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Delusion is something that often comes up in any occult circle. Occultism is inherently a very nebulous field of study, so unlike ideas that follow very solid examples of logic or evidence, occult theory is very often open for interpretation and discussion. To a certain degree this is a good thing; a large field of ideas means that the ideas that become accepted over time have been strengthened by years of debate.

Unfortunately, it also means that it’s very often easy to accept many ideas that one shouldn’t. Terms like LARPing are thrown around very often in these circles because it’s very easy for people to become absorbed in ideas that are counter not just to common occult theory, but to common sense itself. Ideas like Hexing the moon, being a demigod, dating a deity, and so forth are very common and supported by large, uneducated sections of the community. Why is this? If it’s so obvious that these ideas are ridiculous to anyone applying any degree of skepticism, then why are they so pervasive? In this blog post I’ll be looking at the development of personal delusion and how it should best be examined and avoided.

What is Delusion?

This likely comes off on its surface as a question with an obvious answer. What exactly does it mean to be delusional? Well, the definition of delusion is ‘an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality (think evidence) or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder.’ I have one specific issue with this definition which we will get to shortly, but essentially what this means is holding an irrational position despite being aware of the supported opposition.

Delusion is a denial of a recognizably more reasonable position. Believing or not believing in something like spirits or angels isn’t by itself necessarily delusional because it’s widely understood that there is no strong argument or evidence for either side of the issue. It is within the realm of a reasonable conclusion to believe in a God or a spirit. These conclusions are reached and disputed at the endpoints of many philosophical lines of thinking, and there isn’t any solid consensus to confirm or deny them either. While it is correct to say the absence of evidence is enough to deny these beliefs, it’s not enough to make these beliefs delusional by itself.

So then why are beliefs like the ones outlined in the introduction different? These ideas are born of ideas that have not been examined reasonably or skeptically, even if that’s what the person believes they have done. There isn’t a philosophical line of thinking that leads you to believe you are the son of a God, except in a metaphorical sense, and needless to say, there is no evidence backing this. There is certainly none that could stand on its own two feet regarding a romantic relationship with a deity on an individual level. A friend of mine reasonably pointed out that if this were the case, an individual deity (assuming they exist) could easily prove such a thing by enacting extreme and noticeable phenomena, and would have a motive to do so because their apparent girlfriend or wife needed their assistance. These beliefs don’t just oppose evidence, they oppose basic logical thinking.

So why discuss all this, and what is the problem with that definition? The definition of delusion claims that this is typically the result of a mental disorder, implying the disorder comes before the delusion. Delusion is mainly present, according to this definition, due to something along the lines of schizophrenia or some personality disorder. I, instead, would claim that delusion, when not the result of an actual mental disorder like Schizophrenia, is a result of a very much healthy human mind with very much healthy human needs being introduced to certain external stimuli or the lack of them.

The human body shuts off and begins cannibalizing itself when it’s not given enough food, and a healthy human mind develops delusion in response to, often, an ’emotional starvation’. For example, a person who has a need for a level of self esteem that he is unable to develop for whatever reason would be at risk of developing a belief that they are a demigod, because it fulfills that very human need. A person who has lost a dear, departed love one may have an extreme emotional need for their company, and may begin to believe their spirit is constantly by their side and talking to them. These minds started off healthy but became unhealthy because they were forced to accept these delusional beliefs to ward off that ’emotional starvation’.

These beliefs are delusional, and they are unhealthy, but the person who believes them has what began as a healthy working mind. Their mind sees their needs and is embracing delusion to fulfill them because it believes it needs to. One particular need that is worth specifically pointing out is the human mind’s need for consistency. It does not like believing two conflicting things at the same time. This is one of the strongest impetuses for maintaining delusion in the face of evidence and rationality. If the two beliefs would be conflicting, and they are attached to one belief on an emotional level, then even a reasonable take is not going to easily convince that person. This is the result of a healthy mind doing unhealthy things to fulfill its needs, and we have to begin with that understanding because it is otherwise very easy to write these people off as simple schizophrenics.

