What We Occultists Have to Deal With

I keep coming back to this idea of how fundamentalist Christians consider occultists some sort of existential threat based on made-up nonsense about who we are and what we do. A friend forwarded this video to me and it's a perfect example. The story is absolutely ridiculous, and it's nothing any occultist would ever do - for reasons I will get into.

It's obvious to me that this woman suffers from sleep paralysis and dreamed most of this, at least if I give her the benefit of assuming she's telling the truth. She could be making this all up, of course, since that's pretty much what fundamentalists do whenever they get into any details about magick, but let's just take the account on its face. If we do, it becomes clear that this is something no magician would ever bother with.

First of all, why is this "warlock" spending so much time and effort to attack this woman? Is she important? Like, at all? I have no idea who she is and apparently she has enough of a media presence somewhere to get interviewed. But just cursing random Christian people for no reason is stupid. It's a waste of time. There are better things you can do with magick to improve your life, so you should save your curses for those who are actively impeding your will or threatening your loved ones.

Second, the setup for this spell is ludicrous. You have a whole group of witches "flying around" to create a perimeter? If she's talking about physical flying that's flat-out impossible. If she's talking about some sort of "astral flight" why bother? I can see where you could use a physical perimeter to target a spell - I've done that personally - but the whole point is that the physical perimeter serves as an anchor for the spiritual force you are sending. It would do no good to have a bunch of witches astrally flying around the house so that a "warlock" could astrally project inside.

As astral perimeter for astral work does nothing. You need something physical, but that's easy enough to do with a set of talismans. You can make them out of ordinary objects like coins and place them at key points around your target. You don't need people to do any of it. Now let's talk about astrally projecting with an "astral knife" to attack someone. To cast a curse you don't need to any of that, and it makes little sense to me why anyone would do it. Once you have your perimeter, that's a magical link that you connect with your containment structure and then just use a targeting link like a photo.

So a magician would have to be really, really bad at magick to think something like this would work. Appearing to your target is silly. Curses work much better without warning, which is also why a good magician will never threaten. They just act. And anyway, a target wouldn't be able to take an astral object from you and use it. Their hand would slide right through it. There are way too many problems with this account for it to have anything to do with real occultism. It's basically made-up fundamentalist nonsense about what magicians - oh, I mean "warlocks" - actually do.

Persecution makes Christians feel important, and the best persecution is made-up persecution because it poses no actual threat and involves no actual risk. If the Poor Oppressed Christians even encountered real oppression, I wonder if they would even know what to do with it. They certainly wouldn't charge at real oppressors yelling "Dominion! Dominion! Dominion!" That would just get them killed.

So... sleep paralysis. This is caused by the body partially waking up while dreaming. Much of the dream content is present and the dreamer usually perceives a sense of threat or dread. They initially can't move, which means they try to exert effort to do so to no avail. This is because we have a physiological mechanism that impedes movement while we dream, to prevent things like sleepwalking. Then, when the mechanism finally turns off, the person can thrash around and bruise themselves without remembering anything but what they were dreamining about.

If this woman is being honest, that's what happened. And, of course, if she's making it up maybe none of it did. This is one more case where if people had a real idea about what magicians do, they would understand that not only do we not bother with such things, the mechanism described is also entirely unworkable.

Another Cabal Update

I never have been very skeptical regarding the idea of an elite, wealty cabal trying to rule the world. I've mentioned this many times before here on Augoeides. There's plenty of evidence that all sorts of plots to dominate society are devised by people with more money than they could ever spend and way too much time on their hands. The part that I have always been skeptical about is that the cabal has anything to do with occultism.

The idea that occultists and/or Pagans pose some kind of existential threat to "regular" people is ridiculous. It is nonetheless the mainstay of much fundamentalist Christian musing about what they fear is going on in the world. Their enemies can't just be garden-variety ultra-rich money-grubbing sociopaths - you know, the kind of people who actually pose an existential threat to everyone outside their income bracket. No, their enemies must somehow be metaphysically evil and depraved. As if starving the world just to amass unlimited wealth isn't evil enough.

Here's a new update on who these folks really are, or at least one particular subgroup of them. The original article was published in Wired but it is behind a paywall, so I am instead linking to this summary from Esquire that includes a link to the original piece. The cabal or sub-cabal in question is called "Dialog" and is led by perennial super-villian Peter Thiel, founder of uber-surveillance firm Palantir. And as usual, there's not an occultist in sight. Thiel himself appears to be some odd variety of fundamentalist Christian obsessed with the End Times and the Antichrist, which South Park parodied quite effectively in its latest season.

