Making Occult Studies more Accessible

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

In what way does his statement about "putting his two cents in" about something he thinks is stupid have anything whatsoever to do with "being afraid of smelly Pagans"?

There's a difference between letting people know where you stand and purposefully derailling any discussion of the idea. Even when that discussion is about appropriating useful, non-woo ideas out of it.

I'm sorry, but this Aspergers trip about using the word "woo" instead of "occult" is ridiculous. And it doesn't even work:
occult = a large range of spiritual practices that often include supernatural beliefs
woo = supernatural belief

This thread WAS about filtering out the woo and examining the parts of occultism with value to people who find supernatural belief repugnant, such as myself. Now it's more a temper tantrum over semantics.

The thread was old, dead, and cold before Roger bumped it as a joke.

And then Cram and Telarus brought it back to life.

And then at some point I aired my opinions about demystifying the useful elements of occultism by unoccluding them, which apparently is an "Aspergers trip" and a "kneejerk reaction". I am not at all sure you read my posts about it at all, although you do seem to be referring to them.

I think you're conflating an idea you posted in another thread with Roger's distortion of that idea in order to shit on Cram and LHX.

You mean this post: http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php/topic,11209.135/msg,1147838.html in this thread, yesterday?

My bad.

A lot of these techniques are variations on tremendously popular and widely available (and completely nonmystical) cognitive behavioral therapy.

I just don't see much value in playing make-believe about the nature or even the esotericness (now there's a questionable word) of these practices. It seems terribly similar to bureaucrat-speak to me; making perfectly ordinary processes sound hopelessly complicated and specialized.

I completely agree and that was the point of this thread.

What I took issue with was the trolling people about not using that obfuscating terminology in the process of putting occultist practices into plain terms. If you're going to demystify something, you have to identify it using the obfuscating term. In order to say "most of occultism is horse shit," I need to use the word "occultism".

PDer's know most of occultism isn't worth demystifying because it's based in woo-woo. If I wish hard enough in the right way with the right things, it will magically happen via extradimensional quantums and shit. That stuff is irrelevant to this thread. Roger, being the asshole that he is, brought that irrelevant woo-woo shit back into the discussion and shoved it into all our faces with a semantic troll because we dared to identify the things to be unoccluded.



Good job Roger, you sure showed us the folly of occultism. I'm totally convinced that there is nothing of value in occultism because the word "occult" means superstitious in the dictionary and is like smearing feces on my sunglasses. We already attract idiots to the site because the Principia Discordia tends to do that, but that's another story. If there is anything in occultism that is useful to us empiricists it must be non-occult in origin. Looking for valuable things in occultism was a fool's errand because by definition it is all completely rooted in superstitious belief and incompatible with my psychological ecosystem, thanks for saving me from ruining my life.

Your doting pupil,
Net

[Placid Dingo]

No offense intended, Nigel, but your presumption that the western/scientific version of these processes are 'perfectly ordinary' and 'widely available' sounds like a 1st world techno-phile speaking.

Which method would you teach to a nomadic tribal hunter from Paupa New Guinea? To a stressed out business man from Nashville? To a grandmother from rural Nicaragua? To a suicidal factory worker from China? To a young Islamic Afghan kid who watched his family get blown to pieces? To a pseudo-zen dharma-bum surfer from Baja?


"Lie down on the couch...."

"Wha What does that mean?"

"FRONTIER PSYCHIATRIST!"
---------------------------------

Also,

Was my previous wall of text intimidating? Useful? Boring?

I didn't really get it 100%. I get the vibe if I thought for a long time about it I might understand but I didn't put the mental work in, partly because I'm braintired and partly because I'm not sure specifically what the value is in having a clear distinction between seeing and perceiving.

ETA; that is to say, if you be happy to explain, I'd like to hear it.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Actually, I am fairly sure that I was the person who brought the semantic argument into the thread this go-round, in the process of disagreeing with Roger and everyone else I possibly could in one post. Roger, as far as I can tell, was just being his usual funny and over-the-top self, bumping a six-year-old occultism thread. It always mystifies me when people decide to take obvious over-the-top posts as serious attempts at insult. I mean, really?

This was a retaliatory strike.  Cramulus pushed the button.

And Cram, don't think I'm afraid to go totally nuclear and start bumping EvT/Prince Tao Jones threads.

I'll do it, man.

LOOK AT THE HARDCORE VENOM THERE, MAN. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

No offense intended, Nigel, but your presumption that the western/scientific version of these processes are 'perfectly ordinary' and 'widely available' sounds like a 1st world techno-phile speaking.

