This conversation explores the future of occultism as part of a bit of a project/projects I’m working on, with commentator ChaosInvictus arguing that the practice is collapsing due to a modern overemphasis on "Unverified Personal Gnosis" (UPG). This focus on subjective, individual experience is causing practitioners to discard thousands of years of tradition, leading to a break in continuity. ChaosInvictus argues this will dilute occultism into unresearched, contradictory "hearsay" , unlike historical occultism which, while flawed, was at least built upon deep analysis and established frameworks.
How do you see the future of Occultism, be it philosophically or socially or any way, just the future in regards to that word, going?
It's gonna shift more towards new agey stuff and focus on UPG to the point that connectivity within the community will almost become impossible or stagnant.
UPG?
Unverified personal gnosis. It's essentially your own experiences with certain entities or rituals— if I meditate on demon named X and while meditating, I discover he likes blueberries, this is UPG.
You can't verify it, and some other guy might discover in their experience that X actually hates blueberries.
So there’s an overemphasis on personal experience, in some way?
People nowadays only focus on the personal experience.
When debating occultists, I might bring up a quote from a random ancient text talking about a certain demon, and they’ll go, "This isn't necessarily factual, I saw Bimbo Looney in my visions and they were like this instead…” It's similar to Christians who say they only need the Holy Spirit to understand the Bible.
Is there a way to discern fact with metaphysical abstracts or is it more for consistency in understanding?
There is no such thing as actual facts when it comes to the supernatural realm. But, when you have 3000 years of tradition explaining something, you can't really just throw it away and say that it's worthless.
Lilith has been understood as a child killer in the last 4000 years, you can't just say that she doesn't actually do that and turn her into a feminist icon because her whole premise is about killing children.
That doesn't mean that you didn't have multiple traditions in the ancient times, but the way things were back then and how occultists operate are fundamentally different.
Given that difference does it make sense to hold to traditions or can things be revamped or changed to people’s fancy? Would doing so conflict with history or can the progression be shown?
Progression exists within the traditions themselves. And people are free to reinterpret things, even get inspiration from other traditions, leading to syncretism. But things like that should be done attentively and being mindful to not read things that aren't there. As in: doing actual analysis on things.
I myself practice Jewish mysticism and I have very drastic reinterpretation of certain concepts while still working within a jewish framework, and I have 0 UPG experience.
Do you think UPG could be real experience or just psychological manifestation?
The latter. Even if it is real the human psyche heavily distorts it.
How does this intense focus on individual experiences cause issue for the future of occultism? Is it just that it’s so unverifiable? That it breaks tradition too much without regard to the past?
The second part. It's too far from actual tradition you may as well be talking about something else— there’s no continuity. It just breaks in the middle and then terms and names get coopted without any understanding of their roots.
Occultists aren't doing deep interpretations and analysis like ancient occultists did. It's nowhere near close to for example, Christians mixing Christianity with Egyptian mysticism in the 1500's.
And modern occultists don't do much research. Like, the Goetia is such an important thing in modern demonology— 90% of modern demonology relies on it— and yet the Goetia is a satirical work.
Occultism was at its peak in the late middle ages in both Christian and Muslim world.
And it's not that I am gatekeeping, but Occultism is like Science.
So, has more modern occultism sort of diluted things in a way with the emphasis on extreme individualism?
Individual experience, yes.
Will that model collapse on itself or completely ruin occultism?
That's what I think.
Does anything come out of or survive that?
Essentially "occultism" will just become a thing based on hearsay and random Internet posts, not actual studies of things.
[But] I am not sure, the only thing that comes to mind is sharing your UPG behind a paywall, which is somewhat a thing already.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying UPG is necessarily a bad thing, in fact I encourage the practice of UPG. But people should know that you can't just have UPG carry everything.
If we wanna use the term anachronistically, a lot of occultism comes from UPG, but it has many layers alongside it built upon previous traditions and ideas.
Is this all that different from historical occultism though? It seems like in the past much was done in certain orders like say the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Templars or with more modern forms like Theosophy, TOPY or even the Temple of Set. With the paywall it’s somewhat akin to the Church of Satan in that regard.
Yeah, but when it comes to groups, it is underestimated because it's occult knowledge; as in hidden. The whole point of occultism and mysticism is that it is secret and hence not everyone is allowed to partake in them, unless you follow a certain way of living. Obviously some tried to democratise it and make it widespread… To practice occultism back in the day, you had to be pretty well versed in the different religions and ideas, obviously what you said didn't necessarily need to be true but at least you were working with something. What Eliphas Levi says in his books sometimes makes absolutely 0 fucking sense but at least he has well developed tractates and ideas. And as much as I hate Thelema, it is still occultism although more modern form of it. But I can't blame Eliphas and Crowley for their misinformation because they based their ideas on already faulty sources… Okay maybe I can in certain parts but other parts I can't.
The more widespread form of Occultism nowadays doesn't base itself upon anything. And with the heavy emphasis on UPG, no one is right but also no one is wrong. If we both work with the same demon and each one of us have completely different experiences, what is it? Which one is correct? Me? You? Both? Or none?
But, if we have a text/texts associating this demon with lust…
So it’s the consistency of it that matters? Say that occultism does collapse into itself, by standards of occult ideas, at least with the term Solve Et Coagula, shouldn’t this lend to something newer in makeup? I’ll refer to this quote from Ted Kaczynski since it’s poignant in this, that, “you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.”
Sort of like Dune: at first it’s a bunch of scattered pieces of syncretism mashed together every which way like an all you can eat buffet, but in that it eventually levels out and develops into new systems. While not exactly in mirror or in the same meaning of the historical tradition, there is the vague memory at the least still. But it evolved.
Consistency is the only way to evaluate personal experience with traditions; when it's overreliance on personal experience without actually looking into traditions of some sort, there is no real memory.
New systems have developed within traditions themselves. It’s natural. But you can at least trace back their ideas be in actuality or in potential to something, hence how they pass their ideas as credible or having always been there.
The average demonolater will mention the Qliphoth, for example, and how they read a book written by some occultist on their experience with the Qliphoth, but you read the book and the guy has literally 0 understanding of what Qliphoth actually are in Kabbalah.
I don't mind reinterpretations, syncretism or any of that, but at least have a basic understanding of the system.
Does it even matter if Occultism has a future?
No, because 90% of people who use occultism are just larpers, people coping or have mental illness.
And those necessarily discount it all? Is that the broader landscape of the occult or just the segment that gets seen as a result of their attention seeking behavior, no thanks to the internet.
I think the entirety of occultism has become like this.
Those who actually seek occultism wisdom, will look back into the past because that's where it resides. Or maybe current religious traditions— where people don't consider it occultism.
The Internet is a massive place and I only have found two occultists that I am genuinely reading their books and learning stuff from them. One is a guy who while inventing his own rituals, gives a lengthy historical analysis to the subjects he is discussing and when he adds something from his own, he states it clearly that this is his personal interpretation and shouldn't be taken as fact. The other is a legitimate member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
Will the idea of the occult at least continue even if in a broader sense it doesn’t mean much, if anything?
Yes.
End of Interview.
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