Why Occult Psychosis Attracts Extremely Unhinged and Unhealed People

There is a reason occult knowledge was traditionally taught slowly, selectively and with a great deal of ceremony, and I increasingly suspect that at least part of the reason was simply quality control. Give a psychologically grounded person a grimoire and they may spend six months studying its symbolism, historical context, ritual structure and philosophical assumptions. Give the same grimoire to someone who has slept four hours in three days, drinks absinthe for breakfast and has recently decided that the neighbour’s Wi-Fi router is transmitting messages from Saturn, and by Thursday afternoon they may have founded an initiatory order, declared themselves the reincarnation of three medieval kings and blocked their lover for being an “astral parasite”. Ancient initiatory secrecy begins to look considerably less elitist once you have spent enough time on the internet.

Occultism has an unusual relationship with vulnerable people because it deals directly with subjects that already possess enormous psychological force: death, spirits, power, altered states and the possibility that reality contains dimensions we ordinarily overlook. These subjects can inspire art, philosophy, spiritual development and profound self-examination. They can also provide unlimited raw material for a mind desperately searching for explanations. Add unresolved trauma, obsessive tendencies, paranoia or grandiosity, and an ordinary coincidence can very quickly receive a promotion. The number 23 appears twice before lunch and suddenly the universe has opened a private customer-service department exclusively for you.

Altered substances can intensify the entire situation considerably. Alcohol, psychedelics and other drugs have long been associated with artistic, religious and occult subcultures, partly because altered consciousness itself is fascinating. Unfortunately, some practitioners confuse intensity with insight. A powerful experience feels important, therefore it becomes cosmically important. A frightening experience feels supernatural, therefore it becomes metaphysically authoritative. A person sees a serpent while intoxicated and by breakfast has developed an entire cosmology, three degrees of initiation and a Patreon.

This subject is personal to me because I lost a friend in 2020. He was the lead of our band, Caotes, and he died from an overdose. He was a talented Chaos Magician, creative, intelligent and genuinely committed to exploring consciousness. He also believed that substances could expand his mind, and that belief became part of a much more dangerous trajectory. Experiences like this permanently alter the way one hears casual phrases about “breaking through boundaries” or “destroying the ego”. Sometimes the ego survives perfectly well while the liver files a formal complaint.

Prominent figures in contemporary occult culture have also become associated with psychedelic spirituality and extreme altered-state practices, which has encouraged a broader conversation about where exploration ends and recklessness begins. There is a romantic image of the occultist standing at the edge of consciousness, courageously venturing where ordinary people fear to go. It looks excellent in a black-and-white photograph. The less glamorous version sometimes involves dehydration, sleep deprivation, poor judgement, impulsive behaviour and several friends wondering whether somebody should confiscate the ceremonial sword.

Sobriety alone, of course, does not automatically produce psychological readiness. A person may drink only chamomile tea and still enter occultism carrying enough unresolved material to populate an entire Jungian conference. Occult practice frequently draws attention towards dreams, symbols, emotional wounds, buried fears and personal projections. That can be extremely valuable. It can also become overwhelming when someone lacks the emotional skills required to process what emerges. Everyone enjoys the idea of “facing the shadow” until the shadow arrives with documentation, screenshots and a detailed PowerPoint presentation concerning every terrible decision made since adolescence.

Illumination sounds wonderfully glamorous before one realises that illumination means seeing more clearly. Clarity includes seeing one’s insecurity, resentment, fantasies of persecution, and occasional tendency to behave like an absolute idiot. Spiritual development therefore requires a sense of humour. Without one, every uncomfortable revelation becomes an epic metaphysical drama. The practitioner does not merely feel jealous; Venus has attacked them. They are not angry with a colleague; Mars has initiated spiritual warfare. They have not been ghosted after an awkward date; an ancient curse has entered the bloodline.

Modern access to occult material magnifies this problem. A century ago, obtaining rare esoteric texts could require specialist booksellers, correspondence, introductions or membership in an organisation. Today someone can discover Chaos Magic at 2:17 a.m., download fifty PDFs by 2:43, purchase a black robe before 3:00 and announce the establishment of an international magical order before breakfast. The internet removed the gatekeepers, which has produced enormous intellectual freedom and also created the occult equivalent of handing laboratory equipment to everybody entering a shopping centre.

