Some gatherings sell themselves as sacred. Shimmering lights and sound that reverberates through the halls, while people feed them with presence and praise. These festivals, whatever their names, live on the same current, a modern bazaar of symbols where everything is filmed, tagged, and sold.
This isn’t an old folk’s rant or a moral sermon. Even in a market, one can occasionally glimpse something vaguely useful through the noise, but not often. The true magical practitioner rarely performs; their silence says more than any show.
The purpose of “performance” in the occult world is not entertainment. When it becomes that, the real magic has already vanished. Certain gestures can open doors; words and symbols can ignite transformation. But none of this exists for applause. Think of the scattered energies of an audience, their doubts, judgements, and conflicting thoughts. Such vibrations distort whatever is sacred. That is why these theatrical events are only representations, disconnected from any living current.
What is called ritual theatre or esoteric performance is a masquerade of power, because the concept of spiritual connection is contrary to ego inflation, and revelation offered to the unaware risks losing its meaning, dimmed by external mockery, ignorance, or envy.
You can parrot ritual-like atmospheres and décor, but a public performance remains a performance and nothing more. The audience claps, the lights dim, and the energy dissolves into smoke and social media posts.
The imagery often echoes Eyes Wide Shut: velvet, masks, and the promise of the forbidden. A glamour of power for those too easily bewitched by surface mystery dressed in dark and reddish colours. It flatters the spectator with the illusion of transgression. I find this a bizarre proximity to decadence and a display for the eyes of the suggestible. The aesthetic of the elite and the occult merged into a theatre of vanity.
Something essential has been lost. The silence beneath the sound, the stillness that allows the power to move. Esotericism was never meant to be loud. It is a whispering art, coiling in the heart’s shadows to remember the ancient path to the source. It grows in secrecy, for light that is too harsh blinds and disperses.
A fashionable occult event offers the illusion of initiation through proximity. One stands near the “right” people, or hears words that might sound “revealing”, and mistakes this exposure for understanding. But the Mysteries recoil from the crowd. They bloom only when the soul has been emptied of performance, stripped of costume and name.
Commerce, by its nature, demands repetition and visibility, while spiritual development demands depth and silence. They are inherently incompatible. The moment the sacred becomes an exhibition, the current dies.
Something that should be regarded as another cultural or social event is instead presented as a major spiritual appointment, trivialising esotericism into what should remain intimate and sacred.
There is a difference between exhibiting art and attempting the same with deeper, ritual energies.
The truth is quieter, and not all connections are enriching. Some drain rather than fill. The social mask smiles and distracts while the inner fire flickers out. Those who have truly walked the inner path know this fatigue, the strange emptiness that follows being among too many people saying “magic” while emanating distortion.
There are gatherings where the Work is alive, small circles, unadvertised, held in private rooms, where the only ticket to pay is authenticity. There, the current flows like a secret river, unseen but felt, nourishing those who have learned to listen.
The path is not anti-social but anti-noise. It teaches that communion does not require crowds. Two souls meeting in truth experience something more sacred than any stage. The energy exchanged in such encounters don’t leave you drained or in desperate need of silence.
I recently read a post about a famous Berlin convention. The message was basically an emotional toast, half-sermon, half-group hug. It tried to transform a festival into a symbolic act of healing: “community as medicine” in this moment of tribulation.
The premise was that collective participation, shared space, mutual empathy, connection, can offset existential despair. As if it was therapy masquerading as magic. It positioned the magician not as an initiatic worker who confronts the abyss, but a wounded empath who finds redemption in the “multitude.”
My disagreement sits at the friction point between real transformation and collective distraction. Where this post romanticised community as the cure, I believe that the Work demands solitude, confrontation, and inner labour. The true magician doesn’t seek warmth or inner balance among others. The practice itself makes such an approach dissonant.
The mistake is believing that gathering in the name of magic creates magic. It doesn’t. “Community” becomes an opiate when it mistakes emotional validation for spiritual progress. One can dance all weekend in Berlin yet remain untouched by the inner fire that purifies and transforms. There’s nothing wrong with these festivals; they can be entertaining, even inspiring, but they should never be mistaken for anything more than a show.
It is true that we are all part of the One, yet collective consciousness evolves only one consciousness at a time. That’s the paradox most fail to grasp. It is isolation and grinding inner discipline that forge the strength to connect meaningfully later. Until then, community is often nothing more than an echo chamber for our unexamined needs.
These two situations can coexist, but only one leads to transformation.
Alan Watts provided an interesting perspective explaining that the point of communication is not the words but the space between them, the still awareness in which the words appear and dissolve. When you meet another being from that place, you do not need to exchange information; you resonate in mutual presence. Not really a conversation, but shared stillness.
According to Watts, modern gatherings confuse contact with connection. We believe that more interaction corresponds to intimacy, but the quality of awareness is what makes an encounter real. A thousand social exchanges cannot equal one moment of recognition where masks fall away.
The Work does not forbid human company. It is good to have social connections for psychological and emotional balance but promoting these events as something unmissable or remotely relevant on the occult scene is honestly laughable.
At some point, every seeker feels this dissonance. The call of something purer, stripped of artifice. That call is not elitism but an inner-frequency awakening, the vibration of the True Work reminding us that the mysteries are not for display.
It isn’t arrogance or a sense of superiority that drives the true initiate’s withdrawal. It’s their profound need for alignment with the Higher. They do not need external validation, as that belongs to the lower. They understand that sacred knowledge is a living fire and not social currency. When exposed to too much air, it burns out. Only when guarded and tended can the seed grow into something valuable.
In the end, nothing prevents anyone from attending a spectacle. What matters is the ability to discern distraction and marketing from the Great Work.
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