The Armchair Occultist

All too often, I read someone pouring scorn on those who read books and never actually get stuck in to calling up demons, or whatever the book calls us to do. This is as shortsighted as claiming that people who watch travel shows and never actually go anywhere are wasting their time.

While it is true that it is better to travel than to read about travel, nevertheless it is infinitely better to read about travel than not to even think about travel. As any occultist worth anything knows, travelling on the astral plane (including reading books about foreign places) has its value. Sometimes, in fact, the book experience can be even greater than the real thing; compare, for example, a tale of intrigue set in Venice by moonlight with sitting in St. Mark's Square surrounded by tourists. Now I have been to Venice twice, and I dearly love the place; there are real-life facets to the place that you will never find in books - sleepy squares with cats strolling across them, a child riding a tricycle that stopped me in my tracks - shocking me into realizing just how accustomed I had gotten to a life without traffic - markets bustling with strange fish - but nothing in real life Venice really compared with the mystique of books I have read and movies I have seen - Death in Venice, the comfort of strangers, and so on.

Having been to many rituals, I have to say most were a huge disappointment, not living up to my expectations by a huge margin. As I said before, clearly I dont have the right friends who invite me to the right sort of rituals. But then the alternative is to realize that the rituals conjured up by the books in my library are an unfair comparison. Simply put, reality cannot compete with the world of the imagination - of the magical. No matter how many kids buy "Harry Potter" magic wands (tm) and wave them in the air, nothing competes in that experience with reading the books.

Exploring the world of the imagination is in fact the very core of the magical experience, and you're far more likely to get joy out of that than standing in a chalk circle and gesturing at a triangle.

To those of course who succeed in calling up demons, I wish you the best. But not everyone has your skill. Reading books and conjuring things up in our imaginations is the farthest many people will ever go.  But what a journey that is.