professional procrastinator. computer enjoyer. 1-800-didge.
OK so I remember one time I looked into occult stuff briefly (ngl I was young and saw FMA) and looking back I gotta ask: in general are people more into this as a "this is quirky history" thing, or a self-actualization/not as serious thing?
I figure if grimoires and mystic texts did everything they claimed there'd be A LOT fewer shitty politicians.
In the occult sphere, there's varying degrees of belief. Some people just RP, some people this stupid half ass "haha it's psychological, they aren't really demons but subconsciously things happen in my mind!" thing, some people literally do drugs and radically shift their beliefs as a form of practice, and then there's good old fashioned "the universe follows principles beyond the ken of man" occultists that unironically practice magic and expect real world results.
Certainly, old grimoires were written by those of the last mindset. It's hard to say which is the most popular, occult circles have unpleasant overlap with mentally ill people deluded into believing they have special powers, new age cafeteria Christians who don't believe in much of anything, spiritually lost fellows not sure what to believe, and role playing fans who don't realize other people are serious. That isn't to say that anyone who things they have special powers is whacko by the way, but it is to say that an awful lot of schizophrenic dudes with hypergraphia will happily tell you they're the chosen embodiment of Metatron here to save humanity from the Zionist New World Order and have written "proof."
Anyways, what I'm saying is despite being into that stuff I have no fucking idea. On reddit the psychological perspective is very common, in too much free time Florida house wife new age groups christianity + karma stuff is more common, etc. Given the subject in question is defined by being hidden, I don't think a thorough enough survey to determine wide scale demographics of belief is feasible.
Damn I made a lot of run on sentences...
Huh. Yeah that is quite difficult to parse with the demographics muddied like that.
I do find Christian house wives with too much free time getting into, what is essentially magic, pretty funny. There's probably a paper to be written about a hybridization of the two or if one every truly believed in the former beyond social obligation.
Getting back on track: I can somewhat vouch for the schizophrenic angle. I'm not 100% on the guy's mental health, I never really asked, but I had this coworker I could tell was a few beers short of a six pack. He started telling me about Hermeticism and how he read pdf's of the Lesser Keys of Solomon and a few other similar things. Not sure if he thought he was the one but he was definitely convinced.
The psychological angle almost seems like a cop-out but if it works, it works I suppose. I won't deny, some of the aesthetics are cool. Having done edibles (weed anyway) that's almost cheating. You'll get on a train of thought and everything will sound like the smartest thought you've had.
I don't think we'll unpack the logistics of whatever is going on in the Christianity extended universe that easily. 😂
I don't know what he said, but your coworker may have just legitimately read the Lemegeton and was conveying the lore to you. There are pdf of Grimoires and stuff around online, and the Lesser Key is probably the most famous one (definitely amongst the most famous, though Verum and Picatrix are up there.) The sort I'm thinking of usually have very elaborate and unoriginal backstories, I assume they got them from youtube conspiracy videos but I don't really know.
That's the issue of saying it's all a psychological trick, there's no distinguishing if it "worked" from it doing nothing at all! Well, I say that but we need to acknowledge that we humans fill in the vast majority of what we 'know' about the world with assumptions and cultural norms. At the end of the day I cannot prove the sound outside my window is rain and not a stereo system until I open the curtains and take a peak. Likewise, I could not 'prove' whether or not a demon evoked is imaginary or materially present without taking physical measurements.
There is a certain degree of validity that cannot be argued to the suggestion that, regardless of the objective truth, what we think and believe has real effects on our own personal world. That said, I've never attempted evocation to physical manifestion myself (that shit is long, difficult, easy to fuck up, and (if the books are to be believed) high risk) so I try my best not to be too judgmental.