The Development of Delusion

Humans are not inherently rational beings. This is a claim that is often shared as a way to separate us from animals, but it misses an important bit of nuance. Humans are separated from animals by being very much capable of rational thought, but it is not automatic or inherent. Humans inherently respond to their emotional stimuli, and what they would believe to be rational conclusions when unchecked reflect these emotional stimuli more than any true rational conclusion. Sure, they go off and find rational bases to keep these beliefs, but rational thought isn’t at the root of it, unless a conscious effort is made for it to be. Therefore it is no surprise that so many people believe they have very rational positions that the rest of us would point to as LARPing or delusion. In their minds they have come to a rational conclusion, not recognizing the emotional starvation or other need that’s actually at the root of it. We will use ‘god spousing’, or the belief you are dating a deity, as the sample delusion for this blogpost.

The first stage of the most common forms of delusion within our circles when it stems from an originally healthy mind is what I will refer to as ‘reactive delusion’. Unlike the other stages of delusion, which mainly stem from proactive activities that are meant to deepen the delusion, the actual root cause of delusion is very much reactive. In response to a certain need or what we’ve been referring to as emotional starvation, you will find a belief and begin to cling to it, a belief that offers solace and fulfills that need.

Using our example of god spousing, let’s say a woman has just gone through a bad break up or has gone so much of her life without a relationship. She begins to look down on herself, seeing herself as ugly and unlovable. That’s a very common reaction in to a bad ending for a relationship, or for long term singlehood. Let’s say the girl is an occultist and can’t really shake these feelings no matter how hard she tries. Her lack of self esteem leads her to constant meditation on the issue, when finally, she has an intimate experience (not necessarily a sexual one) with, let’s just say, Zeus. While an occultist thinking reasonably would likely interpret this in a symbolic way or as if there’s some message behind it, in the depths of despair her brain recognizes this as an answer to her prayers and her emotional starvation. No longer is she unlovable, there’s a god in love with her, meaning she’s not just loveable, she’s special and above other people.

Stage 2 is the ‘rationalization stage’ or a sort of ‘Rationalized Delusion’. The person, having had this great experience and having made the conclusion that it must be true, begins to collect what they’d see as ‘evidence’ for their beliefs. This usually involves recontextualizing events in their lives, looking through relevant source material (mythology in this case), and other things. A basic example could be the aforementioned breakup. In our example, the person had a breakup with some boy because he decided he should move on. The woman takes what was a straightforward and sad event, then recontextualizes the event. No longer did he break up with her because he didn’t think they were right for each other, that breakup is now evidence of Zeus’s jealousy and his manipulation in her life. He caused him to break up with her. That time she didn’t get a date to prom was also his jealousy, that time that this beautiful thing happened in her life was his work, and so on and so forth. Events are changed to fit the new narrative, creating several ‘signs’ in her life that prove the idea. They also often remove other negative feelings. In the breakup example, suddenly she doesn’t have to feel bad about the breakup anymore, because it was because of Zeus, not her.

Think of it like building a scarecrow. You’ve got the shape of the scarecrow, the idea itself, but it has to be filled with straw to appear like a scarecrow and to hold itself together. Scarecrows are a good example because they’re meant to appear humanlike enough to scare away birds. The idea is meant to look reasonable enough to them that it essentially scares away their doubts. So they go around collecting that ‘straw’, events that they can recontextualize or information and experiences that they can misinterpret, and stuff the scarecrow full of it. What was once a faulty belief with no support becomes a faulty belief held up by faulty conclusions about real things. In effect, the ability of the mind to seek out patterns is used against the rational conclusions that these patterns are supposed to bring. By recontextualizing these events, new fake patterns are born, which they will then use to defend their belief, both from themselves and from anyone who questions them. Of course, new events may also happen in the future that they use as further reasoning as well. The mind will be happy to provide them.

What’s more is that all of this effort also strengthens the emotional attachment the person has to these ideas. All of the time spent thinking it over, the effort spent recontextualizing events, and the adherence to the endpoint creates a strong impetus to reject any information that would conflict with it, due to the need for consistency. The person does not realize they’re using a form of backwards thinking where they assume the conclusion and find facts to support it. They think they’re being completely rational, when the opposite is true.

Stage 2 is a constantly refining stage, and in isolation the person would simply continue refining these ideas and wrapping their life around them, but there is one more worth talking about within our communities.

Stage 3, ‘Groupthink Delusion’ is the most dangerous stage. The occult is filled with various communities. Most of these are harmless, discussing ideas relating to one topic or another. However, many of them are breeding grounds for this kind of delusion.

