I’m curious about what some experienced occultists think about this short interview. This guy used to had an occultist magick channel and then decided that everything he has done was just psychology and a result of entering the trance state (hypnosis). For me, who comes into magick from being an atheist, it’s very confusing.
I mean Magick is a force of nature which some say humans haven’t discovered yet so yeah.
Also entities and everything can be interpreted symbolically and these symbols can be used in many ways to bring about change.
Eh, I started as an atheist too, but here is the thing: if it works, does it matter THAT much?
Agreed. I was a atheist who experimented with magick and I am pretty much a full fledged mage discovering unique things everyday.
Let’s put it this way: if you’re ill and perform magick to get healed and you get healed, you got your results. Now, let’s asume it was the placebo effect. Isn’t a way to trigger the placebo effect something worth knowing?!
Maybe our mind has powers unknown to us. Questing to find them, understand them and using them can’t be anything less than useful, as I see it.
This is just what happens if you aren’t cut out for magic.
Power and knowledge filter themselves according to your own ability. If you just can’t make the cut you get tossed aside like those occultists turned atheists or christians
Yeah, I’m another ex-atheist.
He talks a lot about psychology and trance state, but there’s also lot of magick that gets worked not in the trance state, especially when entities are involved.
I didn’t watch it all (the puppet was too irritating, sorry) but does he also realise that the clairsenses are not trance state, and many consider the use of those as part of magik. I consider those fringe science.
Under the model that the operator is alone in the universe dreaming everything, or in “the matrix”, then there’s no difference between magick and psychology anyway.
But t doesn’t matter which it is if it gets results.
There is another thing: what when someone else performs a ritual for you? Is either magick is real or the mind is so damn powerful that it can affect way more than itself (and this guy basically said the mind is only affecting itself… up to the point I watched the video).
So… what would be the difference? That magick uses terminology that sounds like superstition and the other uses terminology that sounds more academic but both refer to the same damn thing? It that, then there is barely any difference, and he is the one making it (yes, yes, he didn’t invent academic terminology, the point is the same).
Some people find water down magic. Or not put effort at all. Or maybe wat he found fail him always,
I wish I had seen this sooner, but I understand his reasons. Some people simply reach a point where they need to put the wand away for a while and try handling reality in a more direct way. It’s not hard to see how some can believe that Practitioners are just fooling themselves, but when you get such direct and powerful results as some have shared, it’s hard to dismiss it all as simply psychology.
I wish him all the best, Joe will always be the Psycho Sorcerer to me.
Our senses see a head moving, our senses see a tail moving.
Our senses do not see the connection between the head and the tail.
As some have mentioned above, magic is another source of nature that are not apparent with our senses. In time, science will be able to explain more about these worlds, but for now, our evidence shows that the world is flat in this aspect.
If in doubt think of you. Your being, your consciousness exists in this plane from seemingly lifeless atoms. One could say that consciousness is just a complex product of matter.
I could also say: maybe matter is a rather simple way of consciousness.
When you meditate on this, you will start to understand and the more you understand the less you will be certain in what you know.
Everything he has done was just psychology and a result of entering the trance state
Not gonna lie, I didn’t watch the video, but is he basically just denying the existence of external entities? To me this is just another paradigm, a la chaos magick. If it works, why does it matter how? If I’m trying to open a parcel I can use my hands, fingernails, scissors, keys, a knife… End result is still an opened parcel. I can stir a boiling pot of spaghetti with a hammer if I want to. Does it really matter how the job gets done as long as it’s done?
Yes, he says they are delusions of the brain in the trance state. Pretty discouraging for those wanting to learn magick…
I agree in a way, but then why bother studying and performing rituals. I think the basis of magick is believing it.
Perhaps. I suppose it depends on the individual. If a delusion is helpful, why not entertain it?
Is he denying the results of his magic? Or did he never achieve anything noteworthy (in a material sense)?
However, he says he had results and achieved many things, he just realized that it was just due to affirmations and convincing his unconsious mind.
I only heard about him today because someone on this forum mentionned getting advice on his magick channel (in 2018) and then wanting to listen to this advice, came across this interview. He says that there’s no magick, only the delusions of the mind (work with entities, astral travel, spells) and he came to this conclusions after conducting experiments and he was able to reproduce his encounters with entities. That all the things that are called magick have scientific names and there’s no need to dress it as occult. And this realisation broke him…
But I guess, just like religion, your life is what you want to believe in.
He self-admittedly fell victim to the greatest recurring trap you will see in occultism as usually documented on the internet, i.e. turning to magic in desperation. He then made the correct move in analyzing his praxis objectively and cutting the bullshit out. Now that he’s more skeptical he’s better occultist material. You shouldn’t turn to magic because it’s the only place left to turn to. You should investigate it analytically, methodologically, and skeptically once all other explanations for things you see and do have failed.
Its relatively simple to “achieve” things using magic as the chaos magicians can attest, just about anyone but the most repressed can do it.
When someone falls short of realizing magic isn’t just in their heads or turns to a mainstream religion like Christianity, they’ve failed. Either they couldn’t push far enough to prove without a doubt that magic isn’t just in their heads or they couldn’t handle the pressure and shut down so they wouldn’t break.
I had to get used to that whole appearing outside of ritual thing. It was a little unnerving at first, I mean I was like, wtf, am I purposely driving myself crazy? But of course a lot of it is I have realized broken western cultural baggage.
He goes on in his youtube videos about affirmations working for him. I never found they worked for me. I guess they just didn’t go deep enough, or rather, I felt that it wasn’t myself that was broken, but the fundamental “reality” around me that would not allow me to do what I wanted to do, mostly because of existing social structures in place, hence the hard work of tearing down those structures and rebuilding.