I used to be a die hard,“Don’t talk about it” occultist… Now I realize a major stop-gap measure is in place and the majority of people will deny the existence of magick even though they are infatuated by it and it is in their face all day long.
I could point out the numerous movies,games,TV shows, books, advertisements, drink and food names and logos etc.,etc., that SCREAM magick. If you take a minute to think about it, you will see everything I just mentioned. The list is exhaustive.
People love “pretend” magick. Just conduct a search on most anything occult in nature and you will find some hard core role playing game.
Getting started in real magic requires a “leap of faith”, a length of time where you put considerable effort into something everyone around you insists being fake at best, insanity at worst…or the lake of fire thing if people around you happen to be very religious. A lot of dabblers give up before their practice starts bearing fruit and are even more convinced than ever that magic is bullshit, thus reinforcing the secrecy in their own way
This reminds me of American Gods when Gaiman explains the only way to kill a God, forgetting them.
If the knowledge is too closed down and horded it can be lost much easier.
Look at ancient cultures and note how many we lost because of simple things like oral traditions.
Imagine if the internet was kept as ARPANET instead of becoming this wonder.
Everything has risks. No exceptions.
If/when magick becomes known to others, life won’t be IRL Doctor Strange or Legion. There are shortcuts when one practices, but everyone has to put in the work. Worst case scenario, the death rattle of the Abrahamic Trio unleashes a witch hunt or… laws are created prohibiting some practices, just like Rome used to have.
Currently, the only way the general population can possibly believe the acausal is if some dude with a few degrees in [whatever] manages to objectively prove all of it (or some of it).
Even if the Enlightenment didn’t happen, mysticism is what blocks almost everything from the mundane people (it goes from metaphorical explanations of one’s gnosis about [something] to blinds in ancient texts to keep the uninitiated away).
Thanks to materialism and secularism, the Occult will remain occult.
There’s an old saying that says: “Don’t cast your pearls before swine”. And there’s a good reason for that.
Other than that, I agree with what Narsonix and Purple said above.
You have to try hard and practice a lot in order to get results with magick. Not everybody can do it, because not everybody is willing to invest enough time and energy into practice. For example, everybody can find countless free tutorials on drawing, but this doesn’t mean that everybody can become a professional painter just by watching them and by practicing once in a while. It’s just not that simple.
You have to be skilled in order to get consistent results with magick, you need to practice hard in a daily basis, and that alone is too much for somebody who is not serious about it. Also, practice is not the most fun thing in the world and can get boring too fast. Therefore many might be interested in it, but few will actually pursue it anyway.
Hidden magical practices is not a necessity as this is no longer the Dark Ages when Witchcraft was outlawed and the penalty was if found guilty of practicing Witchcraft or other pagan practices death. The Witchcraft Act in the UK was lifted in 1950.
Why not practice openly and enjoy what you do? You can openly brag about your successes and experiments in magic and ask questions to find answers to hidden mysteries with no legal or ethical repercussions. However, if you feel shy about what your doing you don’t have to post. It is entirely up to the practitioner.
I think the majority of people don’t have the discipline to really get far. I know quite a lot of people who like to read, but never actually get to the point of action. And it does take work. People with just a casual interest it won’t get the results they’re looking for.
In my perspective, most people do magic, whether they realize it or not. I simply cannot underestimate my allies, my opponents, and those who are indifferent to me, it is disrespectful. Everything is energy.
That’s so true, you can read a ton of books about Magick, thinking that you have understeand the words, but is not going to be the same if you read the same books 5 years later once you have become a magican. The meaning will be changing as you gain experience.
In modern Magick secrecy or “being quiet” takes the meaning, or is rediscovered, as interiorization of knowledge, focusing on a goal, concentration of energies both inside the magician and the temple. Starting from 1800/900 some authors thought it was time to speak clearly, and that some things protect themselves (along with the possible unwary) anyway.
Hiya OP! As I mentioned in my group ritual thread, miracles become normalcy when the population possesses a strong belief, this is especially prevalent in tribal cultures’ magic with reports of everything from flying objects to transformed people is average. Not only is modern society global, which makes a complete shift in belief difficult to manifest due to the barriers it faces in the initial stages. The flip side of such difficulty is also a kind of numerical one- the deeper and stronger the belief in magic of more people, the more magnificent the resonance between the people, the planet, and magic becomes, which turns the averages of magical results from probability shifts to the types of manifestation thought of as miraculous or mythological. The reason this doesn’t usurp the world as we know it is that magic is still a force that requires skillful patterning to make coherent in ways that would affect reality. There will be more people at the ‘top’ numerically rather than proportionally, because people will always tend to stagnate and the levels of magical ability they feel comfortable with. The occult isn’t occult because it needs to remain hidden; the occult is the occult because humans needed it to remain hidden. The truth is always in plain sight, and sometimes it’s under that stone you overturned 76 times, but on the 77th found what you needed to know. It protects itself, and it’s silly for humanity to assume they have protection from it by simple lack of belief alone.
The occult isn’t really a big cherished secret it’s all around, people just choose to get into it, ignore it, or disbelieve it. Everyone has their own varying potential in the occult, some parts they won’t reach, some will get to the top of their own skills, doesn’t stop them from learning more but knowledge and being able to execute said knowledge isn’t the same. However, I find many occultists have this weird fear that the world will bring back witch hunts or some other silly nonsense. The world knows the occult exists they simply don’t care, whether they care or not won’t change anything, to be honest, following the occult doesn’t make anyone more superior or less than someone who doesn’t.
