occult library here.
Modern occultism was made popular by a man named Allister Crowley. Born in 1875 and deemed by last centuries media as ‘the wickedest man in the world’, he was an impulsive man, known for leading a life of debauchery and sin. He publically proclaimed his love of sex in various explicit poems he published abroad, to avoid being prosecuted for profanity. He was a magician, who joined ‘The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’, which is an organisation dedicated to the study of the occult. Other high profile members included those such as WB Yeats.
He popularised black magic, writing books dictated to him by voices he heard in his head. He allegedly sacrificed animals and even people in his rituals, rebelling against a religious up-bringing with his occult practises. There are a few documentaries about him here on You Tube. While he sounds like a very evil kind of man, these documentaries were an interesting watch for me while in hospital recovering from an episode of psychosis. I was in a suggestible mind state then and believed in magic, making the stories of this Crowley fellow intriguing.
During the middle ages, the Catholic church destroyed any and all occult manuscripts they were able to find, burning the books along with the people caught with them. They torched anyone who mentioned an opposition to God, occultists and schizophrenics alike, at the stake in a horrific instance of mass murder across Europe, now called the inquisition. Victims were often accused of being ‘heretics’, meaning they opposed Gods will, and were tortured for months until they confessed to their crimes. Voice hearers and vision seers were accused of demonic possession and left to rot in a cell for long periods of time until they were eventually forced to confess, admitting demonic possession before being publically executed by the church.
During the missions by the church throughout history, the beliefs and rituals of pagan tribes such as the Celts were suppressed and destroyed. Whatever survived now resides in occult libraries, giving us a glimpse into what was lost to us. Different festivals of our ancestors were adapted by the church, and turned into Easter and Christmas, a practise as old as the hills. Jesus Christ himself was endowed with aspects of his story which came from numerous prophets and religious figures before him such as the virgin birth, 12 apostles and resurrection. For more on this, check out the movie Zeitgeist here.
The occult is basically the study of the supernatural. Most of us believe the supernatural is just a fairy tale, that doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny. Many self-proclaimed psychics and clairvoyants have been found to be charlatans and fakes, namely Uri Gellar, a magician who claimed he could bend spoons but was caught out when an interviewer switched his ‘special’ spoons with regular ones, which he couldn’t bend.
Yet many religious people still regard the occult with fear, I have heard stories of houses supposedly burning down after a Ouija board was used, of people dabbling in the occult only to be set upon by demonic entities and possessed, speaking in tongues and needing an exorcism. I have listened to lectures by priests warning of the dangers of the occult practises of Reiki and Fortune Telling, of the evil of Tarot cards and ‘energy stones’, and it all seems ridiculous to me.
One reason religious people may believe in the power of the occult is the unexplained apparitions of the Virgin Mary in various places across the globe such as Knock, Fatima and Lourdes, and the ‘miraculous’ cures observed in these places. They could be explained as mass hallucinations, and the cures of different diseases could, in theory, be the psychosomatic power of faith, the same principle is seen in the use of ‘placebos’ in medicine. They work because the person taking them believes they are the cure, and this can sometimes actually cure the illness. Miracles can happen because the sick person believes it will cure them with such faith that it does. There are different instances of statues of the virgin Mary crying human tears and blood though, and while there must be an explanation for it out there, it probably causes religious people to lean towards a belief in the supernatural.
During my last admission to hospital, a fellow patient told me of a book he was reading, filled with stories of Freemasons and magic, of mystery schools and astral projection, teleportation, Jinn and lost knowledge of the ancients. I was intrigued, as at the time I had been hearing voices and seeing visions of a different world, and I was open to anything out of the norm. I promptly went and bought ‘The Secret History of the World’ by Johnathan Black on my next day pass into town with my Mum. I read it, furiously making notes in the pages, enthralled with the stories of supernatural knowledge, allegedly suppressed by the powers that be. Then someone in the hospital stole the book. I didn’t care, I bought another one the next day, and proceeded to take notes again.
I studied that book in depth and my imagination was given a fresh dose of amazement with each revelation I came across. I truly believed in magic by the end of it. It lead me to read the gnostic gospels which had been forbidden by the church and left out of the bible. I was really into the occult, that patient who told me of the book describing how a priest had taken all of his occult literature and burnt it, and performed an exorcism on him, drove me on to find out what I wasn’t supposed to know. A few months later the medication had done its job and I had come around to the real world, and I quickly forgot about the occult and the forbidden knowledge I had been chasing. But to this day, that book still conjures up images of mystical states and arcane schools of thought in my imagination.
One thing that still stands out to me is thaumaturgy, or the art of ‘divine magic’, allegedly studied by saints and prophets throughout the ages, leading to the ability to perform miracles and levitate. It is an enchanting thought that one could learn this art and therefore perform miracles. I imagine this arcane knowledge sitting in the vaults of the Vatican’s libraries, hidden from the populous but studied by those in the know, bestowing superhuman abilities upon them. Great content for a story.
Another aspect of the occult which sparked my interest was tales of remote viewers being enlisted by the CIA during the cold war, allegedly discovering Russian facilities with accuracy. Apparently, to remote view all you have to do is use your imagination. You just think of a place and time, and whatever you imagine happening is true, it actually happened. This is also true of the future according to some psychics. Perhaps they are just imagining things, or else all humans have an innate ability to remote view. If you have nothing to do it can pass the time to test it out.
Extra-sensory perception, clairvoyance and telepathy is something I once believed in. I was hearing voices and I thought they had to be coming from somewhere, little did I know they were coming from myself. But the thing that gets me is that I believed I was hearing telepathic people, and this belief was so unacceptable to society that I was forcefully hospitalised for it. Many psychics believe this exact thing, and it seems like tyranny to be locked up for a certain belief.
I have experienced things while psychotic that appeared to predict the future. I would hear a voice or see a vision which would describe something I would later see that day. It’s hard to explain unless you have experienced it yourself, but it is one reason I delved into the occult, in an attempt to understand the phenomenon. It is truly freaky, and it has stuck with me, how it happened, keeping me interested in the subject to this day.
There is a theory that these visions and mystical experiences and powers are real, and come from our third eye chakra, or our pineal gland in our brain. Theoretically, this gland produces dimethyltryptamine or DMT, causing one to see visions and enter mystical states. DMT is one of the most potent hallucinogens in the world and has been used by Amazonian tribes since history began up until the present day, to enter into mystical states and commune with the spirits, when brewed up into a broth using different plant materials found in the jungle. Combined, these plants form Ayahuasca, with the active ingredient being DMT.
This compound is also thought to be produced by the human brain naturally, causing us to dream and see visions of heaven during death. The topic is explored in depth in the book DMT: The Spirit Molecule by Rick Strassman, which you can find here.
I have only touched on some aspects of the occult in this article, there are many more to explore if you wanted to. While it may be just an archaic relic of the past, its teachings of ESP and magic holding no basis in fact, it is still an interesting topic to research, showing us the beliefs of our ancestors. For some, it is alternative to mainstream religion, if people believe in God, and the Devil, why shouldn’t others have the right to believe in Magic and Telepathy?