Which method would you teach to a nomadic tribal hunter from Paupa New Guinea? To a stressed out business man from Nashville? To a grandmother from rural Nicaragua? To a suicidal factory worker from China? To a young Islamic Afghan kid who watched his family get blown to pieces? To a pseudo-zen dharma-bum surfer from Baja?


"Lie down on the couch...."

"Wha What does that mean?"

"FRONTIER PSYCHIATRIST!"
---------------------------------

Also,

Was my previous wall of text intimidating? Useful? Boring?

Wow, I didn't realize the readership of PD.com was so diverse! My bad.

[Telarus]

Wow, I didn't realize the readership of PD.com was so diverse! My bad.

I apologize for any snark from my previous post being ignored bleeding through... I didn't like that post 2 minutes after I posted it, myself.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I have missed a lot of posts because I often read and comment in the morning before leaving for school, and again briefly in the afternoon after returning. Apologies if I have missed relevant posts of yours.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

What's the point of using a system to mess about with your own head, maquyixe, nlp, meditation, hipnosis etc..?

it's a system. Most systems (even the crap ones) are better than no system

no system = "I'm depressed - need pills - no pills available - break out the razor blades"

system = "I'm depressed - let's see why - hmm couple of negative feedback loops stemming from this and that event / lower astral entity / wonky chakras - apply solution x - sorted!"

Doesn't matter how hokey your system is, Lo5 doesn't give a fuck but if you don't got a system then, I dunno, hope for the best I guess.

If it works, then there's value in demystifying it to make it more accessible to others.

Looking at the sales figures for mood-altering drugs, we'd better do something.

Since depression and anxiety are normal responses to untenable realities, I would suggest we have a whole hell of a lot more work on our hands than just demystifying useful occult techniques.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Was my previous wall of text intimidating? Useful? Boring?

A little bit, very, and no.

I thought the point that some of the confusion that occurs with occult practices could be due to unknown combinations of intentional obfuscation and unintentional cultural mismatches was pretty insightful.

The part about "perception leveraging your entire visual field" kicked ass too. I've experimented with a meditation that traces my peripheral vision and found that it seems to increase my alertness, as though someone was going to throw something at me and I needed to be on guard. Useful for extreme fatigue, I thought, and stopped there. After reading about your experience I'm inspired to think of other ways to apply my peripheral vision.

Your post hit me on many levels, more than I have time to enumerate here. Thanks for posting it.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Actually, I am fairly sure that I was the person who brought the semantic argument into the thread this go-round, in the process of disagreeing with Roger and everyone else I possibly could in one post. Roger, as far as I can tell, was just being his usual funny and over-the-top self, bumping a six-year-old occultism thread. It always mystifies me when people decide to take obvious over-the-top posts as serious attempts at insult. I mean, really?

This was a retaliatory strike.  Cramulus pushed the button.

And Cram, don't think I'm afraid to go totally nuclear and start bumping EvT/Prince Tao Jones threads.

I'll do it, man.

LOOK AT THE HARDCORE VENOM THERE, MAN. 

I thought that part was funny too.

If you think I took that as an insult towards anyone, you're mistaken.

[Cain]

To move this thread on and help prevent it devolving into meta-wank (seriously, parts of this remind me of the times our boss declares we are having a meeting to decide the agenda for the next meeting, which we are having a separate meeting about) I just want to declare I have material relevant to this re: the CIA's forays into the occult for "psychological warfare" purposes.

The problem with this is a) America is a very religious society still, so people immediately associate a CIA interest in the occult with Satanism, and thus start spinning paranoid conspiracy theories concerning, often with their own bullshit into the mix, and b) the people who not not are almost always occultists themselves, and so take the view that "magick is real", for a given value of real, and so import their beliefs concerning that into the scenario, which leads us to "Nylarathotep is a CIA asset" territory.  Also c) many of the people tasked with such investigations worked on MK-Ultra style projects, which are kinda the opposite direction in which we want to go.

Therefore sorting this into useful, reverse-engineerable techniques is not easy.  However, given the CIA and other agencies interest in such apparently esoteric methods (Naval Intelligence ran many similar exercises, the DIA used remote viewing, MI6 of course had Crowley as a consultant, and Himmler's SS ran the Ahnenerbe "think-tank", not to mention the KGB's alleged interest in "alternative science") and the crossover of these techniques by practitioners of psychological or political warfare, there is almost certainly something here that is a) worthy of study and b) useful.

Still, sorting the material will take time, and my two best sources on this kind of topic are kinda compromised by falling into the "occultist" territory on the issue (Jeff Wells and Peter Levenda for those wondering), so it will not be a quick process.

