In my world the occult is not hidden at all, so it's almost a wonderment to me when I run into someone to whom the occult world is not only hidden but also mysterious and even scary. At the same time, I can understand, and even relate. As a younger person, I was a part of a closed group of Catholics who had formed their own community during a time which they declared the Pope to be against the teachings of the Catholic traditions. It was a time when the whole world was changing and evolving. While the main stream said that Elvis was dead, rock was king, and hippies tried to get people to read the schedule of social conformity between the lines, in the religious world the Catholic Church was drastically changed by the transcribing of the traditional mass service from Latin to English. While this may have been welcomed by many at this time of great evolution in the human collective, the group of which I was a part saw this as a move by the dark forces to overcome the traditional Tridentine Latin Mass and render impotent its power. As a result, our group saw the world as a hostile place, filled with evil that threatened the survival of our souls.
The interior of the main chapel at Mt. St. Michaels Church in Spokane WA where I was a parishioner. Photograph by Fr. James Martin SJ @ Facebook.com.
I grew up in this spirit, with the traditional Christian idea of God as an older white man with a beard who sits on a throne next to his son on the right, and a dove that depicts the Holy Ghost on the left. The traditional cast of characters also included the virgin Mary, the mother of Christ who is also God's son, hundreds of saints and a host of angels including the four Archangels and many additional choirs such as the Seraphim, the Cherubim and one we are perhaps most familiar with, The Guardian Angels. As always with tales of the good are tales of the resistance to that good which is ever present in all theologies. In the Catholic tradition, the resistance is led by the "Father of All Lies" also known as Satan. Satan rules hell along with his legions who assist him by leading souls to hell through temptations of the flesh. In other traditions, good and evil are depicted in different ways and with different casts of characters.
If any of this sounds familiar, you may have been raised in a very traditional Christian or Catholic household. Maybe only some of it sounds familiar because you were raised in a more unitarian sect or one that focuses more on the heroes of the story and less on the villains. Possibly you recognize some of the story from the recent Netflix series Lucifer! Regardless of how you heard, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with the occult. The answer is perhaps more mysterious that you think!
Occult is a term that literally means hidden. So why is it associated with "demonic" images like Satan and activities that are laced with evil intent?
In order to scratch the surface of the answer to this question, we will have to take a step back into our ancient past.
Many times we hide things because we don't want others to see them for one reason or another. Maybe we are afraid what we need to hide will be taken because it is something valuable. But no matter the period, humans have regarded their valuables and privacy in similar ways. In very ancient times, among the most valuable of possessions were the tales that told of the origin of our existence. This information was conveyed by wise persons from tribe to tribe through stories that held both elements of truth and metaphor. Such stories were told by peoples all over the world, usually in the particular contextual language of their culture, but always in the same relative pattern. For example, the stories told by ancient civilizations often discussed the beginning of time, the formation of space and time, the emergence of deities, the creation of the earth and its creatures, and the emergence of mankind. Some stories also discussed how the universe was structured, how the many dimensions of the earth were formed, and how to utilize the structure and laws of the universe to affect changes in the physical nature of reality. These specific types of knowledge and practices, which are now known to many as magick, or sorcery, were the most highly regarded of all the ancient secrets.
Over time civilizations formed such as prehistoric Egypt and Ancient Sumer where tribal wisdoms began to congeal into the stories that eventually characterized these civilizations as we know them today. But because the stories weren't simply tall tales but actual methodologies for dealing with the world around them, these ancient civilizations sprang up as order out of chaos, and began to become highly organized, codifying and implementing their ways in patterns and cycles in accordance with the spreading agricultural way of life. If one would ever wonder as to why people believed the way that they did at the time, it was precisely because by following their laws and codes, they saw real change and evolution in their lifestyle for the greater good. The things they believed in worked by and large! Civilization before that time was hardly organized save for the most rudimentary of villages, and though truths about origins were then known throughout the conscious world, this world was confined to the Eastern Continent and even then, mostly to Africa and its northern reaching territories.
