Leo D.M.J. Aurini - Of What Use is the Occult？

00:00:00.000 so of what use is the occult it was a year ago on last september's blood moon

00:00:15.200 that i decided to dive head first into the occult sciences

00:00:21.120 and now a year later at the time of recording on the tail end of the virgoan new moon

00:00:30.000 There can't be a more perfect time to reflect upon all of this.

00:00:41.480 I jumped into the occult with great trepidation.

00:00:50.400 As to why I decided to jump into it, the proximate causes, I could point to them.

00:00:57.760 an article on divination, certain questions that were unfulfilled, but that's not really

00:01:04.560 the core of it. If I were trying to give you an accurate reason, why did I choose to do that?

00:01:12.720 Harder question to answer than you might think.

00:01:16.960 And I guess I would place the answer at a failure in semiotics.

00:01:27.760 I'd spent my thirties in the samsera of political argumentation, which left me very little.

00:01:44.860 No riches, no friends, worse off, no meaning, no actionable lovers, a lot of truth but very

00:01:56.440 little to do with it. And I suppose that's the core of it. That's why I felt the need

00:02:06.840 to start exploring esotericism. And as I said, I entered it with trepidation. It comes with

00:02:17.840 warnings. A lot of warnings. And most people don't know why the warnings are there. They

00:02:26.220 I don't know why you're told not to mess with the Ouija board, an admonition that I will repeat.

00:02:37.800 But one year into it, one year of doing it totally.

00:02:45.560 I've been familiar with the basics for decades. I've studied it on and off.

00:02:51.180 But one year of being in it completely, I think I might have a few things to say.

00:02:59.980 And the number one, we're going to do this video in backwards.

00:03:04.760 Number one is actually going to be number three.

00:03:07.540 The reason there are so many forewarnings against the occult, the reason the occult is so dangerous,

00:03:16.240 is because people get into it for the wrong reason.

00:03:20.520 The reason a lot of people get into it, which ought to be the tertiary reason that you get

00:03:28.840 into it, is instrumentalization.

00:03:42.640 The reason the occult is dangerous is because it works.

00:03:46.960 get a group of teenagers bored drunk playing with the Ouija board seeing how they can poke at it and

00:03:54.640 what comes out the other side but what they actually opened up was a major portal to the

00:04:04.640 spiritual realms and they did absolutely no preparation for it even to the extent of not

00:04:14.000 asking intelligent or respectful questions. They ask the sort of provocative, edgy teenager questions

00:04:22.960 that are not going to invite holy forces, but they will invite something.

00:04:38.000 Curiosity, boredom, arrogance, hubris. This is what normally drives people to the occult.

00:04:43.280 This is why the occult is so dangerous.

00:04:50.320 People start playing with the tools before they've done any of the work.

00:05:07.120 It's the same reason you don't play with matches.

00:05:10.880 They could burn your house down.

00:05:13.280 It's the same sort of thing, the instrumentalization of occult knowledge that Edward Bernays got himself involved with.

00:05:25.820 And his work on propaganda has been one of the driving forces of the dissolution of our societies.

00:05:34.680 you shouldn't be playing with fundamental forces

00:05:41.740 when you don't even know what the map of the territory is

00:05:46.680 now this brings us to the secondary reason to engage with the occult

00:05:56.560 tertiary is the instrumental application of force and utility of power

00:06:04.420 upon the world. But what are you doing applying power to the world if you don't

00:06:13.360 even know what the map of the world is? So the secondary purpose, the map, call it

00:06:25.160 second sight. Noetic capacity. This is when, this is when, do you remember that

00:06:38.840 optical illusion that swept the internet many years ago? The dress. Was it blue and

00:06:46.740 black, or was it white and gold? The actual map of the territory is both things at the same time.

00:06:59.580 One of the capacities I've developed in the past year is when I look at that dress, I see it as

00:07:06.160 both of them at once. Not that I can switch between the blue and black and the white and gold.

00:07:13.600 It's that I actually do see both colors at the same time

00:07:19.860 This noetic capacity

00:07:30.080 To see the structures in reality itself

00:07:34.240 To recognize the glory and the horror

00:07:38.380 In every aspect of reality

00:07:40.820 To realize that anything, everywhere, is impregnated with both angels and demons.

00:07:54.640 To see the beginning and the end of all things.

00:07:59.620 To take that apple imagined in your own mind.

00:08:05.920 And translate it beyond the colorful three dimensions.

00:08:09.160 but see it inside and outside all at once and through time as it grows and as it decays.

00:08:20.000 The noetic map of reality is the greatest benefit you get from the occult,

00:08:26.940 to step outside of the linear style of reasoning and learn to see all perspectives at the same time.

