Occultism

In the period of history in which we are living, there is a very strong element of revolt. Revolt against all established institutions. This is good, as those established institutions are, for the most part, extremely oppressive of human personal liberty, and human freedom of thought. People are rightly perceiving all forms of government as basically more interested in their own power and profit than they are in the people they supposedly represent. People are tired of having their own futures and the futures of their children put at risk by the insane scramble for power among those who hold the reins of the various governments all over the planet. People are fearsome at seeing the environment put at extreme risk by corporate greed in partnership with government.

Among the most important of these revolts has been one against established religions, and particularly the Judeo-Christian Religion of the West. It is that aspect of the planet-wide revolt that is the primary subject of this essay.

Human beings being what they are, and possessing a really strong "urge-to-religion" or "urge -to-believe", and an even stronger "urge to have someone else be responsible for them", much of this revolt against religion, is itself in the form of a religious phenomenon. One of the most wide-spread forms this revolution has taken is the adoption of religions and belief systems that are perceived as victims of the Judeo-Christian culture. And so, we have many people today who consider themselves to be practitioners of religions they believe to be pre-cursors to the Judeo Christian culture.

They call themselves "Pagans" and or "Wiccans". Unfortunately, while they are good people and harmless, they are misguided in their beliefs, and in some ways, their beliefs are dictated by the views of the dominant Judeo-Christian Culture. For the very word "Pagan" is a pejorative, a word of contempt used by the Roman Military for civilians (and specifically "rustic" civilians), and then picked up by the earliest Christian converts who considered themselves to be "Militi-Christi" or "Soldiers of Christ".

Basically, in our society, the only true definition of the meaning of "Pagan" is that the person who identifies themselves in that fashion is not a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim, or any other mainstream religion, but conversely that they are neither an atheist nor an agnostic but a person who is a believer. They believe themselves to be following in the footsteps of the people who lived before Christianity conquered, but Christianity has been so extremely efficient at eradicating most traces of those belief systems, that the "New Pagans" have no idea as to the source of their belief structure, which in fact is primarily myth, legend, and literature. Unfortunately too much of what they believe is tainted by the Judeo-Christian ethos. Much, if not in fact most, of Neo-Paganism is also heavily influenced by "Popular Occultism".

"Wicca" or "Witchcraft" is believed to be the "knowledge" and practices of the ancient "wise people" who were healers and advisors of primitive people. But all that can be said about modern Wicca is that it was invented by Gerald Gardner who was a Theosophist, and a Rosicrucian, and a member of "The Golden Dawn" who put together a pastiche of his own ideas and some historical research into the traditions of the English country folk. It too is indelibly tainted by the Judeo-Christian Ethos. Because of Gardener?s "Golden Dawn" connection,"Wicca" is far more heavily influenced by "Popular Occultism" than is "Neo-Paganism".

It is absolutely clear to me that both of those movements; "Neo-Paganism" and "Wicca" were very much flavored and inspired by the works of Charles W. Leadbeater and Annie Besant. These two people, and two others; Dion Fortune and Aleister Crowley are the sources of the entire "New Age Movement". Without the pseudo theosphy of Leadbeater and Besant, neither Dion Fortune or Aleister Crowley would have had much to work on, and most certainly Alice Bailey, the least original of all of them, would have been entirely mute.

None the less, it's all an act of rebellion against mainstream religion. But by far the most popular, and oldest form that his "revolt" takes, is "Popular Occultism". The primary source of MODERN "Popular Occultism" is Theosophy.

"Occultism" is a fascinating, but entirely fictitious topic, unfortunately it is also a dangerous topic as too many people get totally enmeshed in it's fictions and begin to live in those fictions totally excluding reality from their lives. They also allow themselves to become extremely narrow in their ability to accept ideas that in anyway contradict, or impugn, or differ even mildly from their chosen paradigm. They also have a tendency to become rather insensately hostile to anyone who questions their belief system in any way.

Now "Paganism" has at least some real basis in the fact that there were religions prior to the triumph of Christianity, and that, superficially at least, we know something about what those people may have believed in. "Wicca" too has a basis in the ancient traditions of the rural folk. But does "Occultism" have any real Historical Basis? Not really. Let's look at the soil out of which "Occultism" sprang.

"Occultism" basically springs forth out of the age old, and terribly primitive belief humans have in "magic". What's so terribly primitive about the human belief in "magic" is that the belief is based on the idea that "magic" contravenes nature. That is pure ignorance, nothing, nothing at all, contravenes nature. In that case, there is no such thing as "magic". To primitive humankind, anything they didn't understand, and they understood almost nothing, was "magic". Unfortunately, the notion that things not understood are "magical" has persisted to our own times, and not simply in rural areas.

It is probably truest to say that what we today, call "Occultism" had it's original roots in various movements called "Gnosticism" in the first centuries of the common era. Men like Carpocrates, Basilides, and Valentinus who were influenced by Babylonian and Persian dualistic ideas and legends of the Magii. These leaders influenced the great uneducated masses of the classical milieu and the misunderstandings of their ideas by those self-same ignorant masses, are the thing that bore fruit

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