[LMNO]

Okay, I think this thread's done.

Shall we actually start putting these conclusions into practice?

Perhaps some may have thought directly outing themselves on this board to be unwise?  Or is this the secret forum (Nigel had my ex's evil twin chore my decoder ring)?

Nigel!  Translation, please?

To move this thread on and help prevent it devolving into meta-wank (seriously, parts of this remind me of the times our boss declares we are having a meeting to decide the agenda for the next meeting, which we are having a separate meeting about) I just want to declare I have material relevant to this re: the CIA's forays into the occult for "psychological warfare" purposes.

The problem with this is a) America is a very religious society still, so people immediately associate a CIA interest in the occult with Satanism, and thus start spinning paranoid conspiracy theories concerning, often with their own bullshit into the mix, and b) the people who not not are almost always occultists themselves, and so take the view that "magick is real", for a given value of real, and so import their beliefs concerning that into the scenario, which leads us to "Nylarathotep is a CIA asset" territory.  Also c) many of the people tasked with such investigations worked on MK-Ultra style projects, which are kinda the opposite direction in which we want to go.

Therefore sorting this into useful, reverse-engineerable techniques is not easy.  However, given the CIA and other agencies interest in such apparently esoteric methods (Naval Intelligence ran many similar exercises, the DIA used remote viewing, MI6 of course had Crowley as a consultant, and Himmler's SS ran the Ahnenerbe "think-tank", not to mention the KGB's alleged interest in "alternative science") and the crossover of these techniques by practitioners of psychological or political warfare, there is almost certainly something here that is a) worthy of study and b) useful.

Still, sorting the material will take time, and my two best sources on this kind of topic are kinda compromised by falling into the "occultist" territory on the issue (Jeff Wells and Peter Levenda for those wondering), so it will not be a quick process.

That is relevant to my interests.  I suggest a new thread, to get out of this mire. It's full of werewolves, and unicorns, and rabbis.

[P3nT4gR4m]

To move this thread on and help prevent it devolving into meta-wank (seriously, parts of this remind me of the times our boss declares we are having a meeting to decide the agenda for the next meeting, which we are having a separate meeting about) I just want to declare I have material relevant to this re: the CIA's forays into the occult for "psychological warfare" purposes.

The problem with this is a) America is a very religious society still, so people immediately associate a CIA interest in the occult with Satanism, and thus start spinning paranoid conspiracy theories concerning, often with their own bullshit into the mix, and b) the people who not not are almost always occultists themselves, and so take the view that "magick is real", for a given value of real, and so import their beliefs concerning that into the scenario, which leads us to "Nylarathotep is a CIA asset" territory.  Also c) many of the people tasked with such investigations worked on MK-Ultra style projects, which are kinda the opposite direction in which we want to go.

Therefore sorting this into useful, reverse-engineerable techniques is not easy.  However, given the CIA and other agencies interest in such apparently esoteric methods (Naval Intelligence ran many similar exercises, the DIA used remote viewing, MI6 of course had Crowley as a consultant, and Himmler's SS ran the Ahnenerbe "think-tank", not to mention the KGB's alleged interest in "alternative science") and the crossover of these techniques by practitioners of psychological or political warfare, there is almost certainly something here that is a) worthy of study and b) useful.

Still, sorting the material will take time, and my two best sources on this kind of topic are kinda compromised by falling into the "occultist" territory on the issue (Jeff Wells and Peter Levenda for those wondering), so it will not be a quick process.

I have to admit, I never really got my head around the "remote viewing" thing. I'd never rule out the possibility completely but it strikes me as so ridiculously unlikely that I've never really investigated it. Occult stuff has two broad fields of potential practical application the way I see it:

1) Exerting influence over individuals and/or groups. I'm pretty sure everything you could learn about this by studying dusty old tomes is available in much less esoteric format, under such headings as NLP, hypnosis, cold-reading, psychoanalysis and the like

2) Metaprogramming the self. There's a lot of information available in this sphere also but I've never encountered anything that provides as complete a framework as some of the more established occult systems. I wouldn't discount the possibility that I've just never read the right books but anytime I've looked at established theories, I've been struck by how rudimentary it is in comparison.

I'm with Jung in thinking that, aside from the hokey aesthetic, one of the major stumbling blocks is the whole stigma of using imagination as a tool. The whole, diluted "visualisation" thing seems to be scratching the surface with regards to the potential this faculty presents.

