Hacker News Reader

> It combined with other mystic traditions ultimately informed the theosophical movement of the 19th and 20th century through to the magick of Aleister Crowley. His sex magick informs a lot of the modern incel, red-pill, and proud boy ideas that you must refrain from "spilling your seed"—that your reproductive emissions contain some of your essential energy. The result being that you have to abstain or otherwise be reduced to a plodding pile of unenlightened goo (to give the idea some imagery).

Those seem to have been relatively widely-held beliefs based on the humour system of medicine, see https://aeon.co/essays/getting-down-and-medieval-the-sex-liv... posted here on HN a few days ago.

Taoists had similar ideas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoist_sexual_practices

Edit: also I'll never spell it "magick" because Crowley was a toolbag

Edit 2: There's also the current meme that (humorously) claims a man who remains a virgin to the age of 30 will become a wizard, which is presumably drawing on all these historical beliefs.

> Edit: also I'll never spell it "magick" because Crowley was a toolbag

You're right about that one. I did it only for the continuity being that I was specifically commenting on his circle.

The humour medicine was a little different. That article was speaking more to the fact that it was believed people had to release sexual energy for fear of death.

The Taoists were the opposite of that. They thought you should preserve fluids to preserve and prolong life.

Crowley's version was closer to your comment on the meme, which sidles with the red-pill version I mentioned above: that conserving your sexual energy essential bestows you with powers, or at least advantage over the "wasteful" ignorant masses.

Incels don't practice noFap. If you actually check incel forums, they heavily ridicule the idea and the Redpill types who do.

That this is even a sentence one can utter is :face-palm:

Good point. It's important to keep your ridiculous lunatics separate.

To relate to another current event, Le Guin's Wizard of Earthsea, Ged, was a virgin, and lost his power after he wasn't. Or at least that's how I remember it. I read the series a long time ago.

> and lost his power after he wasn't

This is not true. In The Farthest Shore, Ged lost his powers by using them all to ...well to do some huge deed. Not going to specifics in order to avoid too much spoilers.

The "present day" Earthsea wizards practiced celibasy, but it was more a belief or tradition, like Catholic priests.

>His sex magick informs a lot of the modern incel, red-pill, and proud boy ideas that you must refrain from "spilling your seed"—that your reproductive emissions contain some of your essential energy. The result being that you have to abstain or otherwise be reduced to a plodding pile of unenlightened goo (to give the idea some imagery).

As someone who appreciates occult and pagan symbolism for the aesthetic and narrative value, can I just mention how annoying it is that extremists have ruined so much of it by adopting it for code and shibboleths? Especially Norse symbolism. I wanted to get a valknut tattoo when I was younger just because I thought it looked cool - now I'm glad I didn't because if I had, Nazis would think I was one of them.

To say nothing of the manji/swastika.

Tolkien agrees with you:

"No one ever calls on me to "broadcast" or do a postscript. Yet I suppose I know better than most what is the truth about this "Nordic" nonsense. Anyway, I have in this war a burning private grudge... against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler ... Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light. Nowhere, incidentally, was it nobler than in England, nor more early sanctified and Christianized."

Nice quote, but "nor more early sanctified and Christianized" is technically incorrect. The Goths and Franks and Lombards etc. were Christianized before Angles and Saxons.

this is open to debate..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_centers_of_Christianity#...

in my opinion, there were likely christians throughout the empire roughly simultaneously due to the strength of roman trade routes.. as to which places embraced the faith nationally, is a different story..

also: angles & saxons arrived to the british isles after the roman empire.. prior to this the local population was mainly celtic..

another interesting tidbit is that Emperor Constantine was crowned emperor in York before beginning his journey back to take the empire where he famously had a vision of the christian cross.. granted this is a few hundred years later, but still, very early, before the the british isles were settled by Anglo Saxons, and highlights how interconnected the british isles were with the rest of the empire in those days..

Are you familiar with the Ruthwell cross?

http://historyoftexttechnologies.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-dr...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruthwell_Cross

A professor had us all memorize a passage from that poem which I can still recite. It’s quite eerie, and a fascinating look at how cultures adapted to Christianity and adapted Christianity to their needs in turn.

