Books on the occult and magic

So I joined some occult group on Facebook a while back and it had a lot of "rare"old PDF books (examples in the pic) and I feel as if they are either all written very vaguely,sounds like mumbo jumbo or expect you to know a lot from the start.

What I want to learn is.

What is real magic -Do the real "magicans" really think they are casting spells and summoning demons.Or is it more that it's a specific way to dril a thought into your own head so you "succeed" in some sort of way.
I've herd different people say both.
The latter more to do with the fact that the origins of magic come from language and language causes effects in the mind and it's went from there.

>How have People come to make up these spells and rituals or found out about them if they are real ?
how has someone discovered that in the bottom left pic ?
>origins of symbolism-I was reading last night about the hidden hand pose.
>meditating with a god or the tree of life as the focus.What will you achieve by doing this in the long run?

I keep going onto one thing and because their is a lot to digest It can me an hour to read 10 pages in some of these books because of how new or hard to read everything is.

Where should I start ?

Crowley, Evola

>Amazon exists
>rare books.

There's no such thing as magic. There is however, confirmation bias, echo-chambers, image-consciousness and wishful thinking.

People will often argue this thinking that not everything can be reduced to science. What they mean to say is that not everything can be explained by current scientific understanding. So if a phenomenon were in fact something "more" than what science has thusfar explained, scientists would gather like ants on a cookie looking for the career break that would come with explaining what it was, what it's made of, how it worked, and why we never noticed before.
That's why there is no such thing as magic, ghosts, psychic phenomena, or miracles. Welcome to adult life.

I read Crowley is a load of shit.

I don't think it really is magic in a magical way.I do know what you are saying though.

I just want to know what these people are getting out of it.
What are the real benefits of "crushing bones mixing them with rosemary the burning them as a candle while facing east and shouting out a mantra 5x"

People pray in all religions and we could say the same about them.Why do they do it.Well most of them are just hoping they go to a better place.
These occultst people are supposedly gaining something before they die.
But what ?
If it's fake,what makes them Continue throughout the years with different spells ?

What they're getting from it is the same as what people get from religion. An accessible way to hide away from the terrifying realization that they don't understand the universe or have any empirical answer to how to behave in it. Children love stories.

The western esoteric tradition is just a suppressed religious tradition. Magic is essentially a pagan mysticism thay survived Christianity by going underground and cloaking itself in different language.

Like with Christianity, you can pray (or do rituals) for desired effects in this life. The main goal, however, is to prepare for the next life. (Plato the pagan once described philosophy the same way as "preparation for death")

I'm surprised good answers like these haven't been buried in all the religious garbage in Veeky Forums

You misuse the word "empirical".

>empirical: gained through ordinary experience

The world, therefore, is full of empirical judgments on how to behave, because those empirical judgments are only estimations based on experience (as opposed to reason), and not certainly and necessarily true.

It is the categorical judgment that is rarer and harder to reach, and this is, I think, what you mean instead of empirical.

Indeed.

Best description of science I've ever read.