00:08:39.160 One of the consequences of this type of vision is realizing that you right now are standing

00:08:52.620 on holy ground.

00:08:54.760 All of this ground is holy ground and all of it is profane.

00:08:59.400 The holy and the profane interact in homeostasis.

00:09:07.540 Such is the nature of reality.

00:09:11.620 You can stab it with your steely knife, but you cannot kill the beast.

00:09:22.600 So we covered the tertiary is instrumentalization, casting magic spells.

00:09:29.540 secondary is the noetic perception, second sight, seeing reality as it actually is.

00:09:42.340 But what's the primary purpose of the occult sciences?

00:09:51.460 The primary purpose is the mystic's journey.

00:09:55.300 It is to strip away all artifice from the self and have a direct encounter with God and yourself.

00:10:15.060 We're living in an age where mysticism is returning fast and hard, and that's what it is.

00:10:25.300 the encounter with the self and realizing it's always been yourself the whole time you thought

00:10:35.060 it was out there it was all in here and your greatest enemy your greatest enemy

00:10:45.080 has not been those who opposed you those that you fought with hasn't been a tax code or a

00:10:55.120 legal regime. Those things are all problems. A winter storm is a problem, but a winter storm

00:11:02.900 is not your enemy. None of these things are. Your greatest enemy has always been yourself.

00:11:11.840 The primary purpose of the occult sciences is to achieve that encounter with God

00:11:21.680 and with yourself.

00:11:26.900 And in the process,

00:11:29.380 learn to love your own worst enemy.

00:11:41.800 Now I want to note,

00:11:42.880 there are multiple paths to the divine.

00:11:45.880 The occult sciences are the, you could call it the path of the magus, if you want.

00:11:55.700 The path of study, of intellectualization, of radical self-challenging and exploration.

00:12:06.260 But these are states of being that you can also achieve through athleticism, through warfare.

00:12:13.940 Music and art create this encounter as well. The best music, the best art out there creates

00:12:25.840 an encounter with the self that is palpable and life-changing. Religious aestheticism

00:12:38.140 shouldn't be ignored either the focus upon the mantra the focus upon the divine until it

00:12:46.520 collapses into yourself and you become the divine all of these are pathways to it

00:12:53.920 but the ultimate goal is to encounter yourself and see yourself as you truly are

00:13:08.140 now that's the that's the theory

00:13:17.020 let's back off from theory let's go apply theory let's talk about this practically

00:13:29.200 What drove me into all of this is the semiotic failures of the samsara of politics, of the

00:13:47.320 payfabe, the professional wrestling aspects of this very angry and combative world that

00:13:58.060 at least I found myself in, your mileage may vary.

00:14:02.740 one of the things that became clear to me after 10 years being in the trenches

00:14:17.260 of this endless culture war this endless political war

00:14:20.700 is that it never ends the worst thing for a conservative cultural commentator

00:14:30.600 is a Republican in the White House.

00:14:38.940 In a movie, in a story,

00:14:41.480 if the villain is defeated,

00:14:45.220 the story's over.

00:14:50.400 So politics

00:14:51.520 is this endless cycle

00:14:55.320 of new villains and new heroes,

00:14:57.680 and the battle never ends,

00:14:59.420 and it never goes anywhere. It is an ever-accelerating treadmill for you to run on.

00:15:16.860 And the vision, the way my vision has shifted is through the Lignum Vitae, the Tree of Life.

00:15:29.420 the tree that contains both mercy and severity within it.

00:15:39.160 Every castle worthy of the title contains both a chapel and a dungeon.

00:15:50.200 And the treadmill we find ourselves upon, this endless political treadmill, is constantly promising us,

00:15:58.580 Cake yesterday, cake tomorrow, but always bread today.

00:16:01.720 We are going to build the eternal Israel that has no suffering and no dungeons in it.

00:16:12.580 And anybody that promotes the dungeon, they're part of the problem.

00:16:17.940 They're the enemy that we must fight.

00:16:22.620 Everybody is Voldemort.

00:16:24.780 Everybody is Darth Vader building a new Death Star.

00:16:28.580 And that's what everybody on both sides of the political divide believes.

00:16:38.760 When you recognize that's all a process, when it's just WWE, it's just professional wrestling,

00:16:47.960 it's all kayfabe and always has been.

00:16:52.300 The wars are fake.

00:16:55.100 The bodies are real.

00:16:58.540 And the outcome of this particular match, between the face and the heel, does not need your support.

00:17:07.220 In fact, your support is going to have a negligible effect upon the competition.

00:17:14.980 And even if your side wins the competition, there's going to be another and another.

