From the Diary of Emile Belasco(2)

I feel truly sorry for most people who express a desire to study the occult.

The problem is not one of desire. To look into the corners of the secret world is an honorable task. Loki's pants! It's necessary to our continued survival as a race, I think! 

Science is limited. It's very good for what it does, but it doesn't handle the inherent chaos of the cosmos very well. And empiricism’s adherents are just as hidebound and dogmatic as any backwoods bible thumper. Their intellectual condescension closes their minds tightly against the infinite. Oh, there are a few who have seen through that trap, and their minds are needed for this sort of exploration.

And therein lies the problem. Intellectual rigor is often hard to find in the field of true occult study. In order to truly untangle the mysteries, one must have a mind that believes but also is skeptical of new things. Parapsychologists get too wrapped up in their charts and graphs and telemetry readouts. Cultists drown in their unquestioning belief. Poor, wide-eyed, crystal waving fools. They are so hungry for a little magick in their lives that they put themselves at risk, either to charlatans willing to take their money and their faith for their own purposes, or to entities that only need a foot in the door of this world. Like the most heinous things, they need only an invitation. Pity the poor gullible fools.

Ideally, the best minds in the field are people with real powers that have manifested in such a way that required them to study responsibly and get those powers under control. I shudder each time I am in a bookstore and see some bright-eyed young person pull down some volume on Enochian. 

It's like handing a chainsaw to a six-year-old. Someday this world is going to crack in two, like a china saucer because of some ham-fistery on the part of an enthusiastic experimenter with more power than sense or experience.