Occult lit

[Anonymous No.11360362]

Where do I start my journey with Occult lit? Is there any kind of image guides? I assume there's so much content out there you probably need a good place to start. Are there any kind of meme authors that combine Occult stuff with philosophy and psychoanalysis? Honestly, even academic books about ancient practices that might count are occult are fine by me. Just help me get a foot in.

[Anonymous No.11360439]

I made a starter chart a while back. Seemed to have lost it though. Sorry.

I suggest looking into the works of Wouter J. Hanegraaff. He pretty much started the modern academic re-appraisal of occultism and created the new field of "Western Esoteric Studies" for the purpose. Wonderful writer, clear and unbiased. Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed is a good starting point but pretty much all of his work is lightyears beyond anyone else writing on occcult topics.

I would suggest avoiding modern occult groups like Theosophy and Thelema until you understand their historical positions and biases.

[Anonymous No.11360473]

I suggest you yo read "The secret teachings of all ages" by Manly P. Hall. Written about 1920. It is a huge compendium about occult stuff, history, philosophy and many more things. A very wide perspective which will led you to a good first understanding. Also an enjoyable reading and you can always skip one or two chapters if they are about stuff you don't care (although I reccomend reading all). Then, you can search for the themes you liked the most for further readings.

[Anonymous No.11360487]

>>11360439
Found the chart. A lot of the books are expensive because they are academic but they are definitely worth it. Some repetition of topics as well, there's several overviews but I wanted to represent Faivre and Clarke as well as Hanegraaff. Aaron Cheak is a nice memey author who brings a postmodern spin to things although his books are overpriced and difficult to find due to small print runs. The Golden Chain and Golden Thread books are not overviews but good starter texts if you want to dive into the ancient roots of all this stuff and understand how it evolved.
>>11360473
Manly P. Hall is okay albeit a little dated and religionistic (with a masonic slant). Lectures on Ancient Philosophy is a good supplement to Secret Teachings of All Ages.

[Anonymous No.11360504]

>>11360487
Danke.

[Anonymous No.11360902]

>>11360362
can it be a dark and disturbing journey?

[Anonymous No.11360929]

Seconding Hanegraaff. I am so-so on Faivre but he is good. Also seconding to learn the historical genesis of these movements and try to see inner truths in them (if that's your interest) through that, rather than becoming a follower of any one thing.

Another great resource is Colin Wilson's The Occult. And Manly P. Hall is okay too. They need to be taken with grains of salt, but they are good for throwing a lot of names out and letting you sift them yourself.

[Anonymous No.11361397]

>>11360362
To answer what you should read, first you should ask yourself "Why are you interested in the occult?"

Do you want purely academic knowledge? Do you legitimately want to get into it, for the purpose of uncovering the secrets of the cosmos? Or do you just think fucking around with demons will help you land a gf or something?

[Anonymous No.11361614]

What do you accept as occult? Knowledge about the soul? Read the vedas taken at face value

[Anonymous No.11361660]

>>11360362
Is there an /x/ approved fiction chart?

[Anonymous No.11361669]

>>11361660
There is an /x/ mindset chart somewhere. I can't find it in my pics. Sorry.

[Anonymous No.11362020]

>>11361660
Ficciones
Laurus
Veronica
Name of the Rose
Foucault's Pendulum
Illuminatus!
The Secret Magdalene

[Anonymous No.11362023]

>>11361614
The vedas are weak. Tantra and yoga is the true path.

[Anonymous No.11362038]

>>11360362
Okay, this is the third time today that I've seen this picture; what's going on?

[Anonymous No.11362072]

>>11361660
Behead All Satans
The Tainted Turd
How to BOMB the U.S. Gov't
The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs
Faster Than the Speed of Love
Wish It, Want It, Do It
Start with the Greeks: For Dummies

[Anonymous No.11362173]

>>11362020
2nding for Laurus

[Anonymous No.11362261]

>>11360362
Start here, OP
http://tarlwarwickbooks.blogspot.com/

[Anonymous No.11362303]

>>11360902
How can it not be?

[Anonymous No.11362466]

>>11361397
the third one

[Anonymous No.11362526]

>>11361397
First and second. I have pet theories with regards to metaphysics and I want to see how they hold up or if they're at all original.

