Sorcery & Mysticism

Pilgrims in the waterfall
By Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川 国芳)

Sorcery & Mysticism |
Thursday – April 2, 2026

Sorcery, Mysticism, Witchcraft, Shamanism, etc... What are they and how are they relevant today? First of all what moderns refer to as "mysticism" is always things about the world that they do not understand or care to understand, and this goes for religion and metaphysics as well: most modern people regard them as artifacts of the past, and really very few people, particularly within the Western world, actually care to even consider religion and the exoteric traditions from the point of view of cultural grounding, and the people who do consider religion from this point of view, the conservatives, have the most backwards and diffused sense of religion, often more so than the raving "hypermodernists". Really, what even is religion? Yes, truly it should be stated here that religion in the modern and exoteric sense is a kind of mysticism, but not because religion is void of a sound foundation, but because moderns either do not understand the greater metaphysical truth of religion, or because they are only materialists and cannot fathom the simplest thing that fail to impact their corporeal modality, usually their senses (negativism). Indeed, it would be quite right to assert the many "mysticisms" of the modern world, such as democracy, egalitarianism, and really the entirety of the humanist axiom. But to do so would also be to miss an even larger point: all traditions, even the modern, have their place within the metaphysical and cosmological story, and this applies, it must be reiterated, to our times and explains the confusion of the contemporary world, and when it comes to such things as sorcery and mysticism one must take care to not allow the impressions of the material order to define these terms. For instance: the shamanistic practices of the Congo (both Congo Kinshasa and Congo Brazzaville) are deemed by the moderns a kind of primitive practice among people who have yet to become fully enlightened and swept up in the political hysteria of the modern world, and indeed the moderns are correct in pointing out the primitive character of these practices and rituals, but the Congolese witch doctor is not primitive because he is not modern; the Congolese with doctor is primitive because the qualified and sacred practice of medicine has been forgotten and therefore it has degenerated into a kind of pseudo-initiation or pseudo-practice, and indeed if the shamans and the witch doctors of the Congolese jungles where to embrace fully the modern attitude, they would fall and degenerate even further. Whatever the moderns may have to say about these practices, they may not point to any of their own as "enlightened" and knowledgeable. What the moderns fail to understand, because they are not supposed to understand, is this: what moderns fail to see and understand is that their assertions about "progress" are indeed the very opposite of progress; and the cosmological law is clear about the fact that a cycle may only descend from higher principle to lower principle, which also means that the present humanity is situated towards the bottom of the manifested world, at the substantive pole.

    So yes, you may say that there are such things as mysticism and here I would include such things as sorcery, witch craft, and shamanism overall, but it would be even more true to say that all the materialism of the modern world are even more applicable here, or rather the word mysticism applies in this connection even more strongly, because after all that Congolese shaman is still grounded in a very weak and faint tradition, whereas the modern man is grounded in nothing and is now approaching a kind of final rupture, a dissolution – a catastrophe. Just to mention a few examples of "modern mysticism": in a previous post I asked what on Earth the concept of "Queer-theory" was, and while I never answered that question, I do believe that I made it clear in that post that this is a very recent development and really a very clear example of a kind of mysticism, read "Gender Roles". There are of course, it should be pointed out, many historical examples of sorcery, but this history eludes the moderns, and they dismiss this history as fantasy, legend, and myth. Indeed, notice the close linguistic and philological connection between the words "myth" and "mysticism". If I should mention an example from history in the connection to the Taoist arts, it would surely be Zhuge Liang (諸葛亮), but another prominent person in the history of China would be Zuo Ci (左慈); both of these very much historical men were properly qualified and immersed in the practice of Taoism, Taoism being at the esoteric core of the Confucian exterior. Of these, modern men can only assert illusion and myth and that the stories of Zhuge Liang and Zuo Ci belong to the legendary but not to the historical, and therefore, in the modern conception, Taoism is another kind of mysticism that the moderns fail to grasp. Of course, Taoism is the very opposite of mysticism, but today there are really no true masters of these arts, and all of these "survivor-ship" examples, as the moderns would lament, prove nothing. Indeed, what would there even be to prove anyways? A man that simply is not qualified does not know of the things that exist outside his modality. There is no "right" to know of things that elude you, and truly as the old Taoist saying goes: "When the student is ready the teacher will appear. When the student is truly ready... The teacher will [d]isappear.", read "Hierarchy".

    The last note on this subject should perhaps be a quick comment in regards to the assortment of neo-spiritualist and new age assertions and lies about all sorts of things that the practitioners of these ideologies have no basis for, such as the claim that unity will bring people together across traditional lines. First and foremost: this is no kind of unity, this is nothing but crude ideological uniformity, an attempt to erase the last essential vestiges as expressed in each individual; and secondly, the claim that people of different aptitudes will somehow be brought together around some kind of "common good" is of course preposterous, and there are at present no current or historical examples of any kind of universal gathering, any kind of universal brotherhood of man, and really the only thing multiculturalism has brought is much pain and profound disruption to the natural course of life for most people, even most moderns. What these people seek is a kind of bastardized celestial paradise, utopia, but indeed no such thing is possible, and besides, their idea of paradise is quite reprehensible and satanic, but of course, these people are far too stupid and ignorant to understand this.

Reginald Drax – April 2, 2026.