One of my favourite quotes of all time comes from the African shamanic culture: “Nature is magic and magic is natural.” I have believed in magic for as long as I can remember, and whiled away many happy childhood hours with my imaginary friends in Enid Blyton’s Magic Faraway Tree. When mum made me and my sister some fluffy angel wings to wear, we put our instant flying powers to the test by jumping off dad’s red ladder in the garden. As you do. Undeterred by consistent crash landings, Planet Earth felt like an exciting place to be for an inquisitive and imaginative child - St Peters, Adelaide, South Australia, to be precise.
As I grew older, life began to feel decidedly heavier, and the magic began to fade. The sudden death of my dad in 1980, just weeks after the equally devastating and untimely death of John Lennon, left me with some significant questions about God’s existence. A hefty burden for a 17 year old. By my early twenties, I began to quietly explore the esoteric realms, most of which were mocked, discouraged and demonized. Astrology was for weirdos, spiritualist churches were full of evil occultists and the concept of life after death was deemed nonsensical.
Like most people, I shuddered at the mere mention of the word occult because I equated it with the unpalatable work of the devil, even though I didn’t believe the devil existed. I enjoyed learning about astrology, numerology, runes and other sacred forms of divination but chose to disassociate them from the occult because I didn’t consider them to be evil. However, my idealistic, esoteric world began to transform in the mid-90s when I dipped my toes into the ancient shamanic world of healing and magic which dates back over a hundred thousand years. Even then, I skirted around the edges of the daemonic ‘underworld’, preferring to focus on the healing arts and how to harness the magic of nature. By the mid 2000’s, the universe conspired to connect me to a spiritual medium with whom I fell into a ten year relationship, an invaluable experience that provided deep and often rare insight into the delicate and deeply comforting art of authentic mediumship.
When it was time to part company with the medium and my entire life as I knew it, I also left the spiritual scene behind. With the rise of the internet, I watched the essence of esoteric authenticity and purity become overrun with well marketed wannabe ‘pop-up’ psychics and mediums. This left me feeling frustrated, disillusioned and concerned for vulnerable, grieving souls who were easy prey for the growing community of online shysters looking to make a few bucks from fortune telling and fake mediumship.
Just when I thought I was done with dabbling in the spirit world, along came Susan Filer, a kindred spirit from the UK who hosted an extraordinary spiritual sanctuary and private online group for people interested in learning more about authentic mediumship and all things related to spirit. We exchanged a few private messages about our concerns regarding the invasion of spiritual charlatans and she recommended that I contact Jock Brocas, a spiritual medium, author and educator who was on the same virtual page.
I must confess that my inner scaredy cat recoiled when I learned that Jock also specialized in education about the darker side of the occult and was nearing completion of his latest book Deadly Departed. Soon after that, I was drawn to a Shift Network course about the shamanic healing arts, magic and medicine under the guidance of a highly sought after Peruvian kamasqa curandero (healer), scholar and educator don Oscar Miro-Quesada. Between Brocas, Miro-Quesada and additional studies with author, attorney and leading authority on energy medicine, Deborah King, I safely delved into the daemonic realities of the ‘unseen’ realms and learned to replace fear and avoidance with confidence and understanding of how to navigate such dimensions if necessary.
The DeviI Has His Part To Play
“The devil ain’t got no power over me. The devil comes, and I shake hands with the devil. The devil has his part to play. Devil’s a good friend, too… because when you don’t know him, that’s the time he can mosh you down.” — Bob Marley
In hindsight, I can now see the unfolding trail of spiritual teachers who helped me prepare for my unexpected journey into the deepest, darkest realms of mass deception in March 2020, when Corona officially landed in Australia. Whilst curating articles for ‘The Book of Comfort: Grief and Loss to Solace and Hope’, an Otherside Press project I had embarked on with Jock Brocas, I began to collaborate on a parallel book project with an inexperienced author whose raw, esoteric and often painful manuscript explored various themes ranging from ancestral healing, growing up in a cult family, recovering from child sex abuse and dealing with dark occult interferences. Most of her occult claims and experiences were completely new to me, and required extensive research to qualify.
