Is there any legitimate knowledge to gained from looking into occultism and other magick woo?

What the fuck are you talking about. I would just like some old literature about occultism. No retarded Satanism please.

I've read the official accounts and statements from the Salem witch trials, I would like to read more stuff like that. Any recs?

1: some people will believe anything

2: you can make money off these people if you tell them the right things

humanity fell out of the garden of eden (innocence) when language was invented, now pain it's not just pain but it has a word associated with it "pain" (meaning), that can be used to play around, be mixed with other words and transform it

there are different flavors of occultists:

1 - neo-paganism: as in meaning is not only in words, but the world outside (nature) there REALLY has meaning, and the occultist path is discovering this meaning and working with it. Usually by thinking everything has something to do with male/female sex. This includes wiccans

2 - neo-platonists: the world out there has no meaning (or a very degraded version of meaning). But there is a beyond that does make sense. You have to attune yourself with this beyond in a progressive path to re-join god. Most normie religions are exoteric versions of this.

3 - Other (post-modern): Nature makes no sense. There's no beyond that makes sense. You can still manipulate meaning and use it to shape your world. This kind of occultist may believe that will is an actual force that can have influence in the world in a magical way, or may believe that it's just a psychological tool to shape yourself.

or just study Hinduism, they have explored all paths mentioned above and many more.

>2 - neo-platonists: the world out there has no meaning (or a very degraded version of meaning). But there is a beyond that does make sense. You have to attune yourself with this beyond in a progressive path to re-join god. Most normie religions are exoteric versions of this.
literally nothing to do with neoplatonism. read some plotinus before commenting on this.

Funnily enough, this, Pynchon makes a lot of occult references in that.

The only "occultist" who has taught me anything was Gurdjieff. I suppose Ouspensky counts too for expressing G.'s ideas most clearly in In Search of the Miraculous. Basically offensive stuff about how no one really has free will and free will has to be developed, very interesting.

Go to /fringe/ and ask this, everyone on Veeky Forums is a bluepilled fag

No. Religion is worthless and is only good for adding a bit of edgy aesthetic to your own writing.

Also

>woo

Go back to rationalwiki please.

Occultism? No. The raison d'etre of occultism is control over others, that's really it. It utilizes myth, symbolism, and spiritualism to create the appearance of "legitimate knowledge" where none exists. Its used to bewilder initiates and the uninitiated into doing and thinking... well, whatever. It's magic. Everyone wants secret knowledge, or to belong to a secret order, and most will do anything for it. This is the basis of all occult belief.

That said, I guess you might strenghten your vocabulary by gaining some neat little words, but I cannot promise much else from these type of books. Not for the rationally minded.

>any legitimate knowledge
You know, by using an absolute like that you're asking an incredibly answerable question

Like, for one thing, you can learn a lot about history by studying occultism

That satisfies "any"

Most occultists are pretty dumb, but there are some intelligent people who are into it that you might be able to befriend if you share the interest.

I've always wondered this too, OP. That /x/ share folder of occultist writings was completely foreign to me when I found it. (And, honestly, pretty intimidating.)

/x/ is a bunch of roleplaying senpai

Well Veeky Forums often recommends readings that can help you understand people throughout history especially in regards to what influenced their writing. Veeky Forums often mentions the Bible and how it achieves this end yet many thinkers and writers throughout history were also well read in Hermatism, Alchemy, Magic, Gnosticism etc. Hegel was apparently a Hermetic thinker, for instance. So there's that. Alll this stuff was considered useless in the last thirty years. Before that it was restricted only due to muh heresy and not because people thought it was illogical.

The idea that occultists have are also pretty interesting and although I'm a fedora wearing atheist and even I think its criminal that religious and spiritual people dont at least explore different religious perspectives. How the fuck can you call yourself a well read Christian and Have not read Kabbalist literature, the Nag Hammadi library, early Jewish mythology, Hermes Green Tablet etc.

Also from a purely aesthetic position, occultism is amazing and there is a reason why many of its ideas are drawn into fictional works like video games, movies and literature.

The traditional schools of thought that feed into modern occultism (Neoplatonism, Hermeticism and Kabbalah) are worth studying. They're essentially forms of mysticism, which is valuable for mental and spiritual development. In terms of modern occultism, there's little value in it, except Tarot symbolism (which is an old system anyway) and some of Crowley's works. If you're interested in mysticism, you should also look at Sufi Islam, Christian mystics like John of the Cross, Vajrayana Buddhism, alchemy and Hinduism.