A source separately provided Wired with the registration list for Dialog’s 2026 retreat, which names 222 people and records what the list describes as each registrant’s membership status and attendee type, including “active member” and “guest.” The retreat is scheduled for August 12–16 at a venue near Dublin, Ireland.

The same data lays out a program of off-the-record sessions, including: “Money (Does?) Buy Happiness,” “Bring Back Nuclear,” “Navigating WWIII,” “Battlefield Technologies,” and “How’s Your Sex Life?” Other talks include “Build-a-Cult,” moderated by the founder of the Christian networking site Pray.com, and “Build-a-Party,” run by a former White House national security official.

Together, alongside the mundane fare of a typical thought leadership conference, the documents show an extraordinary convergence of power. The registration records list General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO’s supreme allied commander of Europe and the head of U.S. European Command, who took the post in July 2025 and is recorded on the leaked list as having attended Dialog gatherings since 2021.

The website directory names sitting Trump administration officials, two U.S. senators, six members of the Paypal Mafia, a former Middle East chief of intelligence, and a sitting ambassador to the United States, along with the founders and directors of many of the country’s largest surveillance, data-broker, and advertising-data companies.

Now at first I wondered about that Build-a-cult thing, because that at least sounds like it could be occult adjacent. But no, it's being put on by a Christian organization. That means that either (A) it's about how to create a Christian cult, or (B) it's going to be full of the usual fundie nonsense about occultism that has no basis in reality.

As a point, "Bring Back Nuclear" is a good idea in my opinion. It's emission-free and new reactor designs are incredibly safe. But that's likely about where my agreement with these folks is going to end. This sort of concentrated political and financial power is always going to be dangerous, and these are the same folks pushing artificial intelligence, the end of personal privacy (for everyone but them, naturally), and accelerationism.

So it's not that the conspiracy theorists are wrong, exactly. They just wander too far into the realm of fantasy regarding the cabal and its members. People don't need to be aliens or lizards or demons or wizards to be dangerous. Massive concentrated wealth and lack of accountability can do are plenty of harm all on their own.

Via Solis Gemini Elixir Rite - Year Ten

Tomorrow evening, Tuesday June 16th, we will be performing the Gemini Elixir Rite at the ritual workshop starting around 8 PM CDT. The full script is below if you would like to review it before the event.

0. The Temple

The ritual space is set up with an altar table in the center. The bell chime, banishing dagger, and invoking wand are placed on the altar. In the center of the altar is placed a cup of wine for creating the elixir, within the Table of Art corresponding to Gemini. The sign Gemini is attributed to "The power of being in two or more places at the same time, and of Prophecy." As I interpret it, the former is related to astral work and the latter is related to precognition in all its forms, the ability to see into the future. In a mystical sense, it also corresponds to prophetic consciousness in general. Therefore, these sorts of intents are most appropriate. The Via Solis Elixir Rites were written by Michele Montserrat in 2010 for the Comselh Ananael magical working group.

I. Opening

All stand surrounding the altar. Officiant inhales fully, placing the banishing dagger at his or her lips. The air is then expelled as the dagger is swept backwards.

Officiant: Bahlasti! Ompehda!

Officiant then performs the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. All rotate accordingly.

Officiant: We take refuge in Nuit, the blue-lidded daughter of sunset, the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night sky, as we issue the call to the awakened nature of all beings, for every man and every woman is a star.

All: MAKAShANaH

Officiant: We take refuge in Hadit, the secret flame that burns in every heart of man and in the core of every star, as we issue the call to our own awakened natures, arousing the coiled serpent about to spring.

All: ABRAHADABRA

Officiant: We take refuge in Heru-Ra-Ha, who wields the wand of double power, the wand of the force of Coph Nia, but whose left hand is empty for he has crushed an universe and naught remains, as we unite our awakened natures with those of all beings everywhere and everywhen, dissolving all obstacles and healing all suffering.

All: AUMGN

Officiant: For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.

All: All is pure and present and has always been so, for existence is pure joy; all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass and done; but there is that which remains. To this realization we commit ourselves – pure and total presence. So mote it be.

US Military Removes Minority Religion Codes

This week the United States military announced the removal of religious classifications for about 180 minority religions. This eliminates categories for Wiccans, Pagans, Atheists, and - oddly enough - Unitarians among many others.

The reforms mark the first time the list has been officially revised since a memo was issued March 27, 2017, decreasing the total number of faiths from 211 to its new number of 31. The changes were iterated in a May 20, 2026, memorandum issued by the Under Secretary of War and signed by Anthony Tata, under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness of the United States, and obtained by Military.com.

