The Order keeps no secret teaching. Everything it teaches is in the Library, and anyone may read it. But the Order has always drawn a line that this page depends on: the privacy of persons is not the secrecy of teaching. A practitioner is entitled to keep their own name, their own record, and their own practice to themselves, and many have good reason to.
This page gathers what practitioners say about deciding what to tell, to whom, and when. It is advice, and the decisions are the practitioner's own.
Privacy, Secrecy, and Deception
Three things are often confused.
- Privacy is keeping one's own life to oneself. It is a right, and no one is owed an account of another person's beliefs or practice.
- Secrecy, in the sense the Order rejects, is withholding teaching: keeping knowledge from others as a privilege of rank, or swearing others not to reveal it. The Order's essay Against the Locked Grimoire is about this.
- Deception is telling people something false. It is seldom necessary, and it tends to cost more than it saves.
Practitioners who have thought about this subject draw the line between the second and third. Choose your words, they say, but do not lie. A pendant can honestly be described as a symbol of self-reliance. A practice can honestly be described as meditation and journaling. Saying less than everything is not deceit.
Why Practice Has Been Hidden
The word occult comes from the Latin occultus, hidden. For most of its history the practice it names was hidden for a simple reason: it was dangerous to be found out. The page The Witch describes the trials. The panic of the 1980s, described on the page Origins of the Left-Hand Path, harmed innocent people within living memory, and older practitioners in some places remember being followed home from occult bookshops, threatened, or worse. In some countries today, open practice is unsafe.
Most practitioners in most places now face nothing worse than misunderstanding. But misunderstanding can cost a job, a friendship, a marriage, or the custody of a child, and a practitioner who weighs those costs before speaking is being prudent, not cowardly.
Wisdom or Fear
A practitioner who keeps their practice private may wonder whether they are hiding from something they should face. A good test is a question practitioners put to themselves: is the silence coming from wisdom about what is at stake, or from a fear that has not been examined? If it is the second, it belongs in the record as material for the fourth coil, the Venom. If it is the first, it needs no defense. Others put it differently: the question is not whether silence betrays the path, but whether it betrays oneself.
Partners
Whether and when to tell a partner is the question practitioners ask most often. The advice they give is consistent.
- Timing matters. A first meeting is not the time. A relationship that is becoming serious is.
- Disclose carefully, and let the other person set the pace. Practitioners who have done this well describe telling a new partner early that they follow a path with a permanent place in their life, answering questions as they come, not over-sharing, and making no attempt to convert.
- Agreement is not required. Many practitioners live happily with partners who share none of their beliefs: an atheist who supports a practice because they have seen what it does for the person they love, or a believer of another faith who respects it. What matters is acceptance without the effort to change each other.
- Long concealment corrodes. Hiding an altar, a record, or a practice from a partner for years tends to breed resentment and a feeling of imprisonment on one side, and of betrayal on the other when it is discovered.
- Sometimes paths part. Some practitioners describe the end of a relationship over the path as two rivers dividing, which is not necessarily a disaster for either.
One caution needs stating plainly. A partner who respects you may disagree with your path. A partner who tries to control it, first by argument and then by pressure, threats, or monitoring, is showing a pattern that has nothing to do with religion. If that is happening, the matter is no longer one for this page, and qualified help is available.
Family, Friends, and Work
With family, the stakes are usually highest and the conversations hardest. Practitioners who have managed them well recommend honesty when asked, gradual disclosure, and close attention to how each piece is received. There is no need to announce anything. Incense, candles, and books will eventually announce themselves, and the practitioner should decide in advance what they will say when they are asked.
With friends of other beliefs, practitioners advise keeping the friendship where the respect is mutual. There is no need to sever every relationship with a person of a different faith, and the practitioner who does so has isolated themselves for no reason.
At work, most practitioners say nothing at all. Several recommend a simple sentence for the moment when the subject comes up anyway: "I do not discuss religion or politics at work." It is true, it is polite, and it ends the conversation.
The Order's texts are written for adults, and its Statements of Position ask that no one involve a minor in any practice they describe. A practitioner with children decides what to tell them, as every parent decides what to tell their children about their own beliefs. Involving them in the practice is a different matter, and the Order's position on it is fixed.
Practicing in a Shared Home
A practitioner who lives with others can practice without an altar, without incense, and without speaking aloud. The page The Altar describes how. The record can be kept in an ordinary notebook, or in electronic form protected like any other private document, as The Nightside Record advises. Some practitioners keep their records in a magical script for privacy, which is their right.
Answering Questions
Practitioners who are asked about their practice by people outside it, whether curious, hostile, or merely nosy, tend to give the same advice.
- You are not obliged to answer anyone.
- Distinguish the inquisitive from the nosy, and both from the hostile.
- Give a short, true answer, and then watch how it is received before saying more.
- Speak of what the practice means to you rather than of what it is called. Words such as freedom, self-reliance, and examination describe the path accurately and frighten no one.
- Do not try to persuade. It rarely changes anyone's mind.
- Know when to leave the conversation, and leave it.
- Remember that anything said can be repeated. A bell cannot be unrung.
Practitioners who have answered such questions honestly and calmly, with no wish to win the argument, report that the best response they have had was something like this: "I do not understand it, but I know you." That is about as much as can be hoped for, and it is a good deal.
When a conversation does become hostile, the ordinary human responses to threat are to fight, to flee, or to freeze. A practitioner who has kept a record of their own reactions will often recognize which one is starting, and can choose otherwise: step back, lower the temperature, acknowledge that the other person has their reasons for feeling as they do, and decline to escalate. Some conflict cannot be avoided, but very little of it needs to be won.
Newcomers
New practitioners often announce their path too early, before they can explain it, and then face questions and ridicule they are not yet ready to answer. Practitioners who did this themselves advise waiting until the practice is established and understood before speaking of it to anyone. There is no deadline, and there is no obligation to speak at all.
Online
Most of what goes wrong for practitioners now goes wrong online. Several practitioners report being targeted, by other practitioners more often than by anyone else, using personal information they had shared freely. The advice is the same as for any part of life online, with more reason behind it.
- Share less than you think you can.
- Keep the name you practice under separate from the name you work under, if you wish.
- In a new forum or group, read for a while before saying anything.
- Do not engage with harassment. Correct a falsehood once, if you must, without naming the person who spread it, and then use the block function.
- Be wary of anyone who offers rapid advancement, secret teaching, or certainty, especially for money. The page Working With Others lists the signs.
The Order's Own Silence
The Order practices what this page describes. It publishes everything it teaches and nothing about any person. Its texts carry no names, its Keepers are not identified, and the archive it opened in 2014 was edited to remove anything that could identify a private individual. The privacy of persons is not the secrecy of teaching, and a practitioner who keeps their own counsel is keeping faith with the Order, not departing from it.