Occult Mythbusting; Devil Worship, Dark Magic and Sacrifices

I've spoken a little about the reputation that the occult has in the mainstream already, and how it's both quite near and quite far from the truth - so I wanted to spend some time doing my best to dispel some of the worst of the rumours and give a more realistic vision of what occultists get up to in their free time, as well as some of the technical differences between paths, and some of the things that are actually true as well.

Devil Worship

One of the first correlations that people's minds jump to is Devil worship. Not gonna dress it up any more than that - it's what people think, which has in no small part been exacerbated by the existence of Satanism. Don't get me wrong, I like Satanism, I like a lot of the tenets and concepts of Satanism, and some of my best friends are Satanists, but they really could have picked a better name just for the sake of everyone else. Satanism was thought up originally by Anton LaVey, and doesn't actually involve any real worship of Satan - instead the name was more of an edgyboi troll to piss off the Christians, who had a lot more power and were even more corrupt at the time than they are now. LaVeyan Satanism, in practice, centres around the idea of the individual practitioner as being their own god, and focuses on worship of the self, not Satan at all. It also includes some basic moral guidelines that are actually perfectly reasonable, and have given rise to at least one pretty scrumptious meme;  https://imgur.com/gallery/8yuN1jT

Now, I'm not here to debate whether or not LaVeyan Satanism is "right" or whatever - it's a path, it's no more right or wrong than any other paths, there's some hashing out that could be done on the philosophy end of it, and certainly some questions to be asked and answered about how it all works, but the myth was "All Occultists are devil worshippers", and the truth is that not even all Satanists are devil worshippers. There is such a thing as Deistic Satanism, which does actually worship Satan as a God, but it's not as popular. Partially because worship of oneself is much more immediately attractive, partially because most people begin to study the occult as an antidote to overly strict religious backgrounds - and a clean break from Christianity altogether is a lot more inviting than just switching to the dark side.

Dark Magic, or Black and White - and grey - magic. 

This is a biiig sticking point in the occult community. There are lots of different paths that come under the "occult" umbrella - Wiccans, Satanists, worshippers of Santa Muerte, Heathens (those who follow the Norse pantheon), generalised pagans etc. Most paths don't make the distinction between dark and light magic in any tangible sense, mostly because moral questions are so subjective. Like is cursing a rapist black magic? Is casting a love spell on someone who has no feelings for you tantamount to rape? Magic is just a tool. The whole black/white dichotomy is basically as tiresome as the devil worship thing for most practitioners. Wiccans being the major exception - one of their very few cardinal rules is their Wiccan Rede - "an it harm none, do as thou wilt", which, translated from faux old English, means, do what you want as long as you don't hurt anybody.

It's pretty reasonable on a surface level, and certainly has done wonders in boosting the reputation of Wiccans in general polite society - which is exactly what it was designed to do. Wicca was invented by Gerald Gardiner in the 20th century, conveniently around the same time as new laws in the UK that made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of religion. He said he learned most of what he knew from an ancient coven, but these claims are unsubstantiated, and most proper scholars of the occult have the distinct feeling that Wicca was invented to give witchcraft a friendly public face, and, by being an organised religion with set rules and tenets, some protection in the law. It is also often credited with inventing the now-very-irritating public perception of there being two different kinds of magic, black and white, whereas in reality, everything is a hell of a lot more grey. 

Wicca would be considered a Neopagan religion - it is an organised religion with a single god and goddess, it's own laws and codes of conduct, it's own (albeit brief) history, and practices supposedly based off of reconstructed fragments of older practices - accurately or inaccurately. Most paths that have a true link through prehistory have basically nothing in common with Wicca. Most ancient paths have multiple gods and goddesses, most don't have any kind of black-and-white moral code, and most people who practice those arts think Wicca is annoying, to make a long story short. Nobody likes to be proselytised to, or morally browbeaten for their practices - and while they seem to have backed off for the most part now, about ten years ago, Wiccans claiming some sort of moral superiority were somewhat of a bugbear of the occult community in forums online. You could barely go a few days without people from actual hereditary traditions, from all over the world, going off on what they saw as uppity upstarts following a historically dubious tradition and daring to sermonise to them on what was right and wrong. 

Basically, there is no black or white magic to most occultists. It's entirely dependent on the situation and context, and not only that, but most well-constructed occult paths highly encourage the integration of the light and dark sides of human nature, and see the errors in trying to be nothing but love and light always. I've mentioned this integration of the shadow self in several articles already in different contexts - it's not just proper occult practice, it's more or less proper human practice, advocated for by Jordan Peterson and many others. Shadow integration is some of the hardest and most necessary work that occultists undertake and is of absolutely utmost importance in building actual magical power and personal gravitas. The fatal flaw in the Wiccan Rede is that it ignores nuance and puts the idea in one's head that harming someone else is never justified - which is just not true.

