Whoa! Where am I going?
I’m actually working overtime to be open minded! The three words in the title of this post still give me a mental flinch which is exactly why I must take them head on and get to know what they are actually about, not what mainstream society has told me they are about.
If you are starting to feel your blood boil it is probably because you are: a) very religious or b) very unreligious. But hold up and remember – aggression comes from fear so take a bit of time to identify that fear.
Are you afraid that, by exploring too widely, you will lose your religion and without it you will feel vulnerable. Perhaps you feel that others reading this will lose their religion and, in the extreme, that will leave you alone.
Just consider that before racing down the comments section because you feel the need to tell people about your religion.
I know deep down that there is nothing evil in these things, nothing negative. But hundreds of years of Christianity in Western societies has managed to build them into our language in a very derogatory fashion.
An unpopular woman is called a witch. Children’s books tell us spells are for doing great harm. Paganism is associated with backwardness. All untrue but hard to shift in the mind.
I come from the same view point as James Randy – most, perhaps all, of it is just in the mind. This is exactly as I see all religions – they are a crutch or a framework within which people can cope with life.
A film documenting how Randy uncovers many fakes makes for interesting viewing but one of the key moments in the film comes at 21:30 where he is challenged by a high school student.
The student make the point that he has not proved these things do not exist, just that they can be faked. Randy is very clear that this is not his mission. He is simply trying to show how easy it is for us to be conned.
People like Randy are often attacked. They are unpopular people because they are taking something away and not offering a replacement. Aggression is fear.
Randy isn’t beyond the search for spirituality, even though many understand him as that. At 52:50 he says “Its a good world, not perfect, but its ours so we’d better learn to live with it the way it is.”
This is very much in line with Eastern teachings. Change your perception of the world and it becomes a much better place.
So with that in mind the following two videos give an extremely good insight into the history of the occult:
I see it as vital to understand where something came from before trying to understand it and get your head around whether or not it can assist you.
If you watch these films you will understand how the occult was suppressed thousands of years ago and why and how it is coming back into fashion.
Its fascinating to see as well how the concept of gravity was once considered by its discoverer to be something that could have been interpreted as Witchcraft. An invisible power? Why not. Are we actually any further forward as a society to handle a discovery of this magnitude which may turn our whole understanding upside down?
But are they of use in self awareness?
I think the answer is yes, they can be. They can provide a framework because their ultimate focus is to put you in touch with yourself … which is self awareness.
It doesn’t matter if you walk or cycle to your destination if all that is important is the destination. Some people will understand the walking method better while others will find it easier to go on two wheels. Not important.
Not important that is as long as the method of travel doesn’t gradually become the destination.
I know one person, for example, who would greatly benefit more self awareness but she would prefer to do some Witchcraft rituals which help her feel better. They can give her the positivism to overcome mental barriers and help her achieve goals so in that sense they are useful. But for me it is all in the mind.
What puts me off the occult is the ritual side. To me it is unnecessary and a distraction. All well known religions have rituals and I think they are needed to help people feel some sense of belonging. “I sing that song” or “I light candles this way” are all part of a sense of identity that people crave …. but I don’t believe it is self awareness.
That’s not to say I can’t see many positive side to the occult.
In the film I linked to above, Documentary: Secrets of the Occult, Richard Kaczynski says (46:10) “Beliefs can blind us. Whether they’re religious beliefs or scientific beliefs and the great thing about these occult sorts of experiments is that they keep us open to possibility”.
This is a fundamentally important point and a pitfall I am victim to over and over again. Mine is to think science has explained most things, what it has explained so far is fact and it will explain the remainder in due time.
There is a lovely passage in the chapter The Earth Moves of Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything where he remembers how a great deal of the geology he was taught at school as scientific fact turned out to be completely wrong.
A religious persons mistake is to think religion explains things. This is potentially more dangerous as it places barriers to real discovery with believers constantly fearing the further erosion of their ‘story’ to the point that some even persecute.
With the occult you don’t become a Witch tomorrow and that’s it, everything is explained. With mainstream religions like Christianity you do. Sign up this afternoon and you’ve got yourself an afterlife, an explanation of how all things have come to be and a complete set of rules by which to live your life.
The occult is bent more towards openness in this sense although many versions of it have been manipulated to opposite extremes. These however are not really the occult, even if their authors want to call them that.
The occult has a positive framework. It is encouraging you to get out into nature and to observe nature and to think about nature more deeply. That’s great because getting outdoors has obvious health benefits at the most basic level and looking at things more clearly helps your sense of physical awareness which in turn makes self awareness a little easier.
But both the occult and mainstream religions feel the need to plug a hole – to have a god, several gods, gods and goddesses, spirits, something supernatural. This universe and your role in it must be explained in its entirety.
This ‘explain everything today’ approach can stop self awareness developing – “It is God’s will”, “It is the spirits doing”, etc.
If I had to chose though I would go with Paganism, Witchcraft, the Occult (whatever label you wish to give it) over mainstream religions because of its openness, flexibility and tolerance.