Growing up in a Secret Society: My Life in The Occult

Story based upon actual events. Names have been changed to protect identities. All descriptions of secret rituals are accurate.

Christmas Eve of 1999 was the night I realized my parents were not who they pretended to be.

It was the night I learned about the Occult.

Paris was facing the strongest winds in decades. “The Storm of The Century,” journalists called it.

The wind blew through our living room, destroying everything on its path. I scrambled out of bed to help my father push the sofa in front of the French window. The wind whooshed it back. It was eerie.

Within a few hours, the power went off. We quickly ran out of candles and relied on the bright winter moon to light our cramped apartment. It wasn’t much, but it was home. And if you stood on the balcony and craned your neck, you could see the tip of the Eiffel tower lost in a sea of roofs. But not that evening. The city of lights was plunged into darkness.

The news anchor on the portable radio urged citizens to take shelter immediately. Dozens had died already…and the storm was headed our way.

My parents asked me to bring a book, or rather a grimoire, and they started to perform a ritual using Occult artifacts: a black mirror representing the darkness, a totem representing the wind, and ancient incantations that pre-date Church rituals.

I didn’t know it then, but they were performing Chaos Magick.

They conjured up esoteric energies and the air felt electric. A lightning bolt stroke above our head. And without warning, the storm started winding down. The rattling stopped. We were spared.

As the sun rose, I sat in front of the radio waiting for an explanation. “It could have been much worse,” said the anchor, “if the storm had not weakened, swerved north, and miraculously spared fragile infrastructures.” Did my parents drive the storm away?

Growing up, I knew something was off about my parents. But I had no clue they were in a secret society.

A few years after the storm, our family started to climb the social ladder. My father was quickly promoted from Associate to Partner at his law firm. My mother signed with a top publisher and was invited on national TV. As fortune smiled upon us, we moved near the Arc-De-Triomphe in an old-money neighborhood. But unlike the other families, it was my parents’ allegiance to the Occult that allowed them to afford this lifestyle.

To our neighbors, we were a model family. Not the poster family by any means. But we were happy. My father was a lawyer. A big deal in the world of finance. My mother was a best-selling author. They found in each other a worthy partner. And together, they were unstoppable.

Those were times of blissful ignorance. And it was about to come to a halt.

Like a proper teenager, I never bothered to ask questions. But over time, it became harder and harder for my parents to live a double life; a life where they kept secrets from us, their children.

My mother traveled the world to initiate recruits to esoteric mysteries that predate Ancient Egypt. She worked with celebrities and politicians to help them attract all they desired. My father worked as a lawyer for people I simply cannot mention. Think ancestral families connected to major industries and shadow money. Opportunities and riches were boundless.

But power came at a price.

My parents started to be more absent. They would frequently attend meetings at their “club.” Mysterious guests often dropped unannounced. And they always brought home strange artifacts that they rushed to conceal.

My mother was offered a book deal with a star publisher in exchange for participating in a rejuvenation ritual. That’s when Occultists put their semen in a chalice and spread it on a woman to give her eternal beauty. It was a line she simply couldn’t cross…and brought on a reversal of fortune.

This Faustian bargain is the central dilemma of the Occult: what would you sacrifice for fame and wealth? Unfortunately, many Occultists are not afraid to go down a dark path.

Hitler infamously hired the Occultist Erik Jan Hanussen to magnetize crowds and control minds. Winston Churchill was hell-bent on fighting fire with fire. He worked secretly with British Occultist Alistair Crowley to counteract the Nazi’s occult practices. For centuries, powerful men and women have been influenced by the Occult. Sir Isaac Newton, Catherine de Medici, David Bowie…so why not me?

When I turned 15, I was initiated into the Occult. I entered a world where secrets are the currency.

I saw with my own eyes new recruits being locked up in coffins for days; teens left unburnt by fire during ancient ritualistic ceremonies; and secret rooms with artifacts powerful enough to conjure the spirits of the dead. For many years, I tried to run away from this life — but you can’t run away from your family.

I would often visit the society’s secret headquarters, or what they called their Temple. It looked like a country club, but with ancient relics and esoteric artifacts hanging on the walls. My favorite room was of course, the one that was off-limits: The Occultum. This is where masters made the impossible possible.

These ancient practices are based on the principle “as above, so below” from the Emerald Tablet. For example, if you want to dig up dirt on someone, you bury an idol, leave it and pull it out of the dirt three days later. The information will then be coincidentally leaked. Someone could simply “forget” important papers in the back of a taxi or forward an email to the wrong person. It’s about influencing invisible forces that interact with humans or the weather or luck to bring about the desired outcome.

At the Temple, I quickly bonded with the other young disciples who were on track to becoming the future elite of the nation. They went to the most prestigious high schools, had the best education, and smoked the most expensive weed. On Sundays, we trained in the esoteric arts of hermeticism. I felt special. But something else was happening.

Over time, I developed a very strong intuition. I learned to “sense” the future — I don’t like the word predict as it’s more like tuning in to a radio frequency. I started to hear messages from the dead and read people’s intentions. Whatever Occultists did to me, there was no going back.

So why all the secrecy?

Occult means hidden in Latin. It refers to esoteric practices, secret societies, and mystic knowledge passed down from generations to generations to a few chosen ones. Magic (or magick) symbolizes man’s power over the material world — the belief that through thoughts and actions, we have control over people and what is happening around us.

To keep such practices hidden, Occultists had to adapt. The network of secret societies bore many names and became affiliated with many popular groups practicing the esoteric arts: Hermetics, Gnostics, Rosicrucians, Golden Dawn, Knights Templar, Freemasons…but its origin dates to 70 AD.

After the Romans burned the Second Temple, apostles, merchants and nobles came together to hide the Secret Gospel of Mark — a non-canonic manuscript of the bible that reveals the source of the powers of Jesus. Simon the Magician wanted to study the Gospel, entrust mankind with the miraculous powers of Jesus. Peter the Apostle thought the Gospel would be a threat to the newly founded Catholic Church.

To this day, Occultists continue to look for the Secret Gospel of Mark. The closest they came to it is in 1958 when the Mar Saba letter, containing excerpts from the Secret Gospel, was discovered in Israel. But the Church got its hands on the letter and now keeps it in the Vatican’s Secret Archives.

The Church did its best to deny the existence of the Gospel while Occultists made it their life purpose to acquire its secret knowledge that allows humans to be more than humans.

Over time, this war between the Church and the Occult impacted us and created a rift that divided my family.

My parents used their secret knowledge to befriend presidents, influence elite circles and travel the world to paradisiacal places. The world was their oyster. Their marriage was the price.

When they tried to share the secrets of The Occult with the world to empower non-initiates, my parents were sacked by other high-ranked members intent on keeping this knowledge for themselves. But the one secret Occultists really don’t want you to know — is that everyone can be an Occultist.

We're all born with potential that's encrypted in our DNA. With the proper knowledge, Occultists can decode it.

The Occult is more than just an underground network of power-hungry families fighting secretly among us. Often referred as Occult sciences, initiates study the hidden laws and principles of man and the universe. It includes what modern science has discovered about the natural world, but also what science knows little or nothing about: the spiritual realm and the purpose of life on earth and elsewhere.

I’ve seen first-hand how members can acquire knowledge that allows them to push the limits of what humans are capable of. But now that I'm a fully-fledged member of the Occult, it is up to me to decide how I will use this newfound powers…

…for good…

…or evil.