It makes no sense to me to practice something that a religion created or promotes, what place do religions have in the occult?
Interesting take, Victor. But you do realize that if we stripped away everything in the occult that was born from, shaped by, or scaffolded through religion, there really wouldn’t be much left, right? Ceremonial magick? Built on Christian and Jewish models. The LBRP? Hebrew psalms, archangelic names. Thelema? A heady mix of Egyptian deities, Biblical symbolism, and Eastern mysticism. Even Satanism and Luciferianism can’t exist without Christianity, they’re defined
in contrast to it.
That’s not an endorsement, it’s just the historical landscape. Religion was the operating system. Magick was a function built into it.
Personally, I reject the Abrahamic framework. I had to do a shit ton of internal excavation to see demons without the “fallen angel” lens. I don’t use LBRP. I don’t invoke names I don’t believe in. And as someone with Aphantasia, visualization rituals do nothing for me. But that’s me, not a universal rule. Others make it work just fine, and that makes it cool.
Animism, sure, that’s a different story (unless Shamanism falls into it somehow, still learning about it to be honest). But outside of animistic or indigenous worldviews (which aren’t usually grouped with Western occultism), most modern systems trace their roots back to religious ground. We don’t have to worship those gods or accept the dogma, but we
do need to be honest about where these practices came from.
And that’s why I’m puzzled by your dismissal of chaos magick. It was literally created to
escape dogma and religious frameworks, to make belief modular, not mandatory. If you’re critiquing ceremonial magick’s religious baggage, chaos magick is the
solution, not the problem. Just a perspective that might be worth re-visiting.
And since this thread is about meditation, let me pull it back there for a moment. Yes, meditation as we commonly understand it has roots in Eastern religious systems but no single religion
owns the practice of turning inward, observing the mind, or cultivating stillness. Meditation isn't dogma; it's a
technique. It’s one of many ways a magician can develop presence, focus, and energetic awareness. Can you do that through dance, drumming, hiking, or even trance-inducing breathwork instead? Hell yes. The goal doesn't have to be to follow a tradition blindly, it can be to sharpen the instrument. If meditation helps someone master their awareness, connect to their own current, or command their internal state, then it’s a valid tool. Not all tools have to pass a religious purity test to be useful in your kit. We all inherit our scaffolding from somewhere, East met West long ago, and whether we like it or not, some of what we call 'magick' was shaped by that exchange too.
I actually appreciate that you brought this up, seriously. It’s a deep wound in Western occultism that we rarely unpack. We’ve all had to confront it in our own way. The deeper work of magick often isn’t in the ritual, it’s in unraveling the frameworks we’ve inherited and choosing what to rebuild. Damn the topic of wrestling religions scaffolding in magick/occult should be its own thread to be honest, it's a rich topic we could all get something out of in my opinion, or it could turn into a verbal mosh pit. Either way, I'd watch the hell out of it hahahaha.
Last thing Victor, I love that you dont go along to get along! Disagreeing is healthy and pushes all of us to either strengthen our beliefs on something, or change.
My only add is that, IMO, it's that magick is a function of being human ("an edge condition of normal human consciousness"), and religion exploits that function.
