". . . one who studies occult science will do well not to lose sight of the fact that the impulse towards the mysterious leads many people on a vain chase after worthless and dangerous will-o’-the-wisps."

— Rudolf Steiner, from An Outline of Occult Science (p. 2)

"I was repeatedly confronted by the spectacle of Indian "hobbyists," all of them men resplendently attired in quillwork and bangles, beaded moccasins, chokers, amulets, medicine bags, and so on. Some of them sported feathers and buckskin shirts or jackets; a few wore their blond hair braided with rawhide in what they imagined to be high plains style. When queried, many professed having handcrafted much of their own regalia. A number also made mention of having fashioned their own pipestone pipes, or having been presented with one, usually after making a hefty monetary contribution, by one of a gaggle of Indian or pretended-Indian hucksters."

— Ward Churchill, from "Indians ‘R’ Us?"

Please take a moment now to ponder the two quotes above. The aforementioned quotes are both very significant observations, yet the majority of delusional losers on some bogus pseudo-spiritual "path" of their own will never reach these simple conclusions. Why? Because they conflict with their pathological world-view, in which they are entitled to act out some childish fantasy of being a "neo-shaman," or some other such nonsense. (Please be advised that while shamans, and serious practitioners of certain kinds of shamanic magick, do exist, they are a small and reclusive minority compared to the legions of jerk-offs prancing about with drums and smudge-sticks). It is not that these people are not provided with genuine opportunities for personal growth, it is that they instead choose to deny these critical observations rather than admit that they were acting foolishly and then attempt to get back on the right path. You see, once they’re faced with the reality that they’ve still got a lot to learn, many immature souls would choose to turn their backs on reality so they can further immerse themselves in their sick fantasy world. Many "psychedelic shamans" eventually end up either homeless or institutionalized. Don’t be a jerk-off — confront your delusions ("magical thinking," baseless superstitions, compulsive ritualistic behaviors, wearing stupid costumes in public, or seeing "omens" everywhere), and do away with them. If you fail to recognize, and excise, an obvious symptom of mental illness, you can never hope to evolve as a spiritual being. A few significant quotes about "dealing with reality" follow:

"Power and madness are linked together by a psychiatric disorder so variable in its effects that it condemns some people to twilight lives in psychiatric hospitals while propelling others to every imaginable kind of success."

— D. Jablow Hershman & Julien Lieb, M.D., from A Brotherhood of Tyrants (pp. 9-10)

"Although the human soul is, in a very real sense, imprisoned in an apparently material world of length, breadth and thickness, such an isolated and boxed-in awareness also serves as a protection, for without it we would not only be unable to mature to individual self-consciousness, but also be completely incapable of coping with day-to-day activities which help us to survive physically on earth."

— Trevor Ravenscroft, from The Spear of Destiny (p. 81)

"Reality isn’t the way you wish things to be, nor the way they appear to be, but the way they actually are. Either you acknowledge reality and use it to your benefit or it will automatically work against you. That’s the nice thing about reality — you do have the choice of employing it on your behalf, rather than sitting around like a dum-dum and allowing it to beat you over the head."

— Robert J. Ringer, from Looking Out For #1 (p. 40)

"This is ‘magical thinking — allowing a desire or emotion to convince you of something your reason tells you to be untrue. . . . thinking in which an emotion has been allowed to distort the sense of reality. The result of magical thinking is some completely inappropriate action that cannot possibly achieve the desired result — like the ostrich burying its head in the sand to make the enemy ‘go away’ (in fact, a gross libel on the ostrich, but an apt simile all the same). There is always an absurd, slightly comic element in magical thinking. . ."

— Colin Wilson, from A Criminal History of Mankind (pp. 71, 77-78)

"Transcendence needs a material basis; without this, it is nothing but an escapist fantasy. It is significant that most great mystics — and equally most magicians and shamans — were far from being mere ecstatic visionaries. They were also conscientious in looking after their worldly tasks."

— Frater U. D., from Secrets of Sex Magic (p. 216)

I’m not going to delve too deeply into the subject of what, exactly, constitutes a spiritual "dumbass," but a few poignant observations follow:

1.) If you think you need to don a dress or strip buck nekkid prior to working magick (presumably because it "won’t work" otherwise), then you are a dumbass;

2.) If you are shouting words you can’t pronounce (and don’t really understand) during your rituals, then you are a dumbass;

3.) If you are adorning yourself with the trappings of a culture to which you do not belong, and then go forth with the pronouncement that you are now some sort of "holy man" from that culture, then you are a dumbass;

4.) If you believe that you are able to "command" powerful invisible entities by shouting at them, threatening them, or invoking the "Name of the Lord," then you are a dumbass;

5.) If you manage to attain a few grains of knowledge, then pronounce yourself "Enlightened" and attempt to go forth meddling in the affairs of others by rights of your "superior wisdom," then you are a dumbass.

