I'm new here, but I find the idea of authenticity to be confusing. Do we mean proper handling of falsifiable assertions? Or is it a judgement of dedication to certain practice? Does it mean a proper understanding of source materials? Surely a beginner who is earnestly trying to learn could be considered authentic. Maybe inauthentic would be someone pretending to have knowledge that they don't. I am completely inexperienced with the occult, is there an aspect of dogmatism to it? The information I find most valuable offers a novel (to me) perspective that can guide introspection, discovery and empathy.
First of all, this thread is specific to those with a significant online presence and as such does not really apply to people who are new the field. If you're making an effort to orient, learn, practice diligently, and reflect honestly and thoughtfully, you're as "authentic" as can be.
You raise some decent issues, however. Part of the problem with this field is that the truths that really matter are not exactly objective, or at least not straightforwardly so. This is not to say that they are "subjective" either. Those categories don't really work here, but that is another topic. As such, there is no external authority or reference that we can look to when seeking to determine whether what someone is saying is true gold or whether they are just talking out their ass. Ultimately the only way to know is to check what they are saying against our own experience, but this can involve significant time and effort, and a lot of people aren't deeply enough in touch with their experience to really trust it anyway. In response, many people look for proxies - "falsifiable assertions," grounding in specific "source material," etc- by which they can evaluate someone's teaching. This is ok to an extent, and certainly if someone is making claims about specific source material we should want those claims to be accurate, but this kind of scholarly knowledge never really reaches the heart of the matter. Ultimately the only way to know what's real is to spend time exploring and deepening oneself and perhaps getting enlightened, or something like that. The more you do, the clearer it becomes who is speaking from a place of deep knowing and who is either just making up utter crap or just parroting other people's teachings without having gone through the relevant transformation or allowing unhealed emotional patterns to distort their understanding. And really there is always going to be a degree of uncertainty. That's just how life is.
I think you're exactly on target when you say "The information I find most valuable offers a novel (to me) perspective that can guide introspection, discovery and empathy." Keep that open, reflective, heart-centered approach and you'll do just fine.
