One of the things you cannot escape with occultism is religion. Most magical systems are hardwired into religion in some way. It is possible to change systems of magic, such as flipping the Key of Solomon or Abramelin to a pagan magical system, but religion has to be a factor.
This is because occultism has been a “hidden system” to understand religion or philosophy. Without the Gods, it becomes pretty pointless. While there have been some attempts, such as Chaos magic, to strip religion from magical systems, the results are fairly soul-destroying.
However, one thing I have noticed recently is that there are times when religion is not the bedrock of occultism that it should be. This is when the ground swell of a religion changes so utterly that an occultist can no longer follow it. The depth that an occultist aspires is no longer held together by the religion that they are supposed to follow.
I have been reading Tony Fuller’s book Anglo Catholic clergy and the Golden Dawn and how the Church was a huge factor on the life of the last Golden Dawn order to close its doors Whare Ra (in New Zealand). In this situation the order was a Christian Anglo-Catholic community. Subgroups in the Order prayed together in a literal Christian sense. There might have been Ancient Egyptian (and Greek) godforms in the ritual, but initiates believed that Christianity was the highest expression of religion that the pagans aspired. Christ was the ideal role model for a human magician.
But things have considerably changed. In the last decade, Christianity has been hijacked by the far right. It has become less about Jesus and more about “Conservative Christian values.” Occultists can’t have a spiritual bedrock in a religious system which calls for one person to hate another because of their race, colour or sexuality. Magically, the Spiritual Christ or Adam Kadmon is a single figure representing all of humanity and cannot be divided. Those without compassion, calling for such divisions, claiming Christianity is their bedrock, have no part of magic and are gaining ground within that religion. Christian occultists find it increasingly difficult to escape the group mind which has contaminated their religion and find themselves having to say “that is not my Christianity”. At the same time, they know that they are swimming in a pool that someone has pissed in.
Controversially, the same thing is happening to Kabbalah. The once sacred letters of Hebrew are being stamped onto bombs involved in the genocide of those in Gaza. One cannot feel that the group mind of Judaism has been contaminated badly by the Far-Right police of Israel. While the religion of Judaism and Kabbalah is terrific, it is starting to be corrupted by the fascist and often atheistic streams of Zionism and hate churned out by Benjamin Netanyahu. The result is that some occultists to “feel bad” when using Hebrew-based systems (even if those systems are far removed from any genocides).
Islam, once the bastion of spiritual and scientific knowledge and magical wisdom, has been dragged down by fundamentalist elements which encourage a conservative hatred of others, which would have been unknown to its founders. The Hamas anti-Jewish hate-based uprising, which fell into Netanyahu’s hands, was far removed from Islamic chivalry, futuwwa, which encompasses virtues such as courage, generosity, justice, respect for women, and selflessness, which are rooted in pre-Islamic Arab ideals of muruwwa and Islamic teachings.
To be fair, the problem works both ways. To create the latest shiny thing, some occult groups have been taking up traditions which they do not clearly understand. For example, Voodoo is a religion of emancipated black slaves, fusing Roman Catholicism with African traditions. However, when you have wealthy white people following a spiritual path, they cannot even comprehend that you end up with over-tattooed goths, pissed and stoned out of their box on DMT, dancing around a pole. You also get a would-be cult leader posting racist mems about black people without even realising it. One must wonder what the Gods who inspired Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henry Christophe to throw off the French yoke of oppression, think about these European pretenders, who are the descendants of those who enslaved them, stealing something else from them.
Religion is supposed to give occultists a moral floor (compassion, restraint, obligation, accountability) and a metaphysical map (what a human is, what the divine is, what transformation is). Some provide a devotional engine (prayer, confession, purification, sacrifice, praise) a community container (tradition, correction, elders, continuity) and a relationship with the sacred that is not just “results”.
When religion loses that moral floor and becomes a tribal identity, the magician is stranded, because the “group mind” stops being a vessel and becomes a contaminant.
Religions are multifaceted systems comprised of a mystical foundation, a body of liturgical practices, ethical guidelines, and an institutional framework. Most modern contamination is happening in the outer two layers. The occultist’s job is to decide which layers they can still inhabit without poisoning their work.
If you stay inside a tradition, the magician needs to stop anchoring themselves as an “I am X”, and move to a daily rule that produces the spiritual substance you need. A workable rule might be a fixed cycle of prayer or devotion (morning and evening minimum) a purification practice (confession, restitution, invoking) and an act of service or repair weekly (religion without charity or compassion becomes cosplay). There should be regular contemplative practice (silence and meditation).
To keep yourself pure within a traditional group mind you should have strict boundaries on political media intake. This will not solve the religion’s public sickness but stops it from taking root your psyche.
Find or build a micro-church, not a crowd Whare Ra worked because it was a contained community with shared discipline. Big religions are now megaphones that enable idiots to shout their stupidity at others for “likes.”
If you feel that the tradition’s moral floor has collapsed, you do a spiritually clean exit. Don’t do the modern move of “I’m still X but not like them” forever. You do a ritual and ethical exit. As part of the ritual you name what you can no longer consent to and formally release your identification.
Always keep what is universal (virtue, prayer, devotion) but consciously choose a new container.
Switch from “religion” to “mystical lineage” if this is appropriate. If the institutional religion is unusable, you anchor to the mystical stream inside it. As a Christian, your anchor could be contemplative, sacramental mysticism, love and forgiveness. A Jewish anchor could lean on ethical monotheism and contemplative Kabbalah, not nationalistic theatre. Islam could emphasise tasawwuf and adab as the spine, avoiding a culture-war performance. This lets you keep the religious engine without swallowing the current political personality grafted onto it.
If you adopt a different tradition, you do it with humility. You don’t grab traditions you don’t understand, then act like spiritual landlords or cult leaders. If you don’t have information, language, context, and restraint, you don’t have the tradition.
If your participation makes you more arrogant, more theatrical, cruel, you’re not “initiated”, you’re just up your own arse and believing your own bullshit.
The final decision is challenging. You deliberately form a new synthesis, which can be an enticing risk in occultism, though at times it is necessary.
If you do it, it has to be built like an adult with clear metaphysics, explicit ethics, devotional practice, and serious constraints against cult dynamics. It is best if you keep your synthesis to yourself (even if it is good). The last thing you want to be is a prophet of the new Aeon, it always ends badly and in disappointment.
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It amazes me how so many traditions follow these ancient protocols and roles,