A few choice quotes on the nature of being a dumbass follow:

"You’ll Pay To Know What You Really Think!"

— official slogan of the Church of the SubGenius

". . . much of that which has always called itself occult science in the world, and which is even now practiced under that name, bears the impression of what is unhealthy and hostile to life; but this certainly does not spring from genuine occultism."

— Rudolf Steiner, from An Outline of Occult Science (p. 47)

"For someone who has not learned how our balance is maintained to pretend to be a medicine man is very, very dangerous. It is a big disrespect to the powers and can cause great harm to whoever is doing it, to those he claims to be teaching, to nature, to everything. It is very bad."

— Matthew King, Oglala Lakota Elder

"A soon as they discover signs of a gift of this kind, however modest, instead of telling themselves that they must work to develop it, they go around predicting future events and transmitting messages from Heaven. Some of them even announce the end of the world, and send warning messages to the heads of State!"

— Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov, from Looking into the Invisible (p. 95)

"All those who claim to be inspired by Heaven and who roll their eyes and utter interminable and incoherent discourses, who gesticulate wildly or remain frozen for hours on end in supposedly ecstatic postures, are sick and unbalanced. Even if they talk about Heaven, the Holy Spirit or the Angels and Archangels, the truth is that they are sick. The whole pattern of their behavior soon makes this obvious."

— Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov, from Looking into the Invisible (p. 203)

"The Native Americans rightly feel insulted at their culture being prostituted and devalued. While it is one thing (and rare) to be genuinely adopted and initiated into another culture, it is quite another to assume the trappings of a culture without that deep connection."

— Sweyn Plowright, from True Helm (p. 11)

". . . the schizophrenic or shaman may develop a fixed ideation on a narrow circle of significant ideas, "omens," or objects, often becoming so intense as to result in sleep loss or autohypnosis. The boundaries between sleeping and waking break down, and the novice shaman lives in a twilight world of hypnagogic fantasy and half-waking reverie."

— Terrence McKenna, from The Invisible Landscape (pp. 24-25)

"The fakir, the monk and the yogi must renounce the world, abstain from family life and devote their full energies to personal development. At the beginning of each of these ways, at the initiation of work, one must turn one’s back upon the world and die to the past."

— Kathleen Riordan Speeth, from The Gurdjieff Work (p. 56)

". . . if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sene in you, then you cannot distinguish useful ideas from the worthless ones. If all ideas have equal validity then you are lost, because then, it seems to me, no ideas have any validity at all."

— Carl Sagan

"The worst danger of the mystic is a quest of spiritual privilege leading to aloofness from the common lot."

— Vida D. Scudder, from The Privilege of Age

"Stars are frequently misperceived as UFOs by the untrained observer, since atmospheric refraction can produce a sequence of colors — red, blue, and green being most often reported. Refraction can also give an illusion of movement, as can autokinesis: if you stare at a star without a frame of reference (e.g. a nearby building) it will appear to move around slightly, due to small involuntary movements of the eye."

— Timothy Good, from Above Top Secret (p.114)

"Traditional Eastern dimensional theory can be extremely complex, and is often steeped in what to the average Westerner would seem like mysterious Eastern cultural and religious concepts. Wrestling with any non-descriptive foreign terminology is the last thing anyone needs when dealing with a subject as inherently complex as dimensional theory. Strange-sounding words and phrases can very easily cloud important issues."

— Robert Bruce, from Astral Dynamics (p. 25)

"If you can’t think fluently in Hebrew, you have no business trying to do Kabbalistic magick."

— Isaac Bonewits, from Real Magic (p. 257)

"If the leader of a group is withholding information from you . . . maybe you should look more closely at them. Are they doing this to create the impression that they know more than they really do? Are they doing this to create an atmosphere about themselves to which they have no legitimate claim? Are they hoping to hide from you the fact that they really don’t know much more about the Craft than you do? If they are, get out. You are not in a coven. You are participating in a cult group."

— Kerr Cuhulain, from Wiccan Warrior (p. 23)

"I doubt that most of the Wiccans that I see mimicking dogma borrowed from other beliefs are conscious of what they are doing."

— Kerr Cuhulain, from Wiccan Warrior (p. 48)

"More and more I run into Witches who are almost fanatical in their insistence upon seekers acquiring a degree from a mainstream denomination of Wicca. . . . The aspiring student is sometimes made to feel that unless she obtains a degree from such a teacher, her position within the Wiccan community will be that of an impertinent, insolent upstart. They are often made to feel that they have no ‘official status,’ that they are somehow illegitimate. . . . This is ironic, since some of the most powerful Witches I know are solitaries. Many have never had any ‘formal’ training."