Access creates another illusion: possession of information can feel remarkably similar to mastery. Someone downloads twelve grimoires and begins speaking as though they personally negotiated the Treaty of Westphalia with Beelzebub. Another watches four videos about sigils and immediately starts giving unsolicited lectures on advanced sorcery beneath Instagram photographs of strangers. Reading remains essential, yet actual practice involves observation, discipline, patience, record keeping, self-criticism and the almost supernatural ability to admit that an experiment produced absolutely nothing.

Safety protocols become particularly amusing because some practitioners treat precaution as evidence of spiritual weakness. I have encountered people who argue that grounding, protection and boundaries demonstrate fear. Apparently true magical courage requires approaching every psychic, emotional and spiritual situation with the risk-management strategy of a Victorian child investigating an abandoned mine.

I find this position...

Well, I lock my front door because doors come with locks and society has already conducted the relevant experiment. I turn off the oven because fire has an established reputation. I wear a seatbelt because Newtonian physics remains stubbornly unconcerned with my spiritual sovereignty. None of these precautions require me to spend my days trembling beneath the furniture. Sensible boundaries create freedom precisely because they reduce unnecessary drama.

Occult practice deserves the same basic intelligence. A practitioner can ground themselves, maintain emotional boundaries, keep records, avoid making major decisions during extreme altered states and seek outside perspectives when an interpretation becomes overwhelming. These habits are profoundly boring, which is probably why they receive less attention than astral warfare. “I slept eight hours, ate breakfast and reconsidered the situation tomorrow” will never sell as many books as “Defeat Your Astral Enemies Using Forbidden Lunar Technology”, although it would probably prevent significantly more catastrophes.

Heightened attention to symbols creates another interesting phenomenon. Once someone begins studying occultism, the world becomes symbolically louder. Numbers become interesting. Dreams become syncronicities. Animals, colours, songs, names and coincidences become an omen. A disciplined magician treats these things as data points within a larger pattern. An unstable magician can transform ordinary life into a 24-hour supernatural intelligence briefing. A black bird lands nearby and immediately receives a job title.

Social media intensifies this tendency because algorithms already behave in eerie ways. Mention something near your phone and an advertisement appears. Watch two videos about Saturn and suddenly every platform assumes Saturn has become your principal professional interest. For someone already primed to perceive hidden communication, an advertising algorithm can acquire the personality of an oracle. Silicon Valley designed recommendation systems and accidentally produced millions of pocket-sized synchronicity machines.

Popular culture contributes additional fuel. Hollywood scandals, conspiracy channels, Satanic Panic folklore and sensationalist documentaries have trained many people to interpret esoteric symbolism through the intellectual framework of a frightened suburban Facebook group. A pentagram appears and civilisation immediately collapses. Someone owns a statue of Pan and apparently the United Nations must be informed. A woman wears black lipstick and now three YouTubers are producing a six-part investigation.

I have watched people confidently explain symbols they have never studied, traditions they cannot identify and historical movements they discovered approximately eleven minutes earlier. They repeat something heard from a podcast, a preacher, a TikTok creator or a conspiracy documentary, then deliver the information with the confidence of an Oxford professor addressing a doctoral viva. The human capacity to combine total ignorance with absolute certainty remains one of the most reliable supernatural phenomena I have ever observed.

Occultists themselves sometimes encourage the circus because fear is commercially excellent. Fear generates clicks, followers, students and clients. Tell someone that their dream was probably caused by anxiety, poor sleep and too much cheese and the conversation ends quickly. Tell them an ancient entity has attached itself to their ancestral line and suddenly there is scope for a twelve-week consultation package.

After ten years of working professionally in occultism, mainly online, I have encountered enough bizarre behaviour to understand why old magical orders treasured discretion. I have dealt with obsessive individuals, stalking behaviour, attempted intrusion into private communications, extraordinary rumours and people constructing theories about me with such astonishing imagination that I occasionally wished they would at least send me the manuscript before publication.

