And keep in mind – it’s also fine not to understand.
In my own case it began with a very profound set of experiences I had at the age of 13, which were prefigured by earlier events.
It took a full seven years before I even knew of others with similar experiences – and I wasn’t ready (that is, mature enough) to explore it then.
Incidentally, I see “maturity” foremost as a way of owning up to one’s destiny – taking it over, that is; accepting responsibility for it. Maturity thus remains opposed to the childish – but never the child-like.
Indeed, we may never attain the directness and simplicity of the child-like, but that doesn’t mean we should give up trying.
So I didn’t approach the “occult”, it approached me.
The way of its approach I could describe as a “thinking of nature”, but I must first thoroughly overturn the senses of each of these terms. All three must be wrested from modern metaphysical assumptions.
This I hope to do in a later post – which may or may not happen soon, and probably belongs more in the climate collapse thread…
But to give a brief summary of what these terms do not mean:
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“Thinking” does not mean conceptualization – it above all does not mean anything in the sense of θεωρία (theoria) distinct from πρᾶξις (praxis); I’ve already discussed the pitfalls of instrumental reason and the corresponding (false) dialectic of enlightenment and myth.
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“of” is not the objective genitive; that is “nature” is not the object of thought; “of” here refers to a relation in which nature is the “element” of thinking;
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“nature” is not to be taken in any modern sense, but simply as the ancient Greek term φύσις (phusis), which could somewhat vaguely be translated as “emergence” but is really a more specific interplay between revealing and concealing – a primordial “rootedness” which eschews anything “foundational”. It’s a way or understanding in which gods, heroes, and moods alike, emerge and decline, not just trees and flowers.
So the above should be taken as a sketch as to the way of approach, when I claim of having been approached by something. Esoteric as this may seem, it’s an understanding which is already available to us. But sometimes the most near is the farthest of all.
But it is for the reasons articulated by @jasonw22 and others that I also try to avoid the term “occult”. Like “magic”, or “pagan”, it conjures an outside, a negation – facts borne out by tracing etymologies.
I prefer to call it “tradition”, but even this word is suspect.
By “tradition” I do not mean anything nationalistic – nationalism being just another variant of modern subjectivity – I mean only what is most near – an ungrounded movement of metaphor and meaning that remains bounded neither by time nor by the confines of the human.
If there were a way to use the term “mythic” without the pejorative sense of the word “myth”, this may express something even closer to what is meant.
But an understanding capable of properly receiving this term must acknowledge that fire and stone tools are already caught up in this movement; in other words, they are already myths.