— Kerr Cuhulain, from Wiccan Warrior (pp. 103-104)

"There were plenty of frauds among the spiritualists. They faked pictures of spirits just the way contactees fake pictures of UFOs. But even the fraudulent spiritualists often believed at least part of what they were saying. They felt that the world needed some sort of dramatic proof that the spirits of the dead could communicate with the living, but they could not offer the proof — so they cheated."

— Daniel Cohen, from The World of UFOs (p. 57)

"EXCREMEDITATION! Every few hours, the SubGenius experiences the most concrete reality of all, the impervious realness of staring at the wall while voiding. This of all the Meditations is the most magical, for is it not also the least evitable? . . . In these blisteringly transcendent moments he often receives sinister inspirational messages from a whispering WOTAN which provide direct answers towards which the SubGenius has been unconsciously struggling all day."

— from The Book of the SubGenius (p. 170)

"I’m a guitar, a cup of coffee, a snake, a pocketful of names and faces. I see myself in the desert as a rattlesnake, as a bird, as anything. You guys are stuck play-acting as humans. I don’t need to be human."

— Charles Manson

"But don’t start gearing your life to the afterlife — you aren’t dead yet! The so-called ‘real world’ still is the REAL WORLD! Sure, it’s ‘all Maya, all illusion’ — sure, you make your own reality — but just try to remember that the next time you stub your toe, SMART GUY!"

— from Revelation X (p. 89), by The SubGenius Foundation

"A Discordian is Required during his early Illumination to Go Off Alone & Partake Joyously of a Hot Dog on a Friday; this Devotive Ceremony to Remonstrate against the popular Paganisms of the Day: of Catholic Christendom (no meat on Friday), of Judaism (no meat of Pork), of Hindic Peoples (no meat of Beef), of Buddhists (no meat of animal), and of Discordians (no Hot Dog Buns)."

— from Principia Discordia (p. 00004)

"On the fifth day of his sleeping, Lord Omar fell into a Trance, and there came to him in the Trance a Dream, and there came to him in the Dream a Messenger of Our Lady who told him of a Sacred Grove wherein was hidden a Golden Chest. And the Angel of Eris bade the Lord: Go ye hence and lift the Stash, that ye may come to own it and, owning it, share it and, sharing it, Love in it and, Loving in it, dwell in it and, dwelling in the Stash, become a Poet of the Word and a Sayer of Sayings — an Inspiration to all men and a Scribe to the Gods."

— from Principia Discordia (p. 00041)

"That innocent dog sleeping by the fire — little do you realize that he’s an invader from the Dog Star, Sirius."

— from the Firesign Theater’s comedy album, Everything You Know is Wrong

"All previous stuff is crap.

Jeez, psychedelic mushrooms are really an experience.

I’d better calm down, relax, and think happy thoughts. . .

Wow.

Hallucinations are intense, but focus on everyday objects which we normally ignore.

Close to insanity.

Perhaps help us understand more?

Is it possible to think yourself too far?

Marijuana helps, though only gets one part way.

ALERT: STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS IS EVERYDAY THOUGHT!!!

Is it harmful? Did that dirty bastard poison me?

Jeez, I am so seriously fried.

Should I eat another???

Intense emotions.

YOU CREATE YOUR OWN REALITY!

Jeez . . . not recommended for the faint of heart . . . fer sure, man.

Good lighting — candlelight best.

I can understand oracles now!

By morning I’ll feel better.

I digress . . . rambling . . .

Create poetry later?

Whoaaa . . . . . .

Jeez . . . I can truly perceive things much more clearly now.

It is just a matter of reining in one’s trip.

Maintain control . . .

Composure . . .

Wish I had a computer in front of me.

It is a matter of control."

— Journal entry by Scribe 27, at age 21, after eating nearly an entire eighth ounce of psilocybe cubensis all by himself (he wasn’t catching a buzz, and thought they didn’t work).

"DON’T YOU PULL THAT ‘MYSTIC MASTER’ CRAP WITH ME!!! THERE’S CHORES TO BE DONE!!!"

— The Lady Who Lives With Me, quite understandable perturbed after being (somewhat brusquely) told, "I’m not here right now," when she attempted to get my attention whilst I was in a deep trance state doing automatic writing.

"Everyone has to believe in something . . . I believe I’ll have another beer!"

— seen on an unknown biker’s obnoxious T-shirt at a recent AM-JAM.