One topic which seems to be commonly of interest to fans of Gothic music (such as myself) is that of the Occult. Few other topics are as ancient, as controversial, or as often misunderstood as this one. First, a matter of terminology: the word "occult" means "hidden from view" or "secret and mysterious," not "evil" or "satanic" as certain people seem to think. Despite this fact, it is not common practice to refer to covert operations or other mundane secrets as "occult"; the term's common usage suggests topics which are hidden and mysterious partly because they are esoteric and hard to understand, but also partly because they are intentionally kept secret from the uninitiated. Mostly the term "occult" is applied to beliefs in supernatural forces and related practices, and this explains the common association of the term with "evil" or "satanic": it is natural to fear what is mysterious and unknown, and, especially in judeo-christian cultures, it is common to assume that any alleged supernatural forces not associated with the Church must arise from its archenemy, the Devil. Since alleged supernatural occurrences ascribed to the church (such as miracles, etc.) are not "hidden from view", they are not occult, so the word becomes associated with "satanic" forces. As a child growing up in a small community in Nebraska, I attended a pentecostal church whose beliefs and activities bordered on cultish behavior. I was taught to "speak in tongues" and to believe that spirituality required the rejection of "the flesh-and-blood nature" and the pursuit of "the god-life", an attempt to redeem oneself from the perceived "fallen state" resulting from the original sin. This led to the apocalyptic belief that the world would soon be ended by God in a terrible rain of fire a la Revelations, and that our little church and a select few with the capacity for self-loathing and the blind faith to follow our leader would ascend alone into heaven while those who still "lived the flesh-and-blood nature" would perish for their wicked sins such as eating food and enjoying sex. Indeed, in the years after I moved away from that church (both physically and ideologically), I learned that our church's former leader had quit eating altogether, believing that faith and prayer alone would sustain her. I suppose as far as wacky cults go, I was relatively lucky -- no mass suicides, no following spaceships hidden in comet tails or stockpiling weapons and shooting at ATF agents. In another sense, I suspect that I even owe the church a debt of gratitude in that the extreme views I was expected to accept may have helped me to see the importance of critical thought earlier and more easily than another church with more moderate views would have. At any rate, there came a time in my life when I realized that I really didn't believe most of what I professed to believe, and I was tired of all the constant self-deception I was expected to endure in order to fit in. I decided that since I was the only person I was guaranteed I would live the rest of my life with, I had a responsibility to myself to find a way to live with a clear conscience. In order to achieve this, I saw that I had to get to know myself. Thus I decided to stop trying to make everyone else happy and began the pursuit of self-knowledge. As I had already been taught some fairly weird things, I had no particular aversion to studying a lot of other equally weird things in my quest to understand myself (and, by extension, the world I lived in). Besides, I had been brought up with promises of immortality, miraculous powers akin to those of the apostles and other biblical characters, and other such goodies, so it seemed natural to start looking to see whether such things were actually possible. Thus it was that I began my study of the occult. I suppose it is satisfyingly ironic that it was fundamentalist Christianity that pushed me into studying to occult instead of the other way around :) During my quest, I have read books on astral projection, forms of divination including the tarot, ritual magick from both the high magick and low magick perspectives, esp and psi, herbal magick, stones and runes, the Kabbalah, Gnosticism, meditation, tantric magick, and other forms of mainly Western occult traditions. I have found some valuable insights as well as quite a lot of useless garbage. In general, however, I make it my practice not to talk with people about the occult, simply because I have found the vast majority of people who are interested in the occult are credulous cretins who couldn't reason their way out of an open paper bag. it took me long enough to escape the church i was brought up in, and I have no desire to trade one group of flakes for another. Blind unthinking faith in one dogma is as bad as any other, whether it's faith in an apocalyptic fundamentalist Christian world or faith in the influence of the stars on the beginning of the Aquarian age or what have you. Dogmatic beliefs are beliefs which we are told not to question; they are not supported by evidence, but are expected to be taken on faith. Having blind faith in dogma is not the way to find the truth; finding the truth requires willingness to question, self-honesty about what we find, and the ability to think clearly and critically enough to see the difference between truth and falsehood; these necessary features of truth-seekers are lacking in "true believers" of any variety. Many people who study the occult do so from a noncritical perspective, accepting the ideas they want to believe with wishful thinking ("I want this to be true, so I'll believe that it is true") as their guide. Some delude themselves into thinking that if they pick and choose bits of dogma from different traditions and try to reconcile the pieces, they will be closer to the truth than one who just chooses a single tradition and follows it. The fact is, an eclectically chosen dogma is still dogma. The principle insight I wish to express here is this: if one wishes to find the Truth, it is even more important to think critically when studying the occult