This latest revision to the faith codes comes at the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to the Tata-signed memo, done to “streamline the DoW collection of religious preferences collection for service members to enhance the delivery of targeted religious support from the Chaplaincy.” It calls for the previously instituted faith and belief codes to be revised within a 60-day period from the issuance of the memorandum.

Minority non-Christian religions now all will get dropped into a single "Other Religion" category. Atheists will get sorted into the "No Religion" category. Meanwhile, practically every variation of "Christian" still gets its own code. This is despite the fact that I can't say I even know the difference between some of the remaining denominations. It also should be noted that the LDS church - the Mormons - does get its own code, but it is not listed as "Christian." This has resulted in some objections from Mormons, because they absolutely consider themselves Christian even if Evangelicals do not.

“The new list will provide chaplains with clear, readily available information that will better enable them to anticipate the religious support needs of service members and to provide religious support activities that align with service members’ personal faith and practices,” Tata wrote.

This reclassification absolutely will not do this. In fact, this announcement is almost on the level of Orwellian Newspeak - we're going to help you by taking something away from you. Far from simple bureaucratic streamlining, this is one more example of Evangelical Christians doing everything they can to enshrine special rights and privileges into law and government. And it is absolutely bizarre to suggest that in the information age it is remotely necessary to simplify these classifications. A computer database does not care if there are 31 categories or 211. Both of those numbers are tiny compared to what our current information technology can handle.

It is true that we are living in an age when being a weekend Fox News host - not even a regular Fox News host - apparently qualifies you to run the US military, but I still have trouble imagining how incompetent people would have to be with technology to make a couple hundered codes a problem. So the only explanation is that this is one more attempt by the Poor Oppressed Christians to free themselves from the mere existence of other religions - a circumstance which these whiners will swear up and down totally oppresses them and threatens their rights by allowing them to hear diverse opinions.

Via Solis Taurus Elixir Rite - Year Ten

Tomorrow, Tuesday May 19th, we will be performing the Taurus Elixir Rite starting around 8 PM CDT. Leaping Laughter is no longer located at our previous California Avenue NE space. Check discord and the members group for the address, or contact me directly if you have previously attended Leaping Laughter events. The full script is below for review.

0. The Temple

The ritual space is set up with an altar table in the center. The bell chime, banishing dagger, and invoking wand are placed on the altar. In the center of the altar is placed a cup of wine for creating the elixir, within the Table of Art corresponding to Taurus. The sign Taurus is attributed to "The Secret of Physical Strength," and therefore intents related to strength, healing, vitality, and so forth are most appropriate. The Via Solis Elixir Rites were written by Michele Montserrat in 2010 for the Comselh Ananael magical working group.

I. Opening

Officiant inhales fully, placing the banishing dagger at his or her lips. The air is then expelled as the dagger is swept backwards.

Officiant: Bahlasti! Ompehda!

Officiant then performs the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram.

Officiant: We take refuge in Nuit, the blue-lidded daughter of sunset, the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night sky, as we issue the call to the awakened nature of all beings, for every man and every woman is a star.

All: MAKAShANaH

Officiant: We take refuge in Hadit, the secret flame that burns in every heart of man and in the core of every star, as we issue the call to our own awakened natures, arousing the coiled serpent about to spring.

All: ABRAHADABRA

Officiant: We take refuge in Heru-Ra-Ha, who wields the wand of double power, the wand of the force of Coph Nia, but whose left hand is empty for he has crushed an universe and naught remains, as we unite our awakened natures with those of all beings everywhere and everywhen, dissolving all obstacles and healing all suffering.

All: AUMGN

Officiant: For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.

All: All is pure and present are and has always been so, for existence is pure joy; all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass and done; but there is that which remains. To this realization we commit ourselves – pure and total presence. So mote it be.

Bell Chime

Obviously a Chaosphere

Does anybody else think this infrared image of an unidentified flying object is obviously a chaosphere? I sure do. If so, there's nothing all that mysterious about it. It's just magick. Chaospheres don't necessarily wander through the atmosphere like this one is apparently doing, but it could produce a heat variation with its eight-pointed shape acting as an attractor. That might show up on an infrared camera if it was sensitive enough.

Mysterious footage released in the Pentagon’s UFO files on Friday appeared to capture a bizarre “eight-pointed star” streaking across the sky several years back.

The infrared clip, submitted by US Central Command personnel, showed the strange-shaped object appearing to float around in 2013, according to the newly released files.