00:17:20.700 when you see the political samsara for what it is

00:17:27.000 doesn't mean it goes away it's still there

00:17:31.700 but you're able to see it and not participate in it

00:17:38.080 and as for the

00:17:44.420 ultimate purpose

00:17:48.560 of the esoteric

00:17:52.460 of the occult sciences

00:17:53.960 the encounter with the self

00:17:57.280 the brutal encounter with the self

00:18:00.320 and recognizing you are the

00:18:03.520 number one cause

00:18:05.660 of all of your suffering

00:18:07.760 and the thing that you have the most power over

00:18:14.740 in this entire universe

00:18:17.040 is yourself and your own perceptions because how you perceive reality

00:18:23.280 determines your behavior which becomes your reality

00:18:27.880 to alter perception you alter the self and the reason people shy away from this

00:18:42.620 is that it's painful, it's difficult, it's culpable.

00:18:51.360 It means feeling all the pain of betrayal

00:18:55.040 while simultaneously realizing

00:19:00.480 that your perception of betrayal is fictitious

00:19:03.540 and nobody betrayed you,

00:19:05.220 and you need to get over it.

00:19:08.480 You need to alter yourself,

00:19:10.440 discover those painful memories

00:19:12.560 that are still controlling your destiny,

00:19:15.920 still controlling your perception.

00:19:17.700 That angry thought that appears in your mind

00:19:22.220 right after you wake up in the morning

00:19:23.820 or randomly pops up in your consciousness,

00:19:28.760 these nasty little demons whispering in your ear,

00:19:33.340 telling you how awful you are.

00:19:38.420 They're not demons, they're you.

00:19:43.520 That's what you decorated your world with.

00:19:48.480 You put them there.

00:19:50.420 You are responsible for them.

00:19:53.200 That's the hard part.

00:19:55.380 Admitting all of that.

00:19:57.700 And then choosing to redecorate.

00:20:07.040 So now let's get back to the tertiary purpose.

00:20:10.460 The last, the footnote purpose of studying the occult, which is instrumental application upon reality.

00:20:24.540 And now maybe it'll be more evident why this is such, it's like your last concern.

00:20:33.020 if you do the work if you encounter the divine if you encounter yourself

00:20:44.280 and you see that you're your own worst enemy and you stop

00:20:51.200 being your own worst enemy if you get out of your own way

00:20:55.800 you stop turning a father wound

00:21:02.840 into my boss hates me

00:21:05.280 you stop turning a mother wound

00:21:08.700 into women hate me

00:21:10.800 if you pay attention to that pain

00:21:16.220 you dig into it

00:21:19.120 and you embrace it

00:21:20.520 and you correct it

00:21:21.520 All of a sudden, 90% of your obstacles disappear, because you were making those obstacles.

00:21:35.920 Secondary purpose, the map of reality, seeing reality as it actually is.

00:21:46.200 So much of our social dysfunction right now, as a society, is we are in complete denial

00:21:54.640 about the nature of suffering and the inevitability of it.

00:21:59.640 We want to live in a Disneyland castle with a general purpose chapel of non-denominational

00:22:10.600 religion and no dungeon.

00:22:14.720 That's like having fried ice, you can't have that.

00:22:27.140 Suffering is the price of reality existing.

00:22:32.000 The crucifixion of opposites, the separation of terms, the pretend dualism.

00:22:44.340 we're all just in this

00:22:46.700 experiment

00:22:47.960 pretending that we're separate

00:22:49.880 consciousnesses.

00:22:54.460 That illusory separation

00:22:56.660 of things

00:22:57.300 is the price of reality

00:23:00.780 existing.

00:23:05.620 Is it worth it?

00:23:08.660 I think it is.

00:23:09.920 but it's up to all of us to decide whether it's worth it or not

00:23:15.680 i think the main justification for reality is we looked cool doing it

00:23:22.840 but if you're trying to fight for a version of reality without suffering without any of that

00:23:35.120 you're going to fail. The Christian solution to all of this, Christ's solution to this

00:23:46.280 inherent tragic nature of reality, that suffering is inevitable. His solution was he picked

00:23:59.120 up the cross and carry it. And the Christian solution is we all follow him, and we pick

00:24:09.260 up our crosses, and we embrace our suffering, and we bless reality nonetheless. And when

00:24:19.420 you start doing that, you start being able to find beauty everywhere. When you realize

00:24:26.740 everywhere you go there you are but the the map of reality the the holodeck

00:24:36.160 simulation that you exist within is a product of your own mind it's not that

00:24:46.080 you go to another place you are always you and your view of reality is just

00:24:55.780 different versions of the same thing and when you start to see that when you

00:25:00.740 realize that every castle has a dungeon and every prison has a chapel you start

00:25:08.840 being able to find the beauty everywhere and so when you've done that

00:25:18.460 when you've encountered the self

00:25:21.140 and when you've developed an accurate map

00:25:26.860 of reality

00:25:28.760 finally, then

00:25:32.020 you get to the tertiary purpose

00:25:35.080 which is instrumental manipulation of reality

00:25:38.820 and if you've already done

00:25:47.120 the first two. Very often, the third doesn't require anything. Reality is as it is. It's

00:26:02.440 actually not a problem, usually.

