Books that make the seemingly unbelievable believable

I am a regular meditater and a staunch skeptic in matters of absolute certainty (and a materialist and nihilist in so far as inclinations and proclivities are concerned).

Nonetheless, the occult does fascinate me, are there any books that do a relatively convincing job of making the reader believe that there exists phenomena in the universe thats nature cannot be fully detailed by experimentation (or what many would call the scientific method).

The book could argue that these phenomena are knowable in other ways (say by certain reflections though meditation) or largely unknowable/unconfirmable, even transcendental. I guess books that argue in the latter manner would be more convincing.

Help me Veeky Forums. Make my life magical. Not on /x/ because I browse Veeky Forums and I figure you lot would give much more intelligible answers.

Pic quite related.

you could try some of Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger books. he starts out trying to scientifically investigate the idea that he might be receiving signals from Sirius and ends up not knowing what to think.

at least he didn't go over the edge like Dick did with Valis.

>occultism
don't do it or you'll find nothing but punishment for that, there isn't anything (good) you could find there

oh, i dunno.. a thorough study of occultism can show the hundreds of ways that mystics have bullshitted (bullshat?) their way through life. there's a sucker born every minute.

some of this bullshit is amusing (time cube). some of it isn't (scientology).

the more you know about their bullshit, the less likely you are to fall for it.

FOR EXAMPLE.

millennial cults aren't, as you might expect, cults for millennials; they claim the world is going to end on a particular date, and they sometimes attract large numbers of people, who are encouraged to give away or sell their property.

when the day comes and the world doesn't end, some of them get pissed off and leave.

about half of them DON'T. the master of the cult announces a new date.. that day comes and goes.. a few more leave. he announces another date for the end of the world.. it comes and goes, the world doesn't end and a few more people leave... but less than last time.

eventually he ends up with a core of people who will believe any crap he comes out with.

it's a shame that by this point they don't have any money or property, but they do make willing slaves.

praise "Bob"!

Been there, done that. Read some social scientists instead. It's the exact same wordgame and it comes with some real, applicable insights.

there are things cultists will do that social scientists will not.

not many, true, but still..

An understanding of the occult would do you no good if you don't have an observance for religion. It's like trying to learn how to fly when you don't have feathers.

Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous did it for me
Also, tentatively ,Gurdjieff's Meetings with Remarkable Men. I say tentatively, because Gurdjieff insists you are supposed to read Beelzebub'a Tales to his Grandson (a monstrous 1,200 page summation of Gurdjieff's philosophy that's actually strangely similar in its genius and relevance to world-history as Goethe and Nietzsche, I believe) beforehand.

Just the process by which you're reading this is not compatible with Materialism.