[Anonymous No.11362753]

>>11362303

[Anonymous No.11363018]

>>11362526
In that case, why do you wish to focus on the occult, instead of say, Hindu or Buddhist metaphysics? I'm not saying you can't learn a lot from the occult tradition, but it's by far the only source of transcendent wisdom

[Anonymous No.11363174]

>>11363018
Well, there's a few reasons.
First, I generally think mood and aesthetic go a long way, and in terms of that the Occult comes across far more favorably to me than anything in the (mainstream) Eastern traditions.
Second, I don't like the ideas (or should I say the idea) of Hinduism and Buddhism. I don't have deep knowledge on either of them, but what I do know has put me off considerably.
Third, I want to see how the Occult traditions have made sense of all these developments in continental philosophy, how people like Hegel and Heidegger along with the introduction of psychoanalysis might've changed up their ideas.
It's possible that I'm looking for what's not there, but I'll see...
To give you an example off the top of my head, I find it interesting how we have not only more and more empirical evidence for the power of ritual, but also a philosophical grounding for the metaphysical power of putting people in certain dispositions. It suddenly makes the issue of gods and what exactly worship is a lot more relevant (at least, in my eyes).
I'm not exactly in it for transcendent wisdom. I'm more trying to see how these old things can be brought back to life. The pet theory I mentioned is that I think we're heading to a renaissance in polytheism and these sorts of minor, cult-like religions.

[Anonymous No.11363197]

I came I read I applied

[Anonymous No.11363211]

>>11362261
Styx is a retard. His occult videos are not so much the ravings of a madman as the wiki tier entries of a teenage girl. There's no method to anything he says. He's a nut like those conspiracy theorists that buy into every conspiracy theory under the sun. I've yet to see a single Styx video on the Occult that goes into depth on anything at all.
Also his child story with the demon is beyond stupid. Stolus? Was that it? Lol. In any case. He's just so naive.

[Anonymous No.11363217]

>>11363174
If you have a discord account, then there are a handful of occult servers that are absolutely chock full of pdfs and the like. The best one to start with is the /r/occult server (don't let the name fool you, it has very little to do with reddit) and branching out from there.

https://discordapp.com/invite/r4UT8gB

[Anonymous No.11363226]

>>11363217
Thanks, anon, I'll give it a go as soon as I'm able.

[Anonymous No.11363277]

>>11363211
There is this problem I had with many occultists trying to justify something unnatural like a christian craving to find the existence of god. I am certain occultism works on the basis of pure psychology and mostly our unconscious mind. That is what Jung brought even though he believed in some deity. There is a huge field of psychodynamic practice with many schools that is applied to therapy and other things. They can explain the occult phenomena as natural and it sounds to me more probable than any of these snowflake special magical powers some occultists bring. I want any occultist who believes in real entities like this and other unnatural experiences to go and study deeply cognitive psychology, neurology and pick some psychodynamic literature or even Jung and see it from purely materialistic perspective.

[Anonymous No.11363327]

>>11360362
the western tradition is all satanism, although they would call themselves illumined/enlightened. it's a bunch of orgy sex freaks in their 60s retconning ancient mesopotamian traditions long forgotten into being some "real" humanism. they worship some dwarf dildo maker from 4000 years ago.

just read marx, he explains what people really want.

[Anonymous No.11363501]

>>11363277
I agree with you, anon. It's very strange that all these scientists take this approach of NONE OF THIS IS REAL when there are clear results from so many different fields testifying to the reality of these behaviors.
Of course, they'll say it's not "real" because the deity in question they worship isn't "real", but I think that's misunderstanding the point completely. All that calls for is a different kind of theology/metaphysics - it's got jack shit to do with what we already know, namely that these things have a huge impact on human behavior.

[Anonymous No.11363514]

>>11360362
Neoplatonists are always the answer.

[Anonymous No.11363537]

>>11363501
What occultism is doing in my knowledge is just purposely applying practices that manipulate unconscious mind in some certain way. To argue for non existance of unconscious mind is ridiculous as we do not experience many and most cognitive phenomena like the process of thinking but only the result of it and other things like biological functions being ruled by unconscious processes. Kids before 2 and half don't possess conscious mind and think in images and symbols, it's a known phenomena. It doesn't go away jsut become we become conscious and use language. We still think in images and other sensory informations, maybe even internal ones like emotions. It seems it all works together and that it's complex. Occultism makes the experiences that our mind is interested in ticks. There are strange practices and knowledge that our brain will interpret as important because they are different and strange symbols will become our projected something. I don't want to go deep into this but this is purely materialistic and is in no opposition to scientific method or science. The only problem is that we don't possess enough knowledge about consciousness and unconsciouss mind and brain in general. I see nothing unnatural or magical in this. The words used are just means to strengten the change you want to make. You are just manipulating yourself very effectively.