00:26:11.540 The Fool embraces the instrumental tools of altering reality without knowing why they're

00:26:21.280 altering it.

00:26:23.320 They are Oppenheimer, playing with the bomb.

00:26:27.280 as opposed to stepping back and asking if they even know what they're doing in the first place

00:26:35.780 and why they're doing it. What compulsion is driving this and what end are you hoping to

00:26:41.720 achieve? Is it an end that's even possible?

00:26:57.280 which is not to say you should ever use power

00:27:01.500 but you need to know what the power is going to actually accomplish

00:27:08.900 are you doing this because of a monkey on your back

00:27:13.520 are you doing doing this because of some foolhardy scheme where we can have a world

00:27:21.100 where everybody eats cake but nobody gets fat

00:27:23.740 occultism is warned against because people jump into the tertiary purpose and wind up

00:27:39.540 with some very very powerful tools that very very much do things they work

00:27:47.520 but they tend to blow up in your face

00:27:52.980 if you don't know what you're doing

00:27:55.260 if you are still embedded in samsara

00:28:07.240 if you are still embedded in your ego

00:28:10.200 it's extremely dangerous

00:28:13.460 the goals need to be to

00:28:23.640 be in it

00:28:26.440 but not of it

00:28:28.540 you don't get to leave samsara

00:28:34.020 you're always here

00:28:36.360 and it keeps going on forever

00:28:37.580 but you don't have to be

00:28:41.540 so incredibly

00:28:43.140 invested in winning a war that's never going to end you know I'd like to end

00:28:55.500 this video by telling you what inspired me to create it ran into a post

00:29:03.900 recently on uh substack it was one of those posts about how paranoid this that yeah here's a symbol

00:29:15.020 i don't understand and anything i don't understand is of the devil

00:29:23.660 it's a bunch of pictures of a catholic church a catholic cathedral

00:29:28.780 in i believe new york city

00:29:33.900 With disturbing iconography.

00:29:41.260 Cathedrals are such a wonderful example of, from afar, they are the most beautiful thing you ever saw.

00:29:49.440 But you get up close and they're covered in horrific gargoyles and all sorts of seriously upsetting symbolism.

00:30:03.900 In this particular one, there are a bunch of carvings of disasters hitting the city of New York, and also a relief of the Lignum Vitae, the Tree of Life, on a Catholic Church.

00:30:25.900 That's why it clicked for me.

00:30:33.900 When I jumped into the occult a year ago, as I said, great trepidation.

00:30:39.460 Am I damning my own soul?

00:30:41.000 Have I lost faith in Christ?

00:30:42.500 Have I...

00:30:44.500 And seeing that picture one year afterwards, everything clicked.

00:30:54.680 No, I'm not in heresy.

00:30:58.300 This is just the nature of reality.

00:31:03.900 And people will come to this truth in their own time and in their own manner.

00:31:19.480 A teenager playing a football game and trying to be cool for the girls does not need a lecture about non-dualism.

00:31:33.900 But it's definitely something you want to keep away from a Ouija board, the same way

00:31:38.920 you want to keep teenagers away from high explosives and nuclear bombs.

00:31:53.000 The architects of society.

00:32:02.280 These people are operating with full occult knowledge. And occult, it just means

00:32:08.120 hidden. It doesn't mean evil. It doesn't mean

00:32:17.240 secretive and mercenary and mendacious.

00:32:23.000 It just means non-obvious.

00:32:30.740 People go to the cathedral every day without seeing it.

00:32:33.240 They sense the beauty, but they don't see it.

00:32:38.260 Some of the more antinomian people

00:32:41.200 see some of the scary statues on the outside of the cathedral.

00:32:47.180 And they react with paranoia.

00:32:53.000 The antinomian conspiracizing is, that's not a healthy place to be.

00:33:05.980 But when you encounter the full glory and the full horror, and recognize that everywhere you stand is sacred ground, and the profane's part of it,

00:33:23.000 everything beauty beautiful has ugliness in it everything ugly has beauty in it

00:33:30.780 and it's just a

00:33:34.180 endless harmonic fractal

00:33:38.540 once you appreciate all of that then and only then should you start

00:33:48.880 instrumentally trying to alter things

00:33:52.800 L.A. L.A.

00:34:02.460 Mim Fratrum

00:34:04.840 This is

00:34:07.440 Greedy

00:34:08.080 Out

Leo D.M.J. Aurini - September 17, 2026

Of What Use is the Occult？

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