Is the Occult evil?

I know witches who have banded together in hordes of thousands to curse the people who harm innocent children, animals and people for no reason other than amusement.

I know people who dabble in magic, who cast spells and wishes for the sick to heal.

I know people who have cast spells on abusers, to make them realize that they're evil and to help them change their ways.

There are witches who use spells to remind themselves to take care of themselves because nobody else will.

They are not automatically evil. A person who picks up a sword is not immediately a killer. A person who uses magic can be kind, helpful, caring and wonderful.

It is like a blade; you can use it to kill millions and hurt them beyond what morals tell you. But you can also use it to protect people and heal yourself, using discipline and commitment.

Not everyone who uses magic is evil. Not everyone who uses it isn't. A pastor can preach love, but he can also destroy lives.

Before I say anything else, let me state that I do believe in a spiritual realm, and I do not believe that all of it is good.

So, the dangers would be those of interacting with spiritual forces from the ‘wrong side of the fence’. The main strategies of that side of the fence are temptation, deception, accusation and destruction.

You can end up tempted to do things that are not good for you. It can mess with your mind so you end up believing things you might not otherwise have believed and are in fact false.

You can end up caught in a guilt cycle, so there’s no point in trying to get out.

It can end up destroying your life, as you end up enslaved to destructive habits, perhaps even insane and once you are deemed ‘no longer useful’ by the spiritual forces underlying the occult, you might well end up dead.

We keep it secret from ourselves by our inability to understand what is being said in symbols and the cycles of life. As an example, when I first started my occult studies over 40 years ago, I couldn't get my head around what occultists said were the two major forces in the universe, the Spirit of Christ and the Spirit of Lucifer.

I struggled with the concept. Years later, I looked at the Chinese Tao, which called these forces Yin and Yang, and showed how they interspersed with the universe. So simple to understand. There is no need for grandiose titles. So, intersperse your occult learning with a good dose of simplicity.

People demonize what they don't understand. Dogmatic Christianity associates it with evil because they want to keep you from doing any internal work.

As for me... my magick is dark ...dark as the night... I am capable of great good and untold evil in equal measure ... YOU decide which side of my fence you want to sit on - but I will deliver divine retribution on anyone who crosses me without just cause and I will take everything from you before I take YOU.

The majority of the people think of occult and witchcraft as evil because most of them have no understanding of the subject. The other reason is that there are plenty of evil people and fraudsters who practice occult and witchcraft for personal gain taking advantage of the superstitious beliefs of the people.

These evil acts like human sacrifices to appease the gods or the devil bring bad publicity. There are plenty of crimes investigated in the police records of human sacrifices by Tantrics or of people torturing women accused as witches and put to death. There is also the role of the organised religious clergy who do not like non conformist people and are bent on prosecuting such people. This type of persecution of people have been going on since the ancient times.

The religious persecution of individuals suspected to be witches or practitioners of the occult have been recorded since the ancient times. Many scientists like Galileo were prosecuted and many had to face the inquisition in which there was lengthy examination and cross examinations and those who refused to recant faced torture, and most were forced to toe the official line.

Hopefully we have emerged from the dark ages but to believe that such practices do not exist is to live in a fool's paradise.

Ain Soph Aur - Patrick Gaffiero