“Prohibited, Occulted and Scorned” — Individuation vs Institutionalization
“The occulting of ideas, especially those that empower individuation and spirituality as opposed to ideas which offer institutionalization and religiosity, has been taking place since . . . around the first century.”
- From The Tao of Thoth by Ethan Indigo Smith
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I try to get in half-an-hour of metaphysical reading every morning while on my treadmill, and I often find that I have to stop and ponder whenever I encounter an interesting idea or I will lose the thought. Today was no different.
First a caveat: The Tao of Thoth is not the most well-written of esoteric tomes (at times the syntax is atrocious). Smith’s words can be more than a little imprecise and dance around the subject; they frequently disregard economy of expression, reminding me of Dickens, whom I once characterized as “never using 10 words when 100 words would do.” Too often, when he should be tearing out the jugular of his prey, he indulges in “capillary excision” of the minutest scope and significance; it feels like excruciatingly petty microsurgery, although he does make his points well enough once granted some literary leeway by the reader.
His mention of 1st-Century “occulting of ideas” is obviously aimed at the Christian Church’s suppression and appropriation of paganism’s natural spirituality, which — when outright condemnation wasn’t the goal — it endeavored to sanitize and sanctify as accepted dogma, obviously for the purpose of enticing its benighted followers into the fold. When the carrot didn’t work, they resorted to the stick (vis the Spanish Inquisition). The whole idea of Christianity being a glorified form of Sun worship (like many of the earlier “dying-and-resurrected god” faiths that preceded it) was conveniently mislaid as part of the allegorical revisionism of early Christian thought and its focus on purging any vestiges of pantheism. The immediacy of a “cult of personality” was much easier to sell to the unsophisticated than the symbolic deification of remote celestial phenomena standing in for “God” (although it could be argued that the Sun is more essential to life on Earth than religion).
Things have been going downhill for the occult arts since the Enlightenment, with the rational materialist’s script resembling the “group-think” of George Orwell. (I don’t suppose any of them — other than theoretical physicists — ever took to heart Hamlet’s advice to Horatio). I’ve never been a fan of spoon-fed ideologies (even when they’re for <intoning dramatically like Timothy Dalton in Hot Fuzz> “the Greater Good “), and certainly not of the patriarchal “Father-knows-best” kind that smacks too much of mind-control to be tolerated. If I were going to be an Earth-based male archetype, I would take the contemplative Hermit over the hidebound Hierophant any day, and even the misanthropic Devil in some situations.
Smith goes on to say:
“Such continues through to today, perhaps most recently in the . . . occulting of Chinese cultural history” (by Mao’s Cultural Revolution) “including Taoist concepts . . . which have been variously eliminated from consideration or entirely secreted just like all teachings pertaining to self-development. This commonality is due to the rebellious nature of self-development. The more developed the individual, the more enlightened groups are and the less necessary institutions become. Hermetics and anything related to Thoth has been (similarly) prohibited, occulted and scorned and the Tao has been variously scorned and continuously occulted as well.”
But I’m sensing that there is something of a metaphysical renaissance in the works. Now, where I used to get “You don’t really believe in that stuff, do you?” from smirking skeptics, I sometimes hear the equivalent of “Enlighten me!” from curious fence-sitters. Unfortunately, the veneer of populist enthusiasm that clings to the practice of divination along with the rise of social-media purveyors tend to work against an earnest appreciation of the underlying philosophy that has been in place for centuries. As Smith observes: “The occulting of authenticity and intermingling of institutional dilution of the philosophical value and individuation potential thereof degraded self-development practices.” (Huh? Now there’s some convoluted word-smithing!)
The term “dilution” resonates strongly when I consider the content being offered by many (but not all) YouTube presenters, and the ongoing profusion of inane “thinks-or-feels” questions regarding the attitude of other people toward the querent. In that sense, the psychological goals and benefits of enhanced self-awareness and self-improvement ascribed to the serious practice of divination (although I think they are grossly overstated) seem much more constructive than the idle furtherance of one’s social persona and agenda.
The internet entrepreneurs who dish out mystical “feel-good” hyperbole to love-befuddled malcontents are turning the Lynyrd Skynyrd song on its head: “Ask me some questions and I will tell you some lies.” Or at least some speculative guesswork that can always be disavowed as “for entertainment only” if put to the test and found wanting. Let the buyer beware . . .
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on December 9, 2024.
