What do I even mean when I use the word "Occult"?

It probably would have been helpful to this whole series of blogs and posts if I had actually defined my terms first but hey, whatcha gonna do - the long and short of it is, I'm doing it now, any complaints, feel free to @me.

So the actual definition of the word occult according to Merriam-Webster is "to shut off from view or exposure" - and from that original meaning it has become more associated with "mystical, supernatural, or magical powers, practices, or phenomena", which is what you get when you google "meaning of word occult". There are a lot of theories and a lot of conversation to be had about how this knowledge became hidden, who hid it, why they hid it and whether or not it was a good thing they hid it - personally I reckon it was yet another greedy move by powerful people to keep the masses in check, no power structure likes a self-empowered populace with potentially the force of the entire universe on their side. That's just me, though, but it's not any kind of a secret that most of the richest and most powerful organisations on Earth have had some sort of weird occult scandal, be it Bohemian Grove, Hillary's "spirit cooking", hell, even as far back as Queen Elizabeth 1 - John Dee, whose work is still studied by occultists today, was an advisor to her court and held in extremely high regard.

That argument aside, what I actually mean when I say "Occult" is somewhat a combination of the two definitions above - the body of knowledge that is generally not taught to the public at large, that is mostly left out of all modern western popular culture if not directly shunned and ridiculed, that is demonised by pretty much all organised religions and that relates to the mystical aspects of human nature. It is important to note that not all, not even most, cultures treat mystical pursuits this way. All indigenous and pre-Abrahamic cultures did and still do practice these things in various forms and styles - and for the sake of condensing and simplifying, I'm going to list these practices as including, but not limited to, things like meditation, internal shadow work and integration, worship of natural objects and phenomena, the spiritual use of psychadelics, the abstract manipulation of energy and the belief in and contacting of a spiritual world of the dead, gods and nature spirits.

Now some of this has started to move into popular culture, especially meditation and psychadelic use, but that's only after a hell of a lot of resistance, including in law - and also mostly as watered-down versions with a hell of a lot of woo-woo and bullshit - which my conspiratorial tendencies lead me to believe is actually a cynical counter-intelligence move, or, in the case of psychadelics, as a counter-culture, rebellious and often not very spiritual manifestation. Obviously individuals do take these things seriously, the pagan, witchcraft and general occult communities are growing fast and people are beginning to fathom the depths of how far this stuff goes - I especially appreciate Joe Rogan's work towards the normalisation of psychadelics and opening people up to the possibilities of spiritual entities that could be contactable using these substances - and I absolutely adored his podcast with Dennis McKenna, as well as the work that man is doing to explore both the implications and significance of the effects of psychadelics and entheogens. 

What I mean when I say occult is just hidden spiritual practice and the manipulation of ethereal "energy". That's another word just laden with shitty woo, but it really does bear taking seriously in my opinion. We undoubtedly have extra senses that we don't make use of. What even are emotions? Why are some people more sensitive to them than others? Obviously you can explain them away with the chemicals in the brain argument, but why do we use words like cold, warm, prickly, fiery, down-to-earth? They are universal descriptors for the sensations that we feel in regards to emotions and everybody seems to understand what each other mean when we say them, but they are also descriptors used for physical sensations. What are those sensations? What are "vibes"? Why do certain places and times have them? I've made tons of arguments already for magic, how and why it works (or doesn't), how to use it etc., but I don't have all the answers, no-one ever will if we don't consider the possibilities that there really is something to study here.

I like to talk about the magic/science boundary - all throughout history, magic has been used as a descriptor for things we don't understand, and science for things we do, and things move from the realm of magic into the realm of science over time. They are absolutely not mutually exclusive terms, they are in fact ever-changing and interacting fields that intertwine all throughout history. People often cite the origins of chemistry being the art of alchemy, but that's just one example. People also get pissy whenever anyone tries to cross over quantum mechanics with magic, but as far as I'm concerned, that's the biggest frontier and boundary of magic and science, and I honestly do think that if quantum physicists were more spiritual, we would already be in an amazing golden age of technology. Modern people recoil from the term magic, mostly due to a holdover of atheism and rejection of all things metaphysical, but what is quantum entanglement? What is "spooky action at a distance"? What causes particles to change into waves depending on whether they're observed or not? That's all magic to me, and that doesn't mean it can't be science once we figure it out - it also doesn't mean we should swallow every theory any jackass white guy with dreads comes up with after a heavy weekend on mushrooms.

Anyway I've gone off on a tangent as usual, hopefully somewhere in there I've gotten to the point of what I meant, and that it's a tiny bit clearer that I use the word "occult" as shorthand for weird and usually stigmatised practices that are mystical in nature. As always I welcome any questions or counter-arguments, and if anyone is interested in hanging around in a friendly environment with a lot of ideologically diverse but generally intelligent and interesting occultists, please do visit my independently owned and run forum at https://courtoftheibis.com. There is more information about the site at https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1026990267651031040?referrer=gracewhitewitchcraft , and we also have a supporting Discord where most of the day-to-day chat (and text-based DnD) happens, but I'mma make yall go through the site to find the invite link :P We're very small, with only about 13 active members thus far, but that's mostly by choice as I've only been advertising publicly on Minds - I want to build a core of serious, dedicated and sensible occultists before I really start opening up to the world at large and advertising on Instagram, Reddit, etc. - do drop by no matter your level of belief or experience, we only bite if you like it like that.