Rational Occultism
By Eric ~ Member of the Sect of the Horned God
I personally have seen what the power of myth can do to the human mind and how it can touch your very “soul”. My discovery of the occult came around at about the age of 15 and later, around the age of 20, I was introduced to the teachings of Anton LaVey. I loved it. It spoke to me. First I was a skeptic as a teen then, while growing and learning, I began combining my atheism with spirituality and psychology which I feel is the very definition of Rational Occultism.
I was raised into Christianity. Not the suburban Neo-Christians, but rather the hardcore, holy rolling Christians. My family claimed to be”Non-Denominational”, but for all intents and purposes they were Pentecostal. After watching people speak in tongues, casting out demons, dancing, running, screaming, anything you could imagine fanatics doing, they did it. When I was a child I couldn’t even sleep alone or leave my parents’ side because I was so afraid of not being good enough to be included in the “rapture” and would be left behind.
One evening at church, around the age of 14, an evangelist from our church had returned from a mission trip. In our congregation it was common practice for people to be “Slain In The Spirit” and fall out on the floor . The process included white sheets they would lay over the women who wore dresses so they wouldn’t expose themselves. This evangelist claimed that one of the sheets was anointed by god and allowed the “windows of heaven to open up and bless us with the Holy Spirit of god.” Everyone he put this sheet on went insane. The people even went as far to say that they could see six windows of light open up and all in attendance were blessed to be there because there are only 7 windows in heaven-so nearly all of heaven visited us that night. Eventually the cloth made its way near me. My Aunt was beside me and had remained calm through all of this. Once the sheet was placed on her, she began dancing, speaking in tongues, screaming and in, essence, mirroring the fanatic behavior of the congregation. Then the sheet was placed me; I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. Seeing this, my parents, the children, some older than me, some younger than me, and absolutely everyone surrounded me and began praying and rebuked the spirit of hell that was causing me to resist the lord.
I knew then that I was an atheist and that everyone in my life had been indoctrinated. It started a long and hard path for me as I have never been silent about my beliefs and shouldn’t be expected to.