than in other areas of study. The vast majority of people I have spoken with about the occult have been flaky, credulous people who either follow some other equally flaky person's beliefs without question (more like the blind leading the blind than like Luke following Master Yoda) or who simply choose whatever they would like to be true and convince themselves that it is true, without really looking to see whether it genuinely is true and often without even regard for whether their beliefs are consistent! To make matters worse, it has been traditional for centuries for occult writers to deliberately mislead their readers, for several reasons. Hypothetical speaking, knowledge of how to perform miracles or cast spells would obviously be dangerous in the hands of people who are either incompetent or immoral: one could hurt oneself in the former case and others in the latter. Western mystery schools such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn used a system of levels of initiation and strict secrecy in order to try to guarantee that by the time one was capable of using occult means to hurt other people, one was "spiritually mature" enough to be relied upon not to. The basic notion that "knowledge is power" became "some knowledge is dangerous" and should be kept from those who are unfit to use it. Thus, in order to comply with one's vows of secrecy, any writing about occult subjects had to contain enough misleading material to keep those who weren't smart enough (or thinking critically enough!) from actually getting anywhere, either by sending the uninitiated reader after red herrings or by leaving out critical details one should have already learned by virtue of her/his initiation. Further, it is common among occult authors to write in codes which are designed either to mislead or to frighten away those who are not familiar with the code -- for example, a herbal recipe might list "the blood of a newborn infant" when it really means "red wine" in order to discourage the uninitiated from actually trying the recipe. It has been suggested that Aleister Crowley used this technique frequently, which may account for much of his reputation. Of course, this method can clearly have disastrous consequences when someone takes the coded terms literally! Finally, occult authors (like anyone) can simply be wrong about things even when not intentionally misleading their readers, and the tendency of occult readers to be dogmatic and uncritical perpetuates the errors made by authors and causes the intended meanings of original authors to get replaced with literal interpretations of misleading codes. As a consequence, there is a vast amount of occult literature which is worthless, and even the true intent of the authors (let alone the Truth) can end up buried under mountains of garbage. Nevertheless, this does not mean that there are no useful insights or kernels of truth buried within the literature; it only means that to find them, one must be even more careful to think critically. Since most people fail to think critically even in their daily lives, it follows that those who read occult literature and think critically about it are even rarer. This has certainly been my experience. That's not to say that everyone I've ever talked with about the occult is a complete flake; but for every one occultist who actually thinks carefully, I meet ten others who toss around pseudo-scientific terms like "fourth-dimensional energy" in an effort to sound impressive, despite having no understanding of what terms like "four-dimensional" actually mean. Consequentially, very few people who know me were even aware that I had any interest in the occult, or at least they were before I wrote this :) Someone has to impress me very strongly as a capable critical thinker who is genuinely interested in knowing the truth instead of just finding a way to feel special ("Look at me! I'm so enlightened!" or "Don't mess with me or I'll cast a scary spell on you!") before I'll consider actually discussing the content of the occult with her/him. Of course, not everyone who studies the occult is after such lofty goals as "The Truth"; some people simply want an unusual set of religious beliefs or a set of rituals and beliefs that make them feel good. For such people, whatever fairy tale they come across that they happen to enjoy or identify with should be fine. I'm not interested in "how to get warm fuzzies"; I want to understand the world we live in. The Truth is not only stranger than fiction, but it set us free, as it were. Truth is not determined by majority rule; the fact that a lot of people believe something doesn't make it true. Further, we cannot change the truth, in the sense that we can't decide what we would like to be true and then somehow make it so if isn't already true. I'm not talking about redecorating rooms here, I mean we can't just decide "I think Karma is a good idea" and then expect the world to go along. We must be willing to look and listen to the world around us, and then try to find the best explanation for what we see. The Scientific Method has proven itself over the last several centuries as the most effective means of truth-discovery (or at least effective model-making for empirical phenomena) that humanity has created. Those who study the occult and the paranormal would do well to make use of the proven methods and not dogmatically start with their conclusions and try to find supporting evidence. That is the way one perpetuates delusions, not the way one finds truth. Arthur C. Clarke once said that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", and this is the sort of world I think we live in -- one in which reason and honest truth-seeking can lead us to understanding the Truths which are stranger than fiction. It's been said that "not only is the world queerer than we imagine, it's queerer than we can imagine." There are ample mysteries in life, easily enough that we don't have to hang on to dogma of any form in order to find magick in the world.

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