As a result, I found myself on a fast tracked learning curve about the reality of generational satanic and Luciferian bloodline families where ritual child abuse, child sacrifice and cannibalism are common place; clandestine, harmful, black magick rituals that are repeatedly inflicted upon humankind by powerful, unelected creatures at the highest levels; the reality of psychopathic addictions to satanic ritual abuse and blood sacrifice of children; a US$150+ billion/year child trafficking, organ and adrenochrome harvesting racket. These hideous crimes were my most gruesome discoveries by far. Nonetheless, I helped the author develop and structure her manuscript into a readable form that an editor may consider working on and was really happy to move on from those darker realms. A job that I estimated would take about 3 months, took 9 months to complete and even then there was more work to do but that was the writer’s job.
Is the Occult Really Such a Dark and Dangerous Place?
Interesting to note that the mainstream online world will still have you believe that the occult is either a dark and dangerous place, dismissed as devilish nonsense or an elitist realm reserved for a select few such as secret societies including the Freemasons (that are not so secret anymore). Here are some examples of standard definitions I found on higher profile websites:
Cambridge Dictionary - (noun) relating to magical powers and activities such as witchcraft and astrology.
Merriam Webster- (noun) matters regarded as involving the action or influence of supernatural or supernormal powers or some secret knowledge of them.
Lexico - Oxford - (noun) Mystical, supernatural, or magical powers, practices, or phenomena.
Bible Study - Biblically, the occult is any practice that tries to gain supernatural power, abilities, or knowledge apart from the creator God. The Bible is clear regarding what the Eternal thinks about man's foolish attempts to circumvent Him.
Wikipedia: The occult, in the broadest sense, is a category of supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of religion and science, encompassing such phenomena involving otherworldly agency as mysticism, spirituality, and magic. It can also refer to supernatural ideas like extra-sensory perception and parapsychology.
Online Etymology Dictionary - 1530s, “secret, not divulged,” from French occulte and directly from Latin occultus “hidden, concealed, secret,” past participle of occulere “cover over, conceal, from assimilated form of ob “over” + a verb related to celare “to hide” (from PIE root kel “to cover, conceal, save”). Meaning “not apprehended by the mind, beyond the range of understanding” is from 1530s. The association with the supernatural sciences (magic, alchemy, astrology, etc.) dates from 1630s.
When I broadened my search to some of the more obscure sites offering definitions of the occult, I discovered more resonant results. For example, Unimed Living’s Unimedpedia was a particularly spiritually nourishing find:
"The word ‘occult’ is one of the most sacred words that one can use and know. What it means, what it describes and what it reveals is that which God is; and from there, what forms God’s Science and thus the Science of God Himself." Serge Benhayon, An Open Letter to Humanity
I must confess that when I initially saw the word ‘God’, I flinched just a little and accepted that I had more work to do in relation to esoteric education and making peace within myself. But the more I read, the more I resonated:
"The true meaning of the word ‘occult’ is in complete contrast to the grossly erroneous conception, reference, inference and or direct claim that the word ‘occult’ is in any way associated with evil or witches, warlocks, ‘black magic’ or harm etc. The word ‘occult’ means the culture of God or the way of God. When the true meaning of the word occult is known to many more, and eventually by the majority, it will be found why it is so desirable to have it in its bastardised meaning by those who so desire it to the point of insisting that they are right and that there is no other meaning. For ‘them’, there is much to explain once the true meaning is more widely known … a meaning that unites all by one common truth." Serge Benhayon, Esoteric Teachings & Revelations
The following Unimedpedia passage also bears repeating, as it concisely weaves together the spiritual value of inviting the occult and esoteric into our lives:
“The occult is the entirety of the Whole and the esoteric is the many parts that make up the whole. If the occult is ‘all there is’ and we are separated from this, then by virtue of our withdrawal, we have created the very ‘parts’ that now need to be reconciled with the whole they are now existing a-part from. When one lives esoterically from the impulses of the Soul, the occult will reveal itself in full. It is up to each of us whether we choose to live this way or not and to what degree we will live it.” Unimedpedia
Armed with a new appreciation of why it really is better to know the devil than not, along with the benefits of ‘full spectrum’ occult awareness, I look forward to sharing more thought provoking revelations in a series of forthcoming articles for Paranormal Daily News.
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince people he didn't exist. The disguises the devil used this time were simple and the people were easily fooled. A suit and tie plus a white lab coat were all that were needed.” Poul Larsen, ColdCast
