Written Insight - What is Occultism?

In the last insight we briefly touched on esotericism, and one cannot discuss said subject, at length or even briefly, without also mentioning what we called it's companion, which is occultism.

Because many people's minds have been partially raised in either cults at worst or somewhat junk food culture at best, they, and frankly most of mainstream culture often have very knee jerk dogmatic reactions to the word "occult".

Those heavily indoctrinated into the cults of the religions of empire, and well speak much on those later, instantly go to satanism, baphomet, and darkness when they hear the word. Or those, outside of growing up in cults but raised on junk food pop culture, have a very Hollywood ideal of what the occult is, which are people doing rituals in tau robes with hoods hanging over their faces within a pentagram candle circle or Kubrickian Eyes Wide Shut sex orgies with people in Venetian masks at aristocratic mansions. A tiny little bit of which has any correlation or merit to occultism, both examples featuring anonymized people, but both examples are more just people in cults that are cosplaying and/or larping with occult flavored fashion.

Occult primarily means hidden. with the classic example being during an eclipse, the sun and moon are capable of occulting each other. The latin word - obculto - means to cover, not only to hide, but also to guard against, protect, defend. So its hidden and guarded. The term "occult" itself simply means "hidden" or "secret." This doesn't so much mean shady dark back alley undercurrents, or scandalous dark web activity, as those things are just the exoteric criminal underground. Nor does it imply searching for hidden poltergeists in haunted mansions. Again, more fictional Hollywood exoteric influence. As generally, a similar word, we've now mentioned twice in this, cult, in a historical context does not always have a negative connotation, but in modernity, it certainly does. The term "occult" however doesn't necessarily imply anything negative in a modern context; it simply denotes hidden, and protected. And to add to our previous definition, which is a collaborator of the word occult, which is the word esoteric. Which means little known, and inside, so both esoteric and occult knowledge is what is hidden, inside, of you and all living beings.

One final important note that we will share here, through some of our own experience on said subject, is that like all things, Sturgeon's Law applies. And the 90% of occultism that is crap, is what's called popular occultism. Reddit is one of the coolest places on the internet but the occult subreddit thread is not occult. While real alchemy is an occult practice yes someone's social media page about the secrets of alchemy is not occult. As the content them it are easily fineable after half a dozen or so clicks. The real way one finds actual occult information or knowledge, is through a teacher and student relationship, with one who already has had experience in traditions that involve the pursuit of hidden esoteric knowledge, and can transfer said information to said student. Often associated with the search for deeper understanding of the mysteries of existence - stretching into esoteric areas that absolutely are spiritual and mainly deal with an individual's psychology. And how the individual's physiology related to the society psychology, and why that is important, we will highlight in the next one.