THE GOBLIN NEWSLETTER 110

I was an atheist growing up. I didn’t call myself an atheist, but I felt absolutely no spiritual presence in the world. Nothing at all. People seemed to believe in this entire world that I had no access to. I felt more empty about it than resentful, but I also, as I do now, feel that most people who make a big deal about their spirituality & religion or anti-religion are full of shit. It’s like opinions, so personal, so relative, that it doesn’t really matter for the interpersonal world. I know that people want to be tribally aligned & that goes with organizing over these intensely personal matters. I also feel that this is an unevolved (but very understandable) way of existing in the world. When I hit 13 or so I started to read occult books. At that age I was interested in a general badness & the occult seemed to trigger a primal fear in so many people. Some degree of power over this secret world was interesting to me. It was fascinating that people believed in this stuff enough to fear it or considered themselves witches or wizards or whatever. There is a lot said of people’s interest in the occult having to do with their lack of power in the real world & the idea of power in the imaginary world is intriguing. Much like internet & digital world power now & how people will go bonkers as a mod or will become addicted to power fantasies in video games or what have you. I wanted power in the real world. So I read hundreds of occult books, trying to make sense of it. There must be something to it, to have such a huge selection of study on the subject. I finally read a book on Asian Astrology that really correlated directly with my experience of reality. I gained a way of looking at things. I realized that this magical operation was all about repetition, patterns & concentration. If you have multiple people all doing the same thing, all the better. This wasn’t about an imaginary world populated by imaginary characters, it was about the way that physical reality worked. It was then that I realized that there is no separation from the physical & spiritual worlds, they are one & the same.