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Current mood:  blessed Category: Life
Busting the Myth: What is 'Occulture'?
What is ‘Occulture’? You’re living in it. The influence of the occult is all around you – you just won’t see it unless you know where, or more importantly, how to look.
The word occult derives from the Latin root occultus – to hide. By definition, the occult is ‘that which is hidden’. For millennia, the secret yet powerful manipulations of mystics and magicians have exerted untold influence over every civilisation the world has ever known. In fact, it could be argued that without the occult sciences at work behind the scenes, civilisation as we understand it may never have existed at all.
You could be forgiven for thinking that ‘the occult’ begins and ends with devil worship, with tacky dragon statues and grown ups furtively reading Harry Potter novels during the daily commute. You may believe that occultism is simply the preserve of the angst-ridden adolescent or the hopeless escapist. If so, you couldn’t be more wrong.
Any conspiracy buff will tell you that the influence of the occult is everywhere. But what about the incredible force for positive change that occultism might offer us? That story is just as well documented, but it’s not so freely acknowledged. Why so?
Occultism represents an invisible hand that has helped guide society since the beginning of organised human culture. For instance, did you know that Isaac Newton and the founders of the Royal Society were enthusiastic alchemists as well as physicists? Or that the British Empire was the brainchild of Elizabethan magus Dr John Dee, the court astrologer and secret agent whose moniker was ‘007’? Were you aware that Chaucer based many of his stories on originals written by an Arab mystic, or that the largest occult library in the world is to be found in the Vatican? Were you aware that the Surrealists were heavily inspired by esoteric philosophy, or that the American inventor of solid rocket fuel was a student of Aleister Crowley? And why did CG Jung, influential psychologist and student of Sigmund Freud, put so much stock in esoteric symbolism?
In the modern world, artists and musicians have continued to draw from the inexhaustible well of occultism as a spur to greater creativity: Joseph Beuys, Antonin Artaud, Kenneth Anger, David Lynch, Tool, even the Klaxons and Dan Brown… all have sought to bring the esoteric worldview into their arts and thus to the wider world.
Yet still, this rich and vital stream of human endeavour remains an object of derision. Why?
Perhaps it is because the true occultist is a star, a freedom fighter against the tyranny of spiritual oppression. The occult arts aim to empower the individual through personal experimentation instead of cowed acceptance of the status quo. Occultism enables the practitioner to transcend the rigid structures and conventions laid down by those who have much to fear from individual spiritual freedom. The esoteric practitioner is a mountain goat, not a sheep in a herd. By fearlessly accepting personal responsibility for his or her own spiritual development, the occultist has endured centuries of persecution by those who would have us all meekly conform to the consensus of the group.
Today, the last bastion of socially acceptable prejudice is not racism, sexism or homophobia, it’s the complete dismissal, derision and social rejection of the esoteric worldview. It’s time this prejudice was exposed for what it is. It’s time such discrimination was challenged and finally conquered, once and for all.
In 2000, the Occulture Festival was founded to challenge this unacceptable bias against occultism and spiritual freedom. Occulture provides a platform for free expression without fear of oppression, persecution or ridicule. Our mission has always been to rebuild the bridges between the seen and the unseen, to celebrate freedom of mind, body and spirit. We are seeing many signs of success. Together we can break down the last prejudice and release the beauty and power of true spiritual and artistic freedom from the shadows, where it has languished for far too long.
A. Dobbie
3:37 PM
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