HOW 2024 WILL RESHAPE OCCULTURE

We're going back to "how things were", and it's perfectly fine.

With the imminent beginning of the new year, I spent some time looking back at the past twelve months while simultaneously playing the prediction game for the year ahead.

This post is essentially a summary of two live streams I broadcasted over the past few weeks, so if you want to watch and hear me go through these points in less coherent and more rambly details (who doesn't like that?!), check them out on my YouTube channel.

LOOKING BACK AT 2023

It's been a good year. Not great, but good. And given the years that preceded it, I considered it an overall win.

Indeed, I had to deal with a lot of real unpleasantness, which inevitably comes when you put yourself under the spotlight. It was great to finally realise how sane people can easily see through all the lies, slander, and defamation casually thrown from anonymous trolls online. That was undoubtedly a significant step up from the trend of the last few years.

It was also a year of going from success to success with my online teaching efforts, finally pivoting from the "Patreon" model to one where I focus on a single course at a time. People loved that, and I grew my business fivefold over the previous year. I am still a far cry from what I'd need to live the kind of comfortable life I aspire to, especially in a super expensive city like London, but after all, I chose the life of the artist - even if, at times, I wish I went into investment banking when I had the chance, so many lifetimes ago.

This year, I also published my first book, The Aleister Crowley Manual: Thelemic Magick in Modern Times. It's been a success from every possible standard in esoteric publishing. When I received my first statement this Summer, covering the period from February to June 2023, the statistics showed that the print edition was almost sold out, with the digital versions adding another 1000-ish copies to the total tally. Nielsen BookScan tells me the book has never stopped selling, so the following statement will show another positive result.

Frankly, I never expected any of this. Occult publishing is miniscule, and Thelema is a miniscule part of it and one that is incredibly polarised. I knew my audience would not be found among those already calling themselves Thelemites and certainly not among those belonging to the various cults of personality already established. Somehow, I was wrong because many Thelemites did buy and appreciate the book. But my gamble succeeded when I thought that writing about Thelema and Magick in a simple and accessible way - precisely the way Crowley promised in the introduction of Magick in Theory and Practice, without delivering - would convince many to give these subjects a go.

LOOKING FORWARD TO 2024

So, what are my predictions for the ensuing calendar year?

And now, I am not talking about predictions of the astrological kind. I leave that to actual astrologers, and I hope yours is not of the doomster kind that, like a broken clock, every year foresees an end of the world that never comes to pass. If you know, you know.

Instead, I will try to predict some drastic changes in how we collectively interact with what we call "occulture," and I really feel we need a better name sooner rather than later.

LESS FIND THE OTHERS, MORE FIND YOURSELF

"Find the others" is the end of a long quote by Timothy Leary, the American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. It became the slogan of the whole counter-cultural revolution from the 1960s onwards, and it seems that, like many other great things at their inception, it has now been commodified and commercialised beyond recognition.

Leary advocated the "finding of the others" as the second step, with people having first "found themselves" via psychedelic explorations, or in fact, magical and mystical training. Nowadays, people are told that to find solace, to heal themselves, and to become more happy and content with their lives, they must find their community first. It's easy to understand why: communities can be manufactured and sold while taking the time (and the guts needed) to discover who we indeed are is still a challenging endeavour - and one, I hope, we will never learn to submit to the dystopia of the late-stage capitalist hellscape we ended up enduring for so long, and that we are still trapped in.

This concept has been highlighted beautifully by Tara Isabella Burton in her recent article on Aeon. If one can gloss over the fact she doesn't seem to truly understand what Crowley or Thelema are about (the tired trope: "nihilist diabolism"), the rest showcases all that went wrong with the last few years of online occulture.

As I read it and posted about it on Twitter, someone replied:

Internet occulture has become a funnel between my bank account and rare books whose contents are way above station. As if collecting these gems alone will somehow transmit the knowledge contained within or bestow the wisdom a steady practice does.

I predict that this will be the central theme for 2024, with more and more people, especially those who first discovered occulture through the boom of mainstream interest from 2018 onwards, further fuelled by the years spent locked inside with nothing else to do apart from trying to avoid a deadly pandemic, realising that it's time for them to really take the plunge and learn who they are and what magick can teach them without thinking they'll learn anything by osmosis simply by belonging to this or that Discord server, or buying yet another book they won't read, or signing up to another course they won't complete. 

But Marco, aren't you teaching courses and writing books? Isn't this bad for your business?!

Indeed, it is, but I am not into this for the business like so many of my peers seem to be. This has been my lifestyle of choice long before it became my breadwinner, and I will still be fine—and with me, all those other authors and teachers with a good message to share. At least, I know that if this prediction comes to pass, I won't be spending all the time I currently waste trying to herd unruly students or dealing with the many tourists of esoterica.

But that's enough for now. If you want to find out the other 3 predictions for 2024, I leave you to my YouTube ramblings.