Hi! My name is Otto, and this website documents my occult journey as an atheist and skeptic who has no spiritual beliefs.
I'm a 30-something year old male located in Brisbane, Australia. I identify privately as a Satanist (Church of Satan). However, I don't share this with anyone and I don't have any formal affiliation. I am an atheist and a skeptic. I don't believe in magic or any kind of supernatural phenomenon.
I've been interested in the occult for a long time. I first learned about modern witchcraft when I was in primary school. My key areas of interest were Wicca, psyonics, chaos magic, and hoodoo. Throughout high school I read every occult book I could find. However, I eventually converted to Christianity, threw all my occult books away, and left it all behind me.
Some years later, I came to the bitter realisation that Christianity is nothing but horse shit. I became an atheist and a skeptic, and spent years feeling angry about the time I'd wasted on religion, and the opportunities I had missed out on because of it.
That was over ten years ago. I'm not feeling any bitter any more, but I remain entirely unconvinced of the existence of any gods, or paranormal phenomenon—if they existed, it would have been possible to demonstrate them under scientific conditions by now. However, I still feel drawn to the occult.
A few years ago, I read the Satanic Bible by Anton Lavey, and found it quite enlightening. While Lavey very much believed in magic and occult phenomenon, he recognised that the human mind was malleable, and that it was possible to suspend disbelief in order to engage in an activity while at the same time knowing that it isn't real. Satanism is built around this kind of framework, and it's best exemplified by the way a Satanist will use ritual for emotional catharsis.
I've come to realise that I can use the occult as a rational skeptic in the same way. To me, it's a kind of my own personal, private therapy. I don't share this with anyone, and I don't practice with anyone. Nobody knows. This is a secret shared only between me and you.