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I’ve seen enough discussion, confusion, and ignorance on this topic across the world and the internet to warrant this discussion. I would like to talk about psychology, its aims and methods, its connection to occultism, and things of that nature. Specifically I am talking about the realms of things like counseling and psychiatry, as this is what the discussion I’ve seen have revolved around and also my area of academic study and real world application. I respectably will not comment on other fields.

The goal of things like counseling and medication can be summed up as “helping with dysfunction.” Dysfunction is something that, rather obviously, causes an individual to have trouble functioning. If you cannot take care of yourself such as eating, drinking, and bathing then you have a dysfunction, mental or otherwise. If you cannot feel accomplishment even when you do something great, it may lead to severe depression or a poor self image and thus become dysfunctional. If going off your medication forces you to tin foil your house in a fit of hyper-paranoia then it is helping to address a dysfunction.

It is commonly believed that making people “normal” is the goal of psychology. This is incorrect, though there can certainly be a correlation between abnormality and dysfunction. Normality is simply a statistical average. If the average weight of a pile of rocks is 5 pounds, a normal rock is one that weighs within the first standard deviation of the 5 pound average. So, things like schizophrenia, anorexia, depression, transgenderism, and so on are abnormal because the majority of people do not have these issues. That’s all it means. It is also normal to watch television at night, listen to music, eat every day, plenty of things that cause absolutely no dysfunction at all. The thing is, in most cases dysfunction is more likely to come with abnormality. Being born without eyes would be a huge, dysfunction causing abnormality. However, say that there is a high school where the majority of students have substance abuse issues. This makes having a substance abuse problem “normal”, but having such a problem still causes dysfunction. If we clean up the school, what’s normal will switch from using to sobriety, but it will still be true that substance abuse causes dysfunction.

The goal of counseling and psychiatry is to address the dysfunction. Sometimes this requires addressing abnormality. Someone who self-harms is abnormal, and we want to make them functional by increasing their normality. This is NOT AT ALL the same as trying to bring everyone to fit some abstract concept of “normal”. Subjectivity and individuality is extremely important in the field. You can be whatever religion you want, normal or abnormal, so long as it is not causing you dysfunction. You can be any sexual preference you want to be, in fact no known dysfunction seems to come with abnormal sexuality, but rather how people treat and view you because of it.

Psychology is probably the best friend of occultism and magic in science. It looks at placebo, meditation, reconditioning, cognitive therapy, positive thought, etc. and so on. Even if we reduce psychology to materialism (I and many do not) the mind and body are STILL treated as different substances. If this was not the case there would be no point in trying to do something like recondition negative thought patterns with cognitive behavioral therapy. Sure medication can help, because the mind and body are undeniably related, but any [good] doctor who prescribes medication for mental health will also recommend therapy. The idea that psychology is somehow your normal materialist philosophy is completely unfounded.

As for occultists ourselves with mental health issues, therapy and medication can provide some of the ultimate magical tools. I, for example, take a serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which aids with clinical depression. Before this medication I tried many others that failed, could not motivate myself, could not commit, things of that nature. How could that be anything other than antithetical to the practice of magic? Since finding this fantastic tool of SSRIs my success has increased as I am much more functional, though still extremely abnormal in most respects. But I also need to begin therapy, because simply having a medication won’t recondition years of mental patterns. For example, I have had to recondition myself from thoughts like “I wish I was dead” to “I wish I was in less pain”, because the former is depression and the latter is how I truly feel. While psychology is a scientific friend to magic, it is also magical in and of itself. Knowing yourself, meditation, mindfulness, journaling, physical care, recognition of thoughts, and so on are all recommended and taught in counseling, and they also happen to be the keys to magical practice. What could be more magical, after all, than literally changing your natural self to something improved through the power of will?

Thanks for reading, Kheper and Remanifest.

Good thoughts.

I'd also add that normal from a lot of glances is quite self-insulating and in some cases it can be scary just how much it looks like a fundamentalist religion without even necessarily having an institutions. People seem to throw themselves at the center of the bellcurve as if it's their salvation. If one is highly intelligent they have to play a game constantly of constantly curtailing what they say to people because they can, in just a few slips, alienate the people around them by talking 'too high' - which can get quite unrefreshing if they're asked to repress themselves nearly all of the time.

