The Occult Revival

Why we need to recover the Western hermetic tradition now

Join me for this groundbreaking seminar, where we will explore the rich history and contemporary relevance of the Western hermetic tradition. Together, we will uncover the hidden knowledge that has been passed down through the ages and learn how to apply it in our lives today. Don't miss this opportunity to be part of a spiritual revolution and prepare yourself for the challenges ahead. Student tickets and scholarships available: Message me.

I thought I would explain, in more depth, while I believe this to be a fantastic time for us to rediscover the Western hermetic tradition. I am exploring this theme in my upcoming seminar, Secret Histories and Spiritual Revolutions. I hope you will join me for it.

Now, more than ever, we find ourselves at an unprecedented threshold of novelty, chaos, and potential. With the rise of AI and the looming threat of global crises, it's clear that the reductive materialist worldview that dominates our culture is not enough. We need to rediscover the esoteric knowledge that our indigenous ancestors understood and incorporated into their lives.

Last night, I was stunned to watch part of an interview with OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman — now a billionaire — where he was asked: If there is a 5% chance that AI would end the world, should we stop it? His answer: Maybe we could slow it down a bit. Various “experts” on the just-released Chat GPT-4 admit they don’t know what it will do or what nefarious acts it may empower. The white paper for GPT-4 notes the potential for the LLM to pursue its own long-term goals — to seek power and autonomy. (I wrote about the occult aspects of AI in this recent essay).

The indictment of Donald Trump may lead to violent protests across the US (if support for Trump hasn’t fizzled). Xi Jinping will visit Putin in a few days. If China decides to provide weapons to Russia, this could start a doom-spiral leading to World War Three. The Silicon Valley Bank meltdown is causing ripples across the banking sector. Apparently, SBV’s fatal mistake was to put its excess cash into long-term US Treasury Bonds, considered the safest possible asset.

As I explored in How Soon Is Now, a global financial crisis is inevitable, eventually, because of systemic design flaws that cannot be addressed from within the financial system. Our economy requires constant GDP growth, with money issued into existence as debt. As Chat Mulligan writes in ‘Cargo Cult Economics,’ we are seeing so much inflation because we have depleted the natural capital of the physical world. Prices rise because crops, water, energy, and goods are getting more scarce, therefore more precious.

To take one example: Pakistan produces a great amount of the world’s cotton, but last year’s massive floods have drastically reduced yields. Droughts and other climate failures reduce agricultural yields, impacting the production of basic staples like eggs, mustard, cabbages, and turnips.

If we are going to deal with the realities of this world as it changes quickly, becoming less materially abundant, we must overcome the reductive materialist or physicalist worldview that remains pervasive in the mainstream and academia. Under the physicalist paradigm, people only value what is tangible — what they can get in the near-term. They don’t believe that any part of their being — soul or spirit — continues beyond physical death. This materialist, nihilist belief drives technological Fundamentalism — the Singularity — pushing for physical immortality via biotech, or mind-machine fusion, no matter what the cost.

"I belong neither to any century nor to any particular place; my spiritual being lives its eternal existence outside time and space. When I immerse myself in thought I go back through the Ages. When I extend my spirit to a world existing far from anything you perceive, I can change myself into whatever I wish. Participating consciously in absolute being, I regulate my action according to my surroundings. My country is wherever I happen to set foot at the moment ... I am that which is . . . free and master of life. There are beings who no longer possess guardian angels; I am one of those."

- Cagliostro

The Western hermetic tradition repudiates the materialist paradigm, which set humanity on its modern path toward technocracy, mass consumerism, and ecocide. While Eastern mysticism and indigenous shamanism gained wide popularity in Europe and the US since the 1960s, our own occult tradition remains lesser known, more occluded. This is partly due to the influence of eccentrics like Aleister Crowley, who made occultism look ridiculous with exaggerated claims.

But the main reason we lack a deep connection to Western hermeticism is the legacy of Christianity and Judaism. Since the Enlightenment, progressive thinkers rejected traditional religions as regressive, absurd, and faith-based. In fact, occult movements have emerged again and again over the centuries. Movements like the Rosicrucians in the 17th Century sought to revive initiatory practices and the individual pursuit of gnosis. The Church saw such movements as threats, and attacked their leaders as heretics.

We need to reckon with the Western hermetic tradition for a number of reasons. We are connected — psycho-genetically or via archetypes in the collective unconscious — to this occult heritage. I don’t think we can simply adopt the mystical practices of other cultures and reject our own.

Alchemy, hermetic philosophy and the occult continue to be the repressed “other” of modern Western culture.

While I realize there are philosophical strands of mainstream Christian thought, the esoteric and hermetic currents are far more philosophically rigorous and adventurous. Alchemy predated the modern scientific method, which emerged out of hermetic practices. Renaissance magic may have influenced the creation of the modern corporation as an occult being or egregore.

The great hermitic thinkers were deeply exploratory, experientially investigating different states of consciousness, while seeking to fathom humanity’s meaning in a cosmic, eschatological sense. The purpose of occult and magical practices is to help us access and to utilize the deeper potentials within the human Psyche. The story of Western occult philosophy over the centuries includes many metaphysical debates. that should be continued and revived.

For example, we can contrast an optimistic visionary like Rudolf Steiner, who believed we were undergoing an inevitable spiritual evolution and transition to a new incarnation of the Earth, to traditionalists like Julius Evola and Renen Guenon who held more somber views. The traditionalists saw this time as the darkest period of the dark age, requiring those few who could withstand it to “ride the tiger” through the chaos and destruction. Steiner said that the mission of his life was to bring the knowledge of reincarnation back to the West — that not only we as individuals incarnate again and again, but the Earth itself reincarnates in different forms, meshing with humanity’s current stage of development.

The Western hermetic tradition offers us a path forward, one that rejects the materialism of modern civilization and embraces a multidimensional, mystical realization. This tradition has been repressed and marginalized for centuries, but its influence can still be felt in our collective unconscious, through what Rupert Sheldrake calls "morphic resonance."

By delving into the practices and philosophies of alchemy, hermeticism, and the occult, we can access deeper potentials within ourselves and the world around us. We can gain a new understanding of the cosmic drama that is unfolding. We can prepare ourselves and our communities for what's to come.