There is a certain kind of occultist: pompous, elitist, and closed-minded. But let us begin with a necessary nuance.

A degree of discernment, of principled selectivity, can indeed reflect reverence. It can mark the difference between those who approach the Craft as a sacred inheritance and those who would dilute it into mere aesthetic or product. To recognize that witch blood flows through lineages, that not all are called nor claim the right to be called, is to honor the Mystery. When approached with humility, such guardedness preserves the integrity of traditions that were never meant for mass consumption. It signals that the Craft is not a spectacle but a path of transformation. A crucible, not a commodity.

But there is a shadow to every stance. Just as indiscriminate openness can hollow the sacred, extremity of exclusion can calcify it. When the threshold becomes a wall and the gatekeeper mistakes their key for the path itself, what was once reverence becomes repression.

Draped in the trappings of authority, they confuse exclusivity with depth and posture with power. They speak of “authenticity” and “tradition” as if these were commodities, things to be bought, branded, and controlled. As if the living current of the Craft could be shrink wrapped in a limited edition grimoire or proven by proximity to initiatory circles they were never truly welcomed into.

These are the practitioners who sneer at so called “New Age” spirituality, as if the resurgence of modern witchcraft weren’t the very soil in which their beloved texts took root and grew accessible once more. They forget or willfully ignore that they are products of the same spiritual awakening they now ridicule. They romanticize secrecy but have never encountered the sacred silence of true initiation. They venerate grimoires they can’t decipher and dismiss practices they’ve never dared to understand.

They mistake rigidity for rigor.
They confuse exclusivity with depth.
They wave around bibliographies like battle standards, imagining this to be proof of Work done, when in truth, many haven’t even begun.

This cult of elitism does not preserve tradition. It strangles it. The old texts have value, yes, but value is not the same as truth. A book may echo gnosis, but it does not contain it. A grimoire is a threshold — precious, yes — but it cannot walk the path for you. And far too many prefer to stand at that threshold, playing the part of gatekeeper, while the spirits pass them by entirely.

The Craft does not belong to the archivists alone. It is not the exclusive province of those who speak in archaic terms or prop up hollow hierarchies. The Art does not reward performance. It rewards surrender. It teaches through silence, through soil, through shadow. It teaches through the unraveling of the self and the grace of being remade.

This is the Age of Aquarius, a time when knowledge refuses to be caged. It moves freely, irreverent, unpredictable, alive. Wisdom now emerges from unexpected mouths, from practices that are embodied, intuitive, and experiential. The sacred lives not only in antique ink but in the breath of the land, in the murmur of wind through branches, in the patient presence of spirits who care little for prestige and everything for sincerity.

Many of those you scoff at — those without lineage, without titles, without academic polish — have reached the heart of the Mystery because they did the work you would not. They approached the spirits of the land with humility, not entitlement. They listened before they spoke. They knelt before the wild unknown and allowed it to change them.

And that is what most of your kind will never understand: that the Craft is not preserved through control but through contact. Through being undone by the very forces you claim to serve. The crooked path does not wind through the comfort of superiority but through risk, through vulnerability, through humility.

The spirits do not care how rare your books are.
They care whether your words carry the weight of lived truth.

So let it be known. The future of the Craft does not belong to those who hoard it, but to those who are willing to be claimed by it. It belongs to those who walk with the land, who listen when it speaks, who remember that the dead are not impressed by arrogance, and that the gods speak most often to those with no status at all.

You are not the gate.
You are the obstacle.
And the current will move through you or around you…but it will move nonetheless.