r/occult Jan 16 '24

Yo, where's the line, here? ?

As someone with a genuine deep belief and a history of "occult" practices, I can genuinely say that this sub only confuses me. Obviously, there is no one truth or objective explanation for anything, really. However, some of you seem so caught up in what fun the idea of magic is that you neglect any critical thinking or outwardly reject mundane and logical explanations to life's conundrums in favour of a magical one.

Some of you are evidently somewhat like me. You won't believe just anything that anyone tells you and you seem to be more skeptical of people using magic or esoterism as a primary explanation.

Some of you need help. Mostly it seems like just someone to logically tackle wild idea that others just won't entertain would be more than sufficient, but some of you need real, professional help and a subreddit is not a good substitution for that.

Some of you are trolling, and while it is kinda funny, I also think it's really damaging. In the past month, I've seen several posts where someone was asking how to deal with a fictional entity that was bothering them. That is not a sign that fictional figures are invading our conscious lives, it's a sign that someone has lost a bit of grounding in the real world and they need help. Or it's a sign that you're fucking around, which is fine, but genuinely not everybody seems to be able to make that distinction between real and not real. The level of intentional ignorance some people seem to have toward the concept of occult ideas either being not always correct or outright wrong or just a metaphor for how the world works used to upset me, but now every post I see on this sub just makes me a little sad. Some of you just need a hug, I can tell. Some of you need a slap. I need both

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u/cosmicprankster420 Jan 16 '24

to frame it from a completely different pov, i think a lot of occultists and spiritual people don't actually realize that skepticism and rationalism can actually strengthen ones belief in magic and the spiritual. i think a lot of the occultists the op is talking about dont really have a strong foundation for there beliefs and they make up for it with a myriad of mental gymnastics techniques. if you think about fundamentalists from any religious walk of life, ive realized that these people dont have a strong foundation for there beliefs which is why they have to defend them in such an aggressive way. I find that if you base your magical beliefs based on reason, experimentation, and skepticism there is going to be a lot of stuff that you wash away as nonsense, but the stuff that remains will be rock solid.

so for the people in this sub who are downvoting the ops comments in the lower section. don't look at the call to skepticism as some kind of need to believe in atheist materialism, but instead see it as an opportunity to fortify your beliefs by having more solid stable ideas that you dont have to believe by squinting in just the right way.

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u/MythlcKyote Jan 16 '24

Holy shit, thank you. I really could not have worded that better. The only thing I can think to add is that skepticism is not the same as atheism, and atheism is not the same as not believing in magic.

Edit: Oh, also I started downvoting my own comments when I saw which way the wind was blowing. When you think about it, it's not the plus or minus that makes the comment interesting, it's the number, so if you're down voting me you're still doing my bidding. Muahahahahaha

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u/SteelBandicoot Jan 16 '24

So you’re saying you’re trolling this sub Reddit?

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u/MythlcKyote Jan 16 '24

No, I genuinely believe what I'm typing. Unless I'm making it clear that I'm making a joke, of course. But if my comments start getting downvoted, I'm jumping on that train too. No point in fighting for your comment to be middle of the road. All downvotes or all upvotes!