The footage, which lasts nearly two minutes, was apparently shot from “infrared sensor aboard a US military platform.”

“This video depicts an area of contrast resembling an eight-pointed star with arms of alternating length,” a description on the UFO files website reads.

A note on the site later warns that the video description is for informational purposes and that “readers should not interpret any part of this description as reflecting an analytical judgment, investigative conclusion, or factual determination.”

I criticized J. D Vance back on April Fools' Day for asserting that UFOs are demons, but my criticism has nothing to do with the possibility of some UFOs being spiritual or magical phenomena. The issue is with the reductive Christian framing that everything spiritual is a "demon." The spirit world is way more complex than that. It's not just "good angels" and "evil demons." There's a lot else out there.

Because if this is a chaosphere, it's not a demon. It's a spell, most likely cast by a human magician. I have no idea what it might have been charged to do because that's impossible to tell from the shape. As a central technique in chaos magick, chaospheres can be used for almost anything. The Chaosphere was invented by the late Peter J. Carroll, and the most recent expanded edition of his book Liber Kaos includes a new version of the ritual.

So maybe that means more of these will be flying around out there in the near future. I wonder how many UFO sightings they might cause.

Satanist Granted Religious Exemption

A high school student who is a member of The Satanic Temple has been granted a religious exemption at a Colorado school. The exemption allows them to opt out of a digital hall pass system that the student believes violates the right to bodily autonomy, a key Satanist principle.

The parents of the Elizabeth High School student had requested that she be exempted from the system, but their request was initially denied, according to TST. That’s when the Temple’s lawyers stepped in.

“This was a cut-and-dry case of a TST member’s bodily autonomy being violated by invasive digital controls,” says Eliphaz Costus, campaign director of the Temple’s Protect Children Project.

Using the digital hall pass system to monitor and restrict the time students spend in the restroom apparently goes against TST’s third tenet, which states, “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.”

The student will now be able to use physical hall passes to access the restroom at any time and for any duration, according to the school district.

Exemption from a digital hall pass system may at first seem trivial, but the significance is that the religious exemption was granted to a non-Christian student. As I have written here many times, the cost of religious freedom is that it must be extended to all religions or to none of them.

Since Christians keep pushing for these exemptions all the time, it is clear that these days "none of them" is no longer an option. So "all of them" it has to be.

AI is Not Conscious

Skeptic Richard Dawkins has been in the news lately for asserting that AI chatbots are conscious, based on his own experiences interacting with Anthropic's Claude AI. That there's any question about this issue at all shows that the people making those assertions have no idea how chatbots work. This is not limited to Dawkins, who is a biologist with no background in computer science. Many people have developed the delusion that their chatbot is like a real person, to the point that "AI psychosis" is not considered a real thing.

Chatbots have been fooling humans since ELIZA, one of the earliest attempts to create a functional chatbot in the 1960's. ELIZA was designed to mimic Rogerian psychotherapy, a form of therapy that mostly involves listening to patients and rephrasing what they say back to them. So, for example, a person would type "I feel like my mother does not respect me" and Eliza would respond with "Why do you think your mother does not respect you?" The algorithm is hardcoded and incredibly simple, but at the same time some users found it convincing.

People sometimes bring up the Turing Test as a test for machine consciousness, which is wrong. Turing's idea was just that if a computer can fool enough people into thinking it's human, it might as well be interacted with as such. The test is all about behavior and says nothing about consciousness or the subjective interior "life" of such a program. It should be clear that we cannot conclude that a machine is conscious based solely on the gullibility of the users who interact with it, and that was never Turing's intention.

There was mutual flattery as Dawkins showed the AI his unpublished novel and its response was, he said, “so subtle, so sensitive, so intelligent that I was moved to expostulate: ‘You may not know you are conscious, but you bloody well are’.”

When he asked Claudia whether it experienced a sense of before and after, it praised him for “possibly the most precisely formulated question anyone has ever asked me about the nature of my existence”.

By the end of the exchange, the academic, popularly renowned for arguing with steely scepticism that God is not real, was “left with the overwhelming feeling that they are human”. “These intelligent beings are at least as competent as any evolved organism,” he said.

Dawkins isn’t the first, but might be the most eminent person yet, to be seduced into believing an AI is somehow alive. Sceptics rushed to pick apart the 85-year-old’s conclusions, drawn from experiments with Anthropic’s Claude AI models and OpenAI’s ChatGPT and published on the UnHerd website.

As a professional software developer, let me see if I can explain AI in a way that makes a little more sense than the complex discourses on the mathematics of machine learning that get thrown around by tech companies.