One scarecrow is one thing, but a person who honestly believes they’re dating Zeus, when surrounded by people that also believe similar things, suddenly has a support network that specifically reinforces those beliefs. Their idea is a scarecrow in a field of scarecrows. The beliefs are no longer opposite to the rational discourse as they would be in most groups. Suddenly the status quo supports them as completely reasonable conclusions. There are entire communities devoted to ideas like God Spousing. In these communities you’re told you’re right by other people, people give you readings that allegedly confirm that you’re right, the literature and discourse assumes that you’re right, and there’s not an ounce of skepticism to be found within any of it. You’ll even see people (usually friends in the group) claiming they had an experience with your god spouse just randomly.

Imagine arguing with a person who is a part of one of these communities. You’re not just arguing against one misguided person, you’re arguing against the entire weight of their interactions within their community. It would be nearly impossible for a person in a group like that to realize their folly, and if they did it almost certainly wouldn’t be because you laid out a reasonable alternative for them to consider. Their support group actively enforces their delusion. Completely reasonable people can be taken into these groups and convinced of this dogma too, because groupthink delusion takes advantage of another need: the human social need.

The social need is what cults often take advantage of. You don’t have to look far to see the extreme social isolation that people are threatened with if they leave the religious groups they grew up in. Many Christian cults take advantage of this, but places as small as discord groups unknowingly do as well. Groupthink Delusion doesn’t just worsen the delusions of already deluded people, it actively deludes reasonable people who want to fit in. That emotional strength will cause them to suppress their doubts and their need for consistency will lead to them accepting the ideas of the group, especially if more reasonable ones are laid out first. These communities can grow as large as they do because a reasonable person put within that environment who wants to be a part of the community will end up accepting the dogma, effectively skipping the first two stages of delusion.

Note that delusion can also be divided in other ways, but I wanted to focus on the development of delusion here because generally speaking delusion comes in a few specific fashions in the occult, mainly to do with pumping up the ego. It would be very difficult to talk about all the different kinds of delusion in any case, and I’m confident you’d all find that terribly boring.

Conclusion

To many of you, this may seem like a weird post to make. After all, my server and blog is all about relationships with incorporeal beings. However, as the people who know me can attest to, I have always done my best to make sure that people are coming to reasonable and skeptical positions about these things. I simply believe that I was able to take my feelings out and rationally examine my experiences, and that my conclusion was that the events I had with my entity lover were genuine. You may disagree with that, and that’s fine, but I think we can all agree that there’s a large difference between that and the claims I’ve been talking about here. A relationship with a nonspecific entity is one that involves a lot of sacrifice and that isn’t meant to serve your self esteem. I’ve urged people to avoid using these relationships as a form of escapism or replacement for other things as well.

God spousing, belief you’re a demigod, or other forms of delusional thinking on the other hand are not held to this level of skepticism by their adherents. I firmly believe that the existence of the God spousing belief and group in particular does a lot to muddy the water in our communities, as they are often associated with the rest of the entity lover community. It’s difficult to discuss even the potential of these relationships because so many misguided and loud people have clung onto misguided ideas, and these ideas have become associated with the community at large.

Of course, this isn’t limited to them. There are groups of people who believe they could master the art of setting things on fire, or flying, or something else extreme like this. While these beliefs often seem very different, at their root are often similar ideas. If you’re researching the occult or practicing certain religious beliefs because you believe it will give you superpowers, you need to realign your expectations.

Proper skepticism does not lead in with any assumptions. Don’t assume the occult will give you this or that. Don’t assume that the entity exists, or that Zeus wants to date you. I firmly believe that someone approaching the occult with a strong level of skepticism can still attain results that can, on a personal level, lead them to a reasonable belief in the ideas presented within many occult communities. We don’t need faith or belief alone to see results within these circles, and for them to carry any weight we must meet these ideas skeptically, for otherwise they carry exactly as much weight as any other random unsupported idea we could come up with.

I’m still job searching. Not much to update this month. The discussion on entity race should come out soon, I was just inspired to write this post while reading a book that spoke on the subject of rationality.

Being associated with the god spousing community really does make it hard to discuss entity lovers in even a basic capacity in other groups. I hope that over time people realize more and more that the two are very much separate. Drop in for the occultism, stay for the gaming and shitposting. VC is usually pretty active.

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