The newly released movie 'Noah' features a retelling of the creation story that clearly depicts Darwinian evolution transforming a single-cell organism into a monkey. The movie also seems to show magic in scenes more reminiscent of the occult than of the Bible story.
In my own life, I think legends of supernatural, mythic things are really just a manifestation of the collective unconscious. So I don't really get freaked out. I mean certainly, you read about things people did to each other in the pursuit of some mystical or occult goal, and it's horrifying. But that's just human nature.
The occult stuff, I grew up having a fascination about world religion and that fascination grew into other religions and other things and I kind of dabbled my way into the occult and started reading about the occult.
In the seventeenth century, the science of medicine had not wholly cut asunder from astrology and necromancy; and the trusting Christian still believed in some occult influences, chiefly planetary, which governed not only his crops but his health and life.
After all, film is so porous, and to my mind, so oddly occult, that I think that film itself absorbs odd energies like a living skin.
Demonic figures and occult themes have disappeared from modern magic.
The occult sciences were simply ancient technologies for making the occult or unseen manifest in the world - whether that was the influence of the stars and planets, the mysterious meanings of lines inscribed in your palm, or forms of action at a distance like magic and spells.
I'm a storyteller, and I have really good material to work with: I've been studying magic and the occult since about 1983.
The road to freedom lies not through mysteries or occult performances, but through the intelligent use of natural forces and laws.
The occult - what do you mean, Jesus? That's occult to me. It's so far-fetched, it's ridiculous.