Occultism seems to go hand in hand with what might be called positive psychology, not so much about fixing a dysfunction (although it can help) so much as turning just average or blah functioning into significantly higher functioning, a bit like the Masonic motto of making great men (and women) better.

Glad the current regimen is working better for you and keep up the good work!

I don't necessary agree with your assessment of what psychology might be. But on the benefits of psychology I would like to chime in with this:

You don't have to be crazy to see a psychiatrist.
Talking about everyday problems with somebody who isn't in your everyday can help with mental and emotional blocks that everyday life brings.
If your doing any sort of energywork, chakras, kundalini, zazen and feel like you're just not getting anywhere, talking to somebody about stress and pressure usually helps.
We all have some shit we need to get of our shoulders.

They won't lock you up if your a little bit odd.
Just because you believe in the paranormal, or even practice the occult, or heck, you're full out religious, working rituals, priestess of the night, owns a cat or anything like that. They won't arrest you and force you to have electric shock therapy.
There are a lot of people who suffer from mental unhealth that go to the normal dayclinic just like everyone else. You're not going to be the "weirdest" person they've meet that day just because you believe in spirits or do astral projections.
As long as you're not a threat to yourself or others, they wont force you to do anything. And in todays society, as long as you know your name and what year it is, the chances of getting locked up is very slim.
You can honestly go and talk about almost anything, and you don't have to be afraid of them.

be afraid of them. you loose a week sleep not eating well they will offer better food and better sleep streets are raugh need papers very strange. once in anything goes, more drugs in the sychward then downtown. last time darn mouse kept me up, after sychward, 6 months in group home, know if too explain it kidnapped by parnormal research real strange still visit there today all old or disabilities at the group home this building took 8 months and became similar. this was since 2012 i contemplated condemning mice not to exist so much was done but am normally very timid....

Psychology and occultism are related as if you go far enough in psychology it does lead to magickal practice. There are any number of psychiatrists who published material on the paranormal. Any person with mental illness can be putting themselves in great danger by working with occultism but at the same time if you proceed with caution it can help you a lot.

I don't claim that recovering from mental illness is easy but if you can make regular contact with your superconscious mind (the Higher Self) it can help you in solving your problems. Psychology mostly involves the conscious mind and the subconscious mind and leaves out the superconscious. You need to be able to communicate with, and direct, your subconscious but also to go beyond that into contact with your superconscious mind. Only that can remove the karmic cause of your mental illness and build for you a happy future. It can protect you during the therapeutic process from experiencing overwhelming emotional pain, or worse, the psychosis that some who attempt therapy have the misfortune to bring about.

be afraid of them. you loose a week sleep not eating well they will offer better food and better sleep streets are raugh need papers very strange. once in anything goes, more drugs in the sychward then downtown. last time darn mouse kept me up, after sychward, 6 months in group home, know if too explain it kidnapped by parnormal research real strange still visit there today all old or disabilities at the group home this building took 8 months and became similar. this was since 2012 i contemplated condemning mice not to exist so much was done but am normally very timid....

Agreed. Mental health treatment and care varies greatly, even in the first world west and in many countries the level and type of care changes according to social class, status, ability to pay and there are other political factors that affect provision also.

There are many abuses within the system that go unchallenged and provision often harks back to the days of locking up and heavily sedating, instead of providing the latest positive or progressive therapies.

In the UK there are waiting lists of 18 months for CBT and NHS provision of mental health treatment is patchy, underfunded and massively under resourced. Homeless people end up institutionalised or in prison, mostly through self medicating and drug issues/ crimes, as at least then they are roofed and fed regularly.

We don't all live in a mental health utopia. Thanks for the reminder Jack.

Occult disciplines can help a lot with mental health issues, but psychology and psychiatry diverge a lot from each other and 'disorder' categorisation and legality still varies greatly from country to country, as does treatment and 'cures'.

Politics and misuse are not valid reasons for writing off psychology. They're explicitly not actual, pure psychology.

with an episode once a gov force biggest ive seen pondered to pawn the big bang box in 2012 and I said NO. I said lets have war gaze in my home my force and lets get at her gov decided since then and before to have aprt of my home I see it more the joint effort of seeking justice....