I am a little confused about those who describe themselves as atheists and black magicians at the same time. According to E.A. and others, many demons are nothing more than the gods of the ancient near east. If that is the case, how can those who believe in these gods claim to be atheists? By definition, if there are gods, then atheism is not true. I am mainly thinking of those black magicians who believe that there are entities that are not simply the thoughtforms of humans.
Atheism is ultimately incompatible with magic. Those who don’t think spirits objectively exist typically remain stagnant and never grow or learn. The only occultists I’ve encountered that were worth speaking acknowledged the existence of spirits and worked with them correctly.
Euoi, to me that seems manifestly obvious. But Timothy, the cofounder of BALG, describes himself as an Atheist. That seems very strange to me. The only way that makes sense is if his definition of “atheist” is someone who denies monotheism or something like that.
As far as I know, this kind of atheism denies the existence of a sentient single creator God which has wishes and preferences regarding morality, and the actions of humans.
Just as atheists accept that the material world (and the individuals living within it) can exist and flourish without a cretor God overseeing them, so they accept that non-physical beings, including those regarded as gods, can also exist, along with spiritual planes to match this material one we inhabit.
These gods - different from “the” God - are simply beings whose relationship to us differs in power and knowledge, since they’re not bound to a physical body with limited senses.
Anyway, that’s what a few people I’ve met over time believe, opinions vary on whether spirits are real individuals in the way we are (or at least, the way we experience ourselves as being individual), or alternatively, whether they’re de-personalised forces of reality that can be accessed through ritual and so on.
You can find some posts he made on the nature of spirits by searching under his membername, here are a couple that are quite interesting:
My partner believes something similar, that all spirits are manifestations of archetypes and forces powered by the mass subconscious, and that tapping into them is a way of “reclaiming” parts of oneself to enact (literally godlike, transpersonal) power - I don’t believe that myself, but because of him, I’m very familiar with the idea.
I think it’s confusing because of the context in which Timothy uses the word atheist. I know that traditionally, atheists do not believe in anything they cannot see, in other words, they wouldn’t even beleive they existed if it weren’t for the fact they can actually see and feel themselves.
I think, Timothy is mainly using the term to refer to those who do not believe in a superior god that created and controls everything, because if you think about it, christians do not recognize magick and the occult to be real (well, most of the non-catholic christians don’t believe in it) so to them, there’s not even a reason to mention magick so when they think of an atheist, they think of someone who does not believe in Jesus, his father the lord, and the devil and so on. So atheist is used most often to describe someone who has no belief in any of the gods of religions like christianity, catholicism, mormonism, islam, etc.
So I think Timothy is just using the term rather loosely to describe himself as someone who does not believe in these things however, he does believe in the occult so to him he is a supernaturalist and a magician but to a christian, there is no such thing as the supernatural outside of the devil and angels and that we magicians are delusional, so they do not even include magicians when using that term. They don’t care what you really believe in they just know, that if you do not believe in their god, you are an atheist to them.
So it seems like he is using the term in a way it is most often recognized by the outside world. Now to a magician like you and I, we hear atheist and we think someone who doesn’t believe a damn thing and probably has some irrational theory of how we came into existence like stars colliding, or that we are a matryx-like computer program that just appeared here but was not created or invented by anything. We do recognize magick because we are magicians, so to us an atheist dismisses everything, but to the majority of the world we are not even included in that argument so the only definition of an atheist to the outside world is non-believers of their god.
Seems like Timothy is just using a term that is most often understood by the outside world, because obviously, he has a passion for educating the outside world on how magick really works and making sure the religious zealots know the truth instead of walking around blind sided, so it makes sense that he would tailor his terms to be more appealing to those people. Just my theory on this, but I could be wrong.
I think the biggest problem is public and individual definitions of the words Gnosticism, Agnosticism, Monoteism and Atheism. Sometimes we give these words a personal meaning, which creates confusion to those who learned these words through studies.
This is just my personal opinion, and if I step on someones toes I apologies in advance. If you going to teach magic or anything relevant to spiritual workings, the easiest way to teach is to use public and dictionary definitions of these beliefs/non-beliefs systems.
Most magicians dislike Christianity and Judaism, yet most magicians use said religions demonology to summon these hierarchical entities, even if they call themselves atheists. For me, it doesn’t make sense. The word Agnostic - a neutral, openminded point of view - seems more appropriate to describe the definition of a spiritual path than being an Atheist.
Whatever we call ourselves in our personal beliefs, the spirits answer our calls anyway. But sometimes the definitions of words are often getting too personal, which can be confusing for newcomers or for linguistics, such as myself.