Wasn't Tolkien a Christian? Close friend of C.S. Lewis.

That the swastika is basically banned in many countries, is in my understanding the same as we would ban the cross, because of Inquisition, etc.

> I wanted to get a valknut tattoo when I was younger just because I thought it looked cool - now I'm glad I didn't because if I had, Nazis would think I was one of them.

It's also a bad time to be a fan of the Egyptian goddess Isis.

I feel badly for all of the people who named their kids Isis! Lots of people probsbly switched to “Izzy” or something. The really clever ones probably switched over to Inanna, Ashera, or Astarte.

What do you mean "knowledge exists on a timeline parallel to popular history going back thousands of years"?

Are you just saying that Magicians believe events occurred differently than popularly understood?

Or are you saying that secret knowledge comes from a parallel version of reality, where the timeline is different, but somehow makes its way into our universe and is effective.

To illustrate what I am asking, Did Kennedy die in our timeline from a magic bullet? Or can I put magic on a bullet in this timeline using knowledge from a different timeline where Kennedy is still alive?

This could best be described as a "Ketamine Timeline"

Nothing so fantastical as that. There were sects of Christianity that followed more ancient traditions alongside their Christian beliefs. One popular set of knowledge (Christianity) and one arcane (Gnostic/Hermetic). You had to be initiated into the knowledge by a mixture of ancient and adapted rites. There were a number of disparate groups working from a similar or similar range of corpora.

The mystical timeline is parallel. There's a layer and then another layer. So what your common Catholic would have believed in 1500 was childish elementary mystical understanding to the arcane society member who knew the "real" or Gnostic truth.

I'm doing a terrible job at actually explaining this well. I'm giving you the very-diluted roundabout explanation of what I meant.

For a better understanding have a quick read through some Wikipedia articles. If your history of Christianity is not very thorough, then I recommend brushing up on that as well for a more rounded understanding. If you get into some of the reading, you'll understand 100% of those wacky conspiracy videos on YouTube and why people should read more, and how important context is.

My references are generally western-centric, though some of these topics make inroads to China and India (which has its own gnostic traditions IIRC).

---

Down the rabbit hole you go:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_religion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Semitic_religion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermes_Trismegistus (read many of the links)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism (read many of the links)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Roman_mysteries

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosophy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley

And down the Judeo-Abhrahamic-Christianity path:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_mysticism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufism

and just keep going.

> My references are generally western-centric

that these strains predominantly dont exist in eastern christianity to me is indiciative that westerners were seeking to fill a spiritual void lost to 'their side of the fence' with other sources... as to the reasonings behind this, well, your 100% might come into play.

iirc Gnosticism and Manichaeism were both heavily influenced by eastern thought and took root in parts of the eastern Mediterranean all the way to Persia. The early church was very effective in labeling them as heresies and stamping them out.

Actually many traditions have had circles that retain and sublimate the seed, very interesting topic. See more here: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/drcmda/84456b58765cf83144...

>incel, red-pill, and proud boy ideas that you must refrain from "spilling your seed"—that your reproductive emissions contain some of your essential energy

What you're describing is called NoFap; this community is based on the /r/nofap subreddit and is pretty much entirely separate from the culturally-Othered groups you seem to be trying to "weirdify".

Incel have no interest in NoFap.

To the degree that redpill and Proud Boy-like communities belive in NoFap, it's simply based on the repeatable observation that not masturbating increases energy and motivation - especially sexual motivation. Any man who can go two weeks without ejaculating will observe this easily for himself. The difference can be staggering - you feel like a different person.

It has nothing to do with some strange mysticism. Redpillers, especially, are entirely about rejecting traditional mystical beliefs ("soul mates", "love conquers all", "meant for each other", etc) in exchange for repeatable results-yielding methodologies. Nofap is such a methodology.

Not sure where you got this meme, but let's let it die here now because it's as disconnected from reality as most of what mainstreamers say about marginalized male sexual communities.