A public occultist eventually discovers that somewhere, somebody has constructed an elaborate fictional version of them. This imaginary version has secret motives, hidden alliances, supernatural abilities, political ambitions, demonic contracts and perhaps ownership of several underground tunnels. Meanwhile, the actual person is eating toast and trying to remember their Meta password.

Another peculiar phenomenon is accidental rivalry. Public work creates competitors you never consciously entered into competition with. Somewhere on Earth, a person may wake every morning determined to defeat you professionally while you remain completely unaware of their surname. They study your posts, analyse your photographs, compare statistics, construct elaborate theories about your strategy and celebrate minor setbacks. You, meanwhile, are wondering whether the red jasper bracelet looks better with the black dress.

Occult communities also contain people whose grandiosity expands faster than their competence. Someone learns the names of four demons and immediately develops the managerial confidence of a multinational CEO. Their personal finances are collapsing, their relationships are in flames and they have been banned from six Discord servers, yet they remain convinced they possess administrative authority over Hell.

This is where the comedy almost writes itself.

A person cannot answer an email professionally but claims command over seventy-two infernal spirits. They cannot maintain a friendship for six months but announce mastery of cosmic diplomacy. They cannot regulate their temper during a Facebook disagreement but intend to conquer the astral plane. They cannot remember the password to their own account but believe the CIA, the Vatican and three ancient Egyptian gods are collaborating to suppress their magical teachings.

At some point the metaphysical ambition begins to exceed the available infrastructure.

The central issue is therefore self-mastery. Occultism provides extraordinary symbolic technologies, philosophical systems and methods of consciousness exploration, yet every one of these tools passes through the practitioner’s own mind. That mind remains the principal instrument of the operation. If the instrument is poorly calibrated, every result becomes questionable.

Discernment is therefore infinitely more valuable than dramatic belief. A mature practitioner develops the ability to consider several explanations simultaneously. Perhaps the dream was meaningful. Perhaps it reflected anxiety. Perhaps both are true. Perhaps the strange coincidence deserves recording rather than immediate declaration. Perhaps the person who unfollowed you simply became bored rather than receiving instructions from an astral enemy.

The sentence “I might be wrong” possesses tremendous magical power because it protects against one of occultism’s oldest hazards: becoming intoxicated by one’s own interpretation.

I still believe occultism should be discussed publicly. Its history, philosophy, art, psychology and practice deserve serious attention. Retreating entirely into secrecy would allow conspiracy theorists, sensationalists and professional fear merchants to define the subject for everybody else. Public education creates context, and context remains one of the best antidotes to hysteria.

Public discussion inevitably attracts an extraordinary range of personalities. Scholars arrive. Artists arrive. Philosophers arrive. Curious beginners arrive. Serious practitioners arrive. People looking for meaning arrive. People looking for community arrive.

And occasionally somebody arrives who discovered demonology last Tuesday and currently believes themselves to be Supreme Commander of the Infernal Legions.

Fine.

I only ask that they learn to use Google Calendar before reorganising Hell.

Occultism can certainly involve extraordinary ideas. It can challenge assumptions, destabilise conventional categories and encourage exploration of consciousness. Precisely because of that power, it benefits enormously from psychological grounding, intellectual humility, emotional discipline and humour.

Before attempting to command spirits, master dimensions, open cosmic gateways or ascend beyond ordinary humanity, learn to regulate your emotions. Learn to recognise projection. Learn to maintain boundaries. Learn to sleep properly. Learn to question your own conclusions. Learn when to close the laptop.

And above all, retain the ability to look at an extraordinary experience and say:

“Interesting. I’m going to write that down and think about it tomorrow.”

That may be the least glamorous sentence in occultism.

It may also be one of the most advanced.

Lua Astor is a professional occultist with ten years of experience and the High Priestess of Order Specula. She has written more than ten books on Chaos Magic in Portuguese, and her latest book, Advanced Chaos Magic, is available now. Her work focuses on presenting occultism with clarity, discipline and intellectual seriousness, challenging the stigma, hysteria and conspiracy theories that often surround esoteric traditions.