Obviously this can go the opposite direction and people can get addicted to causing havoc with magic, so there's even further nuance here to explore. I personally try not to be a cunt, and there's a lot of reason for it. I do think nasty thoughts and nasty actions take a toll, and I know that implies some sort of arbitrary moral code, and I'm not a philosopher, so I'm not really able to put that into some kind of airtight, technical, crystallised framework that's impossible to refute. However, I have found throughout my lifetime that people who are nasty, quick to anger and have a high opinion of themselves are never happy for very long, often are very visibly ugly and have an aura that repels people. Sure, they can amass power, but I don't see it as being worth it, personally. Maybe it is to them, I have no idea, but I prefer, for myself, for my own happiness and wellbeing, to live humbly and not let my ego get out of control. I'm not quite at Buddhist monk levels of Zen, and I'm able to have a scrap if needed - magically speaking mostly, but I've also done some physical training too. Long story short, it's nice to be nice, but don't be a doormat either.

Ritual Sacrifice

In terms of sacrifices, this is one of those topics where people who live in nice modern countries with cars, feather beds and carpets tend to start clutching their pearls. The fact of the matter is, and you can probably feel this intuitively if you allow yourself to listen to that instinct, but the practice of sacrificing something holds a lot of etheric weight. In the modern day, most people suffice with sacrificing a candle, some food, a couple of drops of blood, etc. - but the fact of the matter is that in many cultures, including ones still fully active in the world today, animal and human sacrifice is still practiced, and has been by all of our ancestors at one stage or another. There is still even a lot of talk about sacrifices in modern Western culture - unsubstantiated of course, but many people familiar with sacrifices - and many paranoid numerologists - consider the 27's Club (look it up if it's unfamiliar to you) to be very suspicious, and bears the hallmarks of human sacrifices - not to mention the atrocities of the Catholic Church, as well as Epstein and his whole crew, which would be considered sacrifices of innocence, if not life. 

Alex Jones speaks a bit about this and, as someone who fully studies this stuff and is absolutely neck-deep in the occult, I would not be in the least bit surprised if all of the most out-there theories are at least partially true, to be completely honest. There's some deep, dark shit spread all over major power struggles, regardless of the assumed "civilised" facade, and it's pretty important to accept these things as possibilities before we can start working to deconstruct them. At the minute they have plausible deniability on their side because it's so absolutely outlandish compared to the rest of modern, Western society. On a global scale, most people would be as unsurprised as I am that the powers that be are heavy into the occult, whereas in the West, it's almost impossible to imagine for most normal people. By design? Then there's the question of whether or not it works - and considering how little retribution ever happens to people who perform these kinds of debased acts, you tell me. 

From a purely personal standpoint, I obviously wouldn't ever put myself in the kinds of dark-ass situations or mindframes where any of those kinds of sacrifices could be considered a viable or sensible option - I'm just not that power-hungry, or that much of a piece of human shit. BUT. (cover your ears, vegans) I am absolutely OK with ritual sacrifice of animals. Probably a little gross to most of you, and hopefully you don't think I'm a total monster just because of this, but there you go. I want to own a farm someday and live as self-sustainably as possible, which would inevitably involve the keeping, and eventual slaughter, of animals. I would consider it much nicer for me to offer the blood of my animals ritualistically to the earth, as both practical fertiliser and as an offering to the land spirits, in hope of good weather, a great harvest and not to be struck with blight or parasites - and it makes the giving of a life to sustain life a more beautiful and symbolic process, to do it with some respect, and attention paid to the gravity of the situation. I'm the type to get emotionally attached to animals as well, so it's not like it will be easy or enjoyable, but the giving of that respect in the form of ritual is a lot more palatable to me than the cold, clinical and frankly disgusting methods of keeping and slaughtering common in industries that provide most meat to most tables.

So on that cheerful note, hopefully this has cleared up some of the misconceptions about the occult community, and not grossed or freaked you out too much - I do try to make these non-threatening as a general rule, but my aim with this whole account is to broach the subject of taking the occult seriously with people who wouldn't normally consider it, so I need to be honest and put the heebie jeebies up people from time to time. I do also try to offer some tools and methods to allay said heebie jeebies as well, though. If this is your first time reading one of my articles, please do check out some others, I outline a lot of basic occult stuff, including magical self-defense and basics, getting started etc. 

Also, just in case you're on the look out for a small, dedicated and plucky band of friendly occultists, who have some decent conversations and a lot of fun, please feel free to join my independent forum/discord combo at https://courtoftheibis.com - we're very small at the moment, but we come from a wide range of political backgrounds and manage to coexist without it getting nasty, which I'm quite proud of - and we also have a diverse range of paths, experiences and practices as well as a helpful environment, so if you have any questions you want answered or are just curious, please do check us out :)