How to Recognise When Someone Isn't Actually that Reliable of a Practitioner... A Casual Hot Take
This started off with me initially annoyed by other Luciferian practitioners and how poorly they are constructed and how poorly they are circulated as revolutionary occultists. But it is a deeper issue. So here we go!
A lot of people post their UPGs not understanding that their UPGs only work for them.
No matter how "thought out" the author may (mistakenly) believe their personal dogma is, it only works because they have made up their rules as they go along while experiencing (UPG) that no one else can experience.
Things can be peer reviewed. But their self-made-praxis is not going to be as reliable as they believe it is.
The meanings are rarely transferrable to others.
A lot of people mistake internally coherent for universally valid.
And not every UPG you see someone has is actually substance that's useful.
UPG is still UPG — "Unverified Personal Gnosis" — it is, by definition, personal. It can be psychologically meaningful, spiritually transformative, emotionally stabilizing, creatively fertile, whatever.
But the moment someone starts treating it as externally binding truth for everyone else, things get muddy fast.
What ends up happening is:
They experience something.
Then they assign meaning to it.
Then they reinforce that meaning through repetition, symbolism, selective attention, emotional investment, ritual structure, community validation, and memory.
... Eventually the system feels self-evident to them because the entire architecture of interpretation has grown around the original experience like roots around a stone even if the structure isn't stable in practise outside of that facet.
Now, that doesn’t necessarily make it false. Human beings work like that in all meaning-making systems . This happens with religion, psychology, art, nationalism, even personal identity.
But it does mean the system is often non-transferable.
Someone else cannot replicate the exact symbolic ecosystem because they do not share:
the same subconscious associations
the same emotional conditioning
the same life history
the same ritual habits
the same cognitive tendencies
the same interpretive lens.
... ... ... ... ... ...
So when people (many of which I see in Online Witchcraft Communities) present UPG as though it has objective authority outside themselves, you get this strange issue where the "evidence" for the claim is inseparable from the private framework that produced it in the first place.
It becomes circular very quickly. Especially when people rely on popularity and clout for circulation. They turn into "artistic influencers".
"I know this deity behaves this way because of my experiences."
"How do you interpret the experiences?"
"Through the theology I built from my experiences."
That’s not peer review. That’s autobiographical metaphysics and it's a slippery slope into spreading misinformation, bad metaphysics and spiritual belief systems, incorrect structures. It is the blind leading the blind and there are very prominent figures, especially here on Tumblr, that are not as experienced as they are just "popular" because of clout.
And honestly? I think internet spirituality sometimes struggles with epistemic humility. There’s a tendency to skip from:
"This was profoundly meaningful to me."
Right into:
"This reveals the hidden truth of reality"
Which are vastly different claims to make.
Many of the new beliefs that people may be "pioneering" aren't new. But they also lack fundamental basics.
These popular "occult" folks are not good teachers — not just because they are actually inexperienced and therefore the blind-leading-the-blind, but they aren't coming from a place that is rooted in structures that are reliable and sustainable.
this is where the issue stops being merely "cringe" or intellectually sloppy and starts becoming genuinely risky.
A sustainable spiritual structure is not just:
"Does this feel profound?"
It’s also:
Does it produce stability?
Does it encourage discernment?
Does it survive scrutiny?
Does it account for human suggestibility?
Does it have mechanisms for correction?
Does it prevent charismatic self-delusion?
Does it distinguish symbolism from literalism?
Does it help people remain functional and grounded?
Does it scale safely beyond one personality?
... ... ... ... ...
A lot of internet-occult spaces fail catastrophically at those questions.
Because many popular occult influencers (I do not doubt some of you have names that come to mind) are effectively self-taught content creators first and spiritual practitioners second.
Their incentive structure is visibility, novelty, emotional intensity, and personal branding — not rigor and sustainability, authenticity or sincerity.
And there are very particular names that come to mind that fail these basic checks that happen to be insanely popular and sought after for very wrong reasons. They are looked at as "experienced and great" when they are barely brushing against anything sustainable.
And spiritual rigor is usually… kind of boring from the outside. It's not going to get you as much attention, money, clients, commissions, or popularity.
Real disciplined traditions often emphasize:
- repetition
- patience
- study
- ethical conduct
- humility
- community accountability
- symbolic literacy
- gradual development
- skepticism toward one’s own perceptions.
... ... ... ...
Meanwhile online occult culture rewards:
- immediacy
- certainty
- uniqueness
- secret knowledge
- aesthetic mystique
- escalating claims
- identity construction
That environment naturally selects for people who sound spiritually advanced rather than people who are actually reliable guides.
And you can often tell when a framework lacks roots because everything depends on the personality of the teacher. It heavily relies on the juiciness of the "spirituality" someone has claimed to have developed or the fandom attitudes between the practitioner and their deity(ies) in question.
There’s no durable scaffolding underneath it. No lineage of interpretation. No tested methodology. No long-term community structure. No mechanisms for disagreement except social fallout. No distinction between intuition and authority.
One thing older traditions understood very well — even the strange, esoteric, mystical ones — is that altered states are not automatically wisdom.
This is a severely lacking understanding amongst substance users in the occult.
Visions are not self-interpreting. Emotional intensity is not proof. Synchronicity is not necessarily cosmic endorsement. Charisma is not spiritual maturity. And symbolic experiences can absolutely become distorted through ego, trauma, projection, isolation, or obsession.
Historically, many traditions built entire systems around containing that danger.
Because humans are extraordinarily good at convincing ourselves that meaning equals truth. And this is something that is severely lacking in some content creators I see and even follow.
A grounded teacher — or grounded system — knows how to slow things down. Recontextualize. Encourage reality-testing. Maintain proportionality.
And you absolutely can create your own systems that are grounded! You don't have to be a "sensational content creator." Smut shouldn't be what makes you "experienced". Attention ≠ Skilled and Knowledgeable.
Ironically, truly mature and experienced spiritual traditions and practitiors often become less sensational over time, not more. They tend to develop caution. Nuance. Restraint. A recognition that the human mind is both wondrous and deeply fallible.
Which is much less marketable...