Ancient Egypt art. Paleocontact frescoes. First contact. Spaceship UFO over pyramids. Aliens and egyptians. Ancient astronauts visited Earth, old stone murals. Adobe Stock Lic #308182173
It is still a mystery to many people of the earth how our infamous African ancestors came by the knowledge they were found to eventually possess, but the ancient teachings have much to say on this subject. Throughout both African, Indian and South American lore are found tales of star people visiting fledgling human civilizations to bring them sacred knowledge of their beginnings and their place in the universe. Though it may be hard to imagine star people coming down from the heavens and sharing "magick" with us, it is hard to refute that a great deal of the knowledge that came from the ancient Egyptian civilization contains astounding wisdom that our modern sciences are only just understanding. In addition, they left behind some of the most amazing and enduring architectural structures the world has ever seen. We still don't exactly know how the people of the time engineered the pyramids and put them together, though we do have some pretty plausible guesses, but even if we did guess the right method, we are always left wondering the exact ignition point of the human civilization's exponential evolution
Dendera temple or Temple of Hathor. Egypt. Dendera, Denderah, is a small town in Egypt. Dendera Temple complex, one of the best-preserved temple sites from ancient Upper Egypt. Adobe Stock Lic #308182173
What we can say for sure is that at the turn of the prehistoric era, homo sapiens took a giant leap forward and were able to demonstrate and preserve knowledge that seemed far beyond where their evolution had been for so many centuries past. Some ancient wisdom teachings say that this happened because the consciousness within the species had evolved to a state where they were ready to receive and process more complex information. Whatever the truth behind it, the evolution catapulted the world into a completely new era with a largely expanded worldview and lifestyle practices. Magick to us was a sacred science to people of this time. Those who knew and understood the biological world, wielded unexplainable powers that could both be conceived as mystical and terrifying, but there was one crucial difference that separated the powers of ancient adepts from today's biologists, physicists, and mathematicians.
“As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul…” ― Hermes Trismegistus
That one crucial difference was that the ancient adepts derived their knowledge of the world from their knowledge of the structure of the universe, which included the components of consciousness and the etheric energy behind the creation of matter. This knowledge was holistic because it contained the whole truth, and gave an inherent understanding to the approach of interacting with the world, vs. the objective approach that we now regard as pristine science. As objective observers we do not know or understand what we are seeing at first. We observe and then draw conclusions. We see if we can repeat these conclusions and then we proceed to define what we have found but only that which is repeatably the same. In a way this approach is like a child trying to understand its own mother as if she was an alien and they had no sense of coming from her and no memory of their growth with her by their side. In a sense, we have lost who we are along with the loss of the occult sciences.
The reasons for our loss, and our current attitudes about science are intimately connected with why "occult" secrets eventually went into hiding. They are also connected to why people have largely disconnected from the biological world, our evolutionary mother.
It is a long tale, and one that through many such stories I hope to be able to fully tell. The long and short of it is that from the time of ancient Egypt, many civilizations rose and fell. The sacred sciences were taught far and wide for a time, but the human heart became selfish and greedy. Eventually civilizations began to war and conquer each other, imposing each their own brand of theology onto their conquered territories. In a story I will later reveal, the Romans came upon the knowledge of the ancients and essentially turned it inside out, externalizing the esoteric and utilizing its tenets to entrap the minds and hearts of its citizens. They starved out and erased the most influential civilizations and rewrote their histories, stealing their stories and burying most keys to the sacred sciences under millions of tons of rubble and ash, while retaining a secret repository for their own use. A new era of civilization had once again dawned. In this era the secrets were cast in the shadows and demonized to frighten people from ever recognizing the truth.
Though the history of our occult past is dim, the light of truth has ever endured in the flames of the lanterns of adepts who have kept it burning throughout the centuries. The teachings of the sacred sciences once accessible to the known world, became shrouded in mysterious language, encoded by wise and learned individuals who held sacred and close the keys to their powerful knowledge. In the world of daylight, the written secrets were hunted and burned while adepts were tortured and murdered. The knowledge was cast as demonic and unsavory in the public eye, the opposite of what was good and godly, the stuff of darkest intent and blackest magick. And so it was that the knowledge became darkened and lost to time, except to those few who carefully and quietly preserved it to our present day.
In this current dawning of the Dwapara Yuga and the Age of Information, also known as the Age of Aquarius, the secrets of the adepts have once again made their way to the still quiet but growing crop of new initiates. Already in the last few centuries, we have seen the rise and fall of several incredible adepts and influential leaders who have left the world with their profound teachings. The light of truth will never die. During this age, the keys will once again be revealed, and the present body that represents the occult will be lost to the light of awareness.
If you have never heard of occult truths represented in this way, or even if you have and would like to learn more, please subscribe and follow, as I continue to reveal a greater story of our occult history and shed light on the amazing and beautiful practices that can profoundly affect our lives and help us live more fully and joyfully.
~VKW