[Anonymous No.11363538]

>>11363327
Lmao kys

[Anonymous No.11363552]

>>11363327
wut

[Anonymous No.11363554]

>>11363327
t. Pastor Anderson

[Anonymous No.11363571]

>>11363537
I don't think your approach is telling the full story and it sends the wrong message. If you're just focused on the unconscious people are going to get the idea that this is just a fakery that will go away as soon as its workings are shown.
I think it's perfectly safe to say there are "Occult" practices that can happen in a fully conscious way. For example, so long as all the people in a worship-group are aware of the fact that they've created the god they worship together, or that it's not real in some manifest way, there isn't anything dishonest in committing to worship in a different way, especially when it's in a group.
I think we are talking about very different things. The power of symbolism is strong, I don't doubt that, but I'm personally more interested in the actual re-affirming of religious practices (not necessarily historical ones).

[Anonymous No.11363587]

>>11363571
Nobody should care about the opinions of people about fake or not. It works because our minds work that way. One could even argue that something practices too long by many people will become collectively unconscious and even transfered to another generations as ideas in unconscious mind. But this is debatable and not supported by science, we only know there are certain predispositions but we know our environment shapes and guides us. You can't do anything fully conscious because you are only counscious partly at all times. It is impossible. If you create an idea like god and then project something into it then it will of course have effect on you but you don't realize what you are really doing. Religional practices are occult mixed with out instinctual desires to be together and it provides a lot of answers to unanswerable world around us. You could say that even scientific realism and positivism is a form of that. Paul Feyerabend said something similar but that is a bit off topic.

[Anonymous No.11363930]

>>11363587
>Nobody should care about the opinions of people about fake or not.
I disagree. The whole point is to change society and make people more aware of these things.
>One could even argue that something practices too long by many people will become collectively unconscious and even transfered to another generations as ideas in unconscious mind.
Like memes?
>You can't do anything fully conscious because you are only counscious partly at all times. It is impossible.
Not sure what you mean by this, honestly.
> If you create an idea like god and then project something into it then it will of course have effect on you but you don't realize what you are really doing.
Why does it need to be projection? And well, you could argue we never understand what we're really doing, I don't see how that's helpful in any way.

[Anonymous No.11364005]

How do we get rid of materialism?
It's supposed to be a tool of understanding, not understanding itself. Nowadays everywhere we only get reductionist a neopositivist jargon. Neuro-this and neuro-that. Wissenschaft denkst nicht. It is not a matter of religion or /x/, nor the will to prove that Succubus, for instance, are real. It is, though, a matter of this STEM point of view being suffocating.

[Anonymous No.11364167]

>>11363930
Not everyone cares about changing society that is the art of politics. Go read about collective unconscious and unconscious mind because you never did so. You are only conscious for like few % of what you do, you are always only aware of few things. I don't want to bother replying this to you because you obviously never read anything about either sciences or unconscious/conscious mind besides some occultistic books.

[Anonymous No.11364210]

>>11364005
It's just a phase, we had irrational middle ages, rational reneissance, irrational baroque, rational enlightenment, irrational romanticism, rational positivism, irrational fin de siecle etc.

[Anonymous No.11364232]

If OP likes the psychological model of magic then I would suggest he read Liber Null & Psychonaut and/or Condensed Chaos.

[Anonymous No.11364344]

>>11364167
>Not everyone cares about changing society that is the art of politics.
You're mistaking propaganda for politics. And I am talking more about changing the ideas within society with philosophical thinking.
>Go read about collective unconscious and unconscious mind because you never did so. You are only conscious for like few % of what you do, you are always only aware of few things.
That doesn't change the fact that people feel very conscious of what they do, so what exactly is your point? What I said was pretty clear - namely that perhaps religious ritual and practices could make a comeback on a societal level in a conscious way. By conscious I mean that everyone knows they're indulging in those activities and that it's not merely a substitute. Whether or not you want to say that's full consciousness or not is completely irrelevant to me. I don't doubt that most of what we do is automized, that's pretty clear from the literature, but it makes no phenomenological difference.
>I don't want to bother replying this to you because you obviously never read anything about either sciences or unconscious/conscious mind besides some occultistic books.
It's actually the opposite, lol. I barely know anything about occultism, but I'm read on neuroscience and psychology.
The problem here is that you're only being pedantic and dismissive and seem completely uninterested on applying any of these things on a practical level.