The Lonely Savage

For the past ten years, I’ve had a fascination with religion that borders on the insane. I’ve gone out of my way to learn everything I can find in these fields, especially when it came to their more mystical aspects. Mysticism always interested me and the way to spiritual enlightenment seemed like such a worthwhile goal to me. I read and practiced the meditation, the ritual sacrifices, the magick rituals and all other things that would lead me to the exalted state of enlightenment. Today, I wonder if this was not just one more expression of the nihilistic hedonism that our society seems to be raising up on a pedestal and whether or not my brainwashing was more total than I ever thought.

I grew up on what I considered to be revolutionary thinkers and I decided never to conform. I was reading Robert Anton Wilson’s theories on Quantum Psychology when most of my friends in high school were discovering online pornography. I had finished (re-)reading all of Timothy Leary a second time when my closest friends were falling in love and finding somebody to settle down with. I read Nietzsche, Kant, Heidegger, Hume and Spinoza on my way to and from work while most of my colleagues seemed most interested in Dan Brown or the latest Wallander. I didn’t think I was better than anybody else (Okay, so maybe I thought I was a little bit better), but I did feel annoyed over how so few people actively sought to challenge their perceptions of their surroundings and expand their consciousness.

Some time in early months of 2000, when I was first introduced to the magick of Aleister Crowley, I thought that this was a great way for me to continue developing my mind. The system contained what I recognized to be several ways to separate yourself from your perceptions, to free yourself from preconceived opinions. It seemed like a studious application of these theories and methods would lead me ever closer to “enlightenment”, whatever that was supposed to mean. That bit was never really clear. Either way, I joined the ranks of the Ordo Templi Orientis and was in short order initiated up to 2°, which is where I decided to leave the order. I have, since, been involved with yet another occult order which I also decided to leave.

It seems today, when I’ve had the good fortune of hindsight, that the continual strivings of the new age culture seems to be nothing more than an egotistical masturbation of the spirit that fails to reach climax. We use high and lofty words where we say we want to engage in some mystical unio dei and become part of God Himself. We say we want to “see the light” and become illuminated. We want to understand ourselves and our deepest and most basic urges. Some even say that they do it because they want to find themselves. Yet we’re all spiritually impotent because we resort to blame games, holier-than-thou tactics and the inevitable “my occult order/worldview is better than yours”-style of debate.

I don’t know about your experiences, dear reader, and I am forced to speak from my own, but I have found that most of these ‘enlightened’ people look the other way when a homeless man asks for coins. They narrow their field of vision until they’ve arrived in a self aggrandizing existence where nothing is important but the continual – yet impotent – improval of the self. In some ways, these people are the spiritual equivalent to the bodybuilder, but they have far less to show for it. How can one measure another’s enlightenment? How can we determine how well somebody knows himself?

Occultism, while it boasts an incredibly beautiful imagery and system of references and symbols, is nothing more than an impotent nihilistic hedonism. While I’m sure that many people have undergone real and measurable positive change through various methods, I’m equally sure that applied psychology is a better bet when it comes to actual changework. While I know that many people, though the study and application of the occult, now feel better about themselves, I wonder if they ever stop to consider if enough other people feel better about them due to these studies.