>>24686834
I think it’s true, there’s a big aberration in Western occultism.
They can go down a dark path, be spiritually swallowed up. Often from getting into some splintered, potentially dangerous pseudotradition, which indeed has something like shells or remnants of spiritual power, but in a corrupted or decayed way. They can still have their experiences of non-ordinary reality which seem to confirm their occult path. Instances of ESP or clairvoyance, converse with a spirit world, states of samadhi, or entrances into unique trance-states or bizarre states-of-consciousness, likewise tied to these magical or paranormal phenomena.
Despite that I agree with some criticisms of Crowley, and believe he got swallowed up by some egomania, I still also think you’re looking at this in too quaintly materialistic a way.
Even with these criticisms of Crowley, the quality of his life was still fascinating. You can bring up the seeming negatives and material failures, but he was still an erudite mad genius who created a tremendous body of work on ceremonial magic and the occult (variously overlapping with mysticism, poetry, philosophy, theology, comparative religion including Eastern religions, even psychology and sometimes discourses on the sciences, politics, literature and art, history, any major field of human endeavor), artist, poet, novelist, a reputable mountaineer, and grew to have a massive, only-partially-underground influence on modern Western culture.
>>24687172
Also a good short post
>Remote Viewing and Cryptography before they had become sciences and operationalized practices under *formal* state level espionage requirements. Before that, metaphysical speculation without catching heresy charges. There is a fake it until you theurgically make it element that discards it past a [spoilern]'abyss crossing' [sic] point which could be called and looks like LARP.
Yes, in part
A very good, benevolently oriented, not necessarily so sinister-and-deranged entry to the occult is Robert Anton Wilson. He veers towards a sort of scientism and brainy clever anti-religion mindset at times, but other times has wondrous mystical insights, and his multi-model framework is a very helpful and mind-expanding way of entering into this. I think a psychological or neuropsychological approach as he sometimes takes actually is very interesting and relevant in some of this, but again it’s only one model, others can criticize it as “reducing the spiritual to the psychological (or neuroscientific)”. But I like to think more in terms of complementarity, both-and.
He also speaks as someone directly participating in some of this, not just some skeptical academic entirely outside of it or only blandly talking about its history.
“Prometheus Rising” and “Cosmic Trigger” (Vol. 1) are the books to read, they’ll answer stuff about why people get into the occult and any positives they get out of it probably better than any posts here can do. Along with its risks