Psychology coupled with neuroscience does a good enough job of describing many of the mechanisms but they seem to be missing a lot of tricks when it comes to interfacing with these. IMO that's a huge blank that hocus pocus goes a long way towards filling in.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

To move this thread on and help prevent it devolving into meta-wank (seriously, parts of this remind me of the times our boss declares we are having a meeting to decide the agenda for the next meeting, which we are having a separate meeting about) I just want to declare I have material relevant to this re: the CIA's forays into the occult for "psychological warfare" purposes.

The problem with this is a) America is a very religious society still, so people immediately associate a CIA interest in the occult with Satanism, and thus start spinning paranoid conspiracy theories concerning, often with their own bullshit into the mix, and b) the people who not not are almost always occultists themselves, and so take the view that "magick is real", for a given value of real, and so import their beliefs concerning that into the scenario, which leads us to "Nylarathotep is a CIA asset" territory.  Also c) many of the people tasked with such investigations worked on MK-Ultra style projects, which are kinda the opposite direction in which we want to go.

Therefore sorting this into useful, reverse-engineerable techniques is not easy.  However, given the CIA and other agencies interest in such apparently esoteric methods (Naval Intelligence ran many similar exercises, the DIA used remote viewing, MI6 of course had Crowley as a consultant, and Himmler's SS ran the Ahnenerbe "think-tank", not to mention the KGB's alleged interest in "alternative science") and the crossover of these techniques by practitioners of psychological or political warfare, there is almost certainly something here that is a) worthy of study and b) useful.

Still, sorting the material will take time, and my two best sources on this kind of topic are kinda compromised by falling into the "occultist" territory on the issue (Jeff Wells and Peter Levenda for those wondering), so it will not be a quick process.

I have to admit, I never really got my head around the "remote viewing" thing. I'd never rule out the possibility completely but it strikes me as so ridiculously unlikely that I've never really investigated it. Occult stuff has two broad fields of potential practical application the way I see it:

1) Exerting influence over individuals and/or groups. I'm pretty sure everything you could learn about this by studying dusty old tomes is available in much less esoteric format, under such headings as NLP, hypnosis, cold-reading, psychoanalysis and the like

2) Metaprogramming the self. There's a lot of information available in this sphere also but I've never encountered anything that provides as complete a framework as some of the more established occult systems. I wouldn't discount the possibility that I've just never read the right books but anytime I've looked at established theories, I've been struck by how rudimentary it is in comparison.

I'm with Jung in thinking that, aside from the hokey aesthetic, one of the major stumbling blocks is the whole stigma of using imagination as a tool. The whole, diluted "visualisation" thing seems to be scratching the surface with regards to the potential this faculty presents.

Psychology coupled with neuroscience does a good enough job of describing many of the mechanisms but they seem to be missing a lot of tricks when it comes to interfacing with these. IMO that's a huge blank that hocus pocus goes a long way towards filling in.

I agree P3nT. Understanding the scientific WHY, doesn't always make it easy to work the HOW. It's a bit like Antero's "archeology of the Soul" where he studied ritual and then tried to build 'ritual' without the 'woo'... his paratheatrics was one of the outcomes of that project.

I also like Cain's perspective. One recent book I read was "The Official CIA manual of Trickery and Deception" which was written by a stage magician focused on application for the CIA. This was also part of MKULTRA and discusses (in brief) the Cold War era research that went on between the Russians and US... each one trying to figure out what the other was researching and then to research it better themselves.

I'll try to write something up which summarizes a few of the applicable bits.

[P3nT4gR4m]

To strip away the bullshit as much as I can. What I think would have been useful to me, back at the start would have been twofold.

1) The art of imagination

Exercises and methods to strengthen and focus the faculty.
A semantic language of symbols and attachments, basic building blocks


2) Multiple Personality Disorder

Some useful templates with which to build 'agents'* to facillitate interfacing with below the surface cognitive function

Most of part one is covered succinctly in Crowley's Book 4 but, by the second part, it's chock a block full of gobshite mumbo jumbo.

Part 2 is covered very well, here there and everywhere but, once again, there's a fuckload of spookey bullshit built in and reading between the lines is practically impossible until you understand enough to render it virtually useless, other than for the odd tidbit of an idea. Of course, by the time you get to this stage, the hokey shit is kind of fun. It's like, how do you like your roleplaying, dungeons and dragons or tax accountant adventures in the staff canteen?

*there's probably a better word for this - characters, environments, programs ... I dunno

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Nigel!  Translation, please?

This is a tough one, but I believe it says:

Bunnies bunnies bunnies bunnies bunnies bunnies bunnies wearing tinfoil hats unjust persecution complex because it makes me feel so special just like the burning times, Pention? (Mom makes me do the dishes before I can have my allowance).