Of Snake-Oil Salesmen and Real Students of their Craft

Hello Occulties,

I'm sure my own derision of certain practices using newer forms of media to reach a new generation of occultists hasn't been missed, but when it comes down to it, that's less to do with the media being used and more to do with the vast majority of purveyors of "information" who use these forms as their major platform.

Allow me to help you to understand this if you're learning.

A bit over a hundred years ago in the United States, it was not at all odd to have a traveling "doctor" arrive in your town, hocking a miracle cure. We still refer to these folks as snakeoil salesmen and they were a very real thing. Dr Quackenstein's miracle cureall  (which might contain morphine or cocaine or both but was probably 90% grain alcohol at best,) would be sold to you via Dr Quackenstein who had, in advance, brought along a few folks who pretended to be suffering some greatly crippling ailment, be miraculously cured after sipping a bit of Dr Quackenstein's Miracle Cure-All. Dr Quackenstein would display clearly falsified credentials and after selling bottles of his fake medicine would travel quickly to the next town, always fooling more townspeople. The cure-all cured nothing, and people ended up losing hard earned money for something that did not cure anything (excepting maybe a little back pain for a day or so.) 

This is because he put on a great spectacle, and since time immemorial, the weak minded and the ignorant have been greatly moved by a spectacle. This also was because like many people trying to learn spellcasting and/or find spellcasters, people were so ignorant on the topic of medicine, that you and I might laugh at their ignorance today, but even smart people back then really didn't know much about medicine. I am reasonably sure people still got bled by their doctors for certain conditions (but that might have fallen out of favor a few decades previous.) 

Now back in Dr Quackenstein's heyday, it helped quite a bit that medicine was not what it is today, and that many were illiterate, and that many were never ever going to have any sort of medical knowledge taught to them. It helped that many still believed the miasma theory (bad smells were the carrier of disease,) and that our understanding of bacteria and viruses was still very poor. 

Just as it helps people who put on a spectacle to attract customers now that many of you do not realize that the study of the occult has been a serious field of study (the best occultists I know are far more like college professors than they are like goth looking hippies or wizards painted on the side of a 1970's van,) and that being psychic is actually as rare as maybe being born with green eyes. In fact, serious scholars who were not out to wow you with their miraculous exciting stunts (so they were not entertainers,) and people who were a form of medicine man or woman who also took their craft as seriously as the midwife might, – these are our forebears. That some people with talent may have been showboats is very true, but a serious occultist has more in common with a real doctor or professor than he or she does with today's Dr Quackensteins. 

BUT, because people are so ignorant about the study and practice of the occult, they are their forebear's equivalent of the townsperson running to purchase this cure-all, and eschewing the doctor that has a PhD in medicine and has been the town doctor for 20 years, since Dr. Realdoctor sure as hell never cured blindness (and Dr Quackenstein cured that stranger's blindness when he stopped through, right?) Dr. Quackenstein dressed like he had money, – all flashy and fine? Meanwhile the town doctor had a battered old medical bag and …I mean, he's not made much being the town doctor since he allowed you to pay him with chickens sometimes, so he must not be as good as Dr Quackenstein. 

That's what you all are doing when you tell me this person PRETENDING TO BE A PRACTICING SPELLCASTER told you that say…cinnamon replaces brick dust when sprinkled around the home. No. BRICK DUST – as popularized in the horrid movie Skeleton Key, has some historical significance as a protective powder in hoodoo. If you replace it with cinnamon it is not at all going to help you except I guess your house will smell like cookies for the first gust of wind that passes through. You are disseminating Dr Quackenstein's theories as far as you can if you pass that rotten bit of advice along.\

But Dr Quackenstein is fun, and convincing, and so in tune with modern times right? Yeah, kids, I get it. I've seen the young adults who are literate but can't read a book and sadly it's mostly their parents and teacher's fault for exposing them to tablets and forms of media we now realize are as addictive as drugs pretty much at birth. And the other reality is experts would be older and would not be like to come from that generation, and therefore would be all about the books (SO MUCH OF LEARNING SPELLCASTING IS READING! Oh so many hours of my life spent reading and studying! I could have 8 PhD's with all this damned reading!) 

So, I want you to understand…. I want people to learn real stuff. I want them to know the history, and how this works and to be able to pass on the accumulated knowledge of all the real occultists who came before them and before me, and during my time, to other generations that come long after I am dead. But to do this we need to push against the Dr Quackensteins. We need to tell the people who thought it would be cool to pretend to be a witch on TikTok to fuck off. That's like thinking it's cool to pretend to be a doctor, give out medical advice, and kill people in so doing, because you know it's totally neat to pretend to be a surgeon to your followers. 

It's not that I hate new forms of media. It's that the people who are more apt to use them are not apt to be experts, and many of them are Dr. Quackensteins. There's some great folks who are the real deal who are using those new forms of media, too. Just you need the real occultists who are on the platform start to increase in number (and they are daily), and realize that the Dr Quackenstein's of the world are PERFORMERS (most occultists are more like PROFESSORS,) and that if someone is putting on a real show…they probably are just an entertainer, not the real deal.

I really hopes this helps many of you. 

~Cat