The following is an aged response to my article published on medium entitled, “THE NüGURU — “Millennial Occultism” and my early meditations on the YouTube Community’s influx of Spiritual & Self-Help Gurus. In particular, the ones I’ve dubbed “Occult Influencers”† or famous social media types that flout “occult” ideas, sometimes to harrowing degrees (See: Fouseytube), always with an emphasis on the generalities and vagueries associated with the “occult” and “influence”:
These “occult influencers” eschew either one or a confluence of two major characteristics:
A) Authoritative stances on wholly subjective perspectives co-opted, appropriated or repackaged as Ultimate Truths to be Peddled for Wealth & Status
B) “Chosen Ones” / Gatekeepers of revelatory ideas teased through a presumed discipline of archaic esoterica they “earned”
You can read the rest over on MEDIUM.COM.
I would like to further define both the ARMCHAIR OCCULTIST and that of the OCCULT INFLUENCER or “Nü-Guru” – as I’ve come to discern quite a major difference:
ONE IS (ESSENTIALLY) HARMLESS, if not NECESSARY.
THE OTHER IS NEITHER.
Modern occult communities, particular to the social media age, know that the most pompous of the self-styled “experts” and “specialists” are mostly loophole “flexers,” or folks who, through use of a credential-free and largely amorphous metaphysical craft, are the newest in the age-old dark-magickal current of snake-oil salesmen.
These folks, though nefarious and ultimately dangerous, are cunning — as they are able to channel their studious and well-developed devotion to trickery into a profitable vocation. They are poisonous profiteers, necessary to develop the internal snake-oil antidote within many a spiritual wayfarer— nothing particularly characteristic of this generation’s prophet-teers as they are simply the newest edition of the charlatan lineage.
However, our generation has developed an altogether unique Frankenstein’s monster, one that is a hodgepodged marionette built of the bric-a-brac detritus of withered spiritual movements and time-tested self-help philosophies, mutated by the Great Hex that is Social Media: The Occult Influencer.
There is a difference between these hollow husks of New Thought dumbery, these Occult Influencers or Nü-Gurus, and say the Wikipedia Magi, AKA the much-maligned “armchair occultists,” you’ve no doubt heard all about.
These Nü-Gurus have managed to slither and scurry under the shadows of Occultism’s greatest hex: elitism and it’s rival camps: High and Low Magick. All because Occultists have been fixated on the misinterpretations or non-practicing “claims” of ARMCHAIR OCCULTISTS (non-practicing, well read types). All the while, the Occult Influencer is contaminating generations of impressionable youth by conjuring and grooming the whims and fancies of material worry within the hearts and minds of the young.
Luminaries, Experts, and Specialists, especially in devotions considered High Magick, continue to war with these “Occult hipsters,” maybe unwittingly classist in their criticisms if not wholly self-serving: It’s no surprise that these “experts” and “specialists” fall into this trap as a means to establish credibility, to rise above the riff-raff as it were. This label we’ve all heard bemoaned, article after article, expert after specialist, has become an echo chamber of a nervous and esteemed few.
These special few who are “burdened with glorious purpose” to correct those “posers” who are “doing it wrong” serve a purpose, as do the permanently hand-raised Inquisitors who challenge every facet of every metaphysical study as old as time. (See: Jesus’s own Disciples: Thomas the “Doubter” and Simon the “Zealot”)
These combative and dour-dogmatic types are prevalent within any area of life, and not unique to Occultism… and we need them. They are necessary components for every well-rounded discipline and a fierce reminder of where a practitioner’s purpose lay: “What is Right, and is it always True?”
“Armchair Occultists” have become the unnecessary way for “seasoned” casters to vex their frustrations with the occult’s current “fad” — by using that age-old “armchair occultists, am I right? pfft” aside.
As with any fad, long-term practitioners are able to validate their experience as an OG of their specific nerdy passion that has now, suddenly and horribly, become “cool.”
There are some leaders in the occult field who decide to make it a point to bemoan the spiritual development of someone outside of their curriculum. As such they unironically claim that their knowledge is the knowledge most worth your money. Have they completely lost sight of their utility as educators? It’s a shame, because stumbling is all part of the learning, and those who wish the best for you, wish for you to find the way yourself.
I realize the sharp, hard edge that divides the “millennial occultist” from the “esteemed practitioner”, and it’s not just the application of the knowledge they tout, it’s the knowledge’s application of their loud (transparent) monetary concerns.
It’s almost as if the financial burden that haunts us all is extorted and exorcised to fulfill that same worry within themselves.
Share your wisdom with the actual DUMB magicians casting hollow faith and financial vapidity, The Occult Influencers who care only about the marketability of their tenets.
We all should be wary of anyone who laments to reveal the right way to embark on a spiritual journey. Full stop. This not the temperament of an ascended master, it is the pettiness and desperation of a commission-based salesman.
If these “adept practitioners” would see the irony in their lamenting of the “armchair occultist” and quit the need to declare themselves “adept practitioners” at every turn, they might notice these aforementioned occult influencers’ dark hold on a generation of impressionables.
Hopefully, they’ll quit needing to declare their legitimacy and get to fucking work contesting these social media stars’ New Thought malformations and dangerous misrepresentations of the Law of Attraction.
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