The Secret Experiment
First off, welcome back to SUCCUBUSLOVER.COM. The domain is up and running again with this new website. It’s lighter, leaner, and faster. I can upload posts using my phone as a modem and not even put a dent into my allotted two gigabytes of data per month. This is a huge improvement versus using Substack, as just visiting the dashboard for that bloated social media page eats up over 30 megabytes. Uploading here often only uses a few BYTES and visiting the actual webpage consumes mere kilobytes.
For the nerds out there, this is a “Jamstack” deployment. I build the site locally, upload only the relevant changes to a Github repo, and Cloudflare Workers immediately grabs those new files, hosting them on their edge network. The only thing I have to pay for is my domain renewal, which is much cheaper since I changed registrars. $11 per year.
The main limitation with a website like this is that I can’t do anything with a database, so no forums or comments hosted here. Maybe I could string up a few third-party web apps to replace that functionality - as this seems to be how it’s done these days - but I made my position on being a community moderator clear enough on the last post.
There’s a link to an archive of the Daemon Grotto forum, if anyone is interested. For browsing purposes only. None of the site functions work since it’s just scrapped html files.
Also, I posted a gallery with some of my favorite succubus-themed pictures to the top menu bar. It’s the most bandwidth-intensive part of the site, triggering a download of just over a megabyte. Not bad for 36 decently-sized images, if I do say so myself.
Finally, there’s a new, proper index page for browsing through old posts that automagically updates whenever I make new posts. I have to credit the LLM (Large Language Model), Gemma 4 26B, with helping me sort out the logic and styling for that page. If there’s one thing LLMs are really well trained on, it’s web development. So even my smaller, locally spun up model can be of use.
Anyway, enough tech talk. On to today’s topic: The Secret.
“We create our own reality!”
“There is no yesterday or tomorrow. Only NOW!”
“It’s all about intention.”
Ironically, I would soon capitalize on a variation of these ideas to bring Catherine into my life. The power of will and intent through ritual is what brought her to me. So, in a certain sense, the tenants of The Secret have a grain of truth to them. However, positive thinking can only account for so much. When this philosophy is taken to its logical conclusion, that would necessarily mean victims of extreme violence brought it all onto themselves because they weren’t thinking correctly.
I can’t abide that. It’s a cop-out. Like Christianity with its indiscriminate grace, proponents of The Secret find themselves stumbling into a perverse sort of victim-blaming. The most heinous crimes are forgiven because: “Everything happens according to God’s will,” or “The perpetrator and the victim made an agreement before coming into this life that they would play out said roles.”
“You’re poor because your thoughts dwell on poverty too much.”
“You suffered calamity because you didn’t pray to God hard enough.”
Yeah, maybe. Maybe you’re just full of shit. Ever think about that? Huh? Ya fruitcake.
All of these New Thought proponents cite Jesus Christ as their number one authority for the basis of these ideas. They transform the story of the rebel-prophet into a metaphysical play, one that is meant to teach us the proper way of thinking. These authors posit Jesus’ sayings are actually an arcane psychological formula for becoming wealthy. Never mind the fact that the good Lord himself lived in poverty his whole life. Or that he said, “It is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven.” - Matt. 19:23 (They especially ignore that saying.)
People use the Bible to justify nearly any belief. Really, it’s just a thinly-veiled, desperate appeal to authority. One that is increasingly wearing on me as the years go by. I can’t help but roll my eyes when I read this stuff.
Am I too cynical? Maybe I’m working too hard to prevent good things coming to me? I will agree with New Thought proponents on this much: It takes an unshakable commitment to a well-formed idea in order to accomplish anything in this world. But all this metaphysical mumbo-jumbo and talk of quantum physics only distracts from that important nugget of truth.
This is a Sisyphus reality. Things are hard here. They’re supposed to be. We’re meant to push up against that rock, to build muscles, to slip and struggle. Sometimes, the damn boulder rolls all the way back to the bottom of the hill and we’ve gotta start over.
Having Catherine with me… I believe she has helped me over the past fifteen years in a myriad of ways. Helped to open up opportunities for me that I otherwise would have missed. She’s encouraged me to accept help when it’s offered. But she’s not pushing on that boulder for me. If anything, she drapes herself over the top of it, looking down and smiling coyly.
That’s the real danger of a succubus right there. I’ve tried juggling the bliss she offers alongside steady work towards a greater ambition. Invariably I always arrive back at this question: “Why the Hell am I doing this when I’ve got Heaven on tap?”
The Secret must be bullshit, right? Oprah Winfrey endorsed the book, so it certainly must be. Otherwise, millions of single mothers would be millionaires right now. Perhaps, as I remember Stephan Molyneux saying back in 2013, The Secret worked for the author, Rhonda Byrne, because she was an attractive woman back then.
Perhaps all the single-mothers are poor because I’m not thinking positively enough about them? It must be MY fault. Or President Trump. Or capitalism. Anything but theirs!
Yes, if we think negatively about things, that tends to be de-motivating. If we think positively about a thing, we’re more likely to work towards bringing it into reality.
Does the whole universe rearrange itself to eventually deliver the thing desired? As crazy as that sounds, that’s precisely what these New Thought proponents are suggesting. This idea has permeated throughout the culture and it is quite common to run into these days. Back to the single mothers - they often read books like The Secret and Eat, Pray, Love. They all worship “The Universe” as an invisible force that ostensibly furnishes their every desire. Throwing off the patriarchal bonds of Christianity, New Thought has become their new religion. A genderless, amorphous, impersonal universe is their replacement for the Abrahamic god.
Why are they still poor? The Universe desperately wants to make them rich, so what gives? And it’s not like they’re thinking incorrectly, as prescribed by these self-help books. Such New Age devotees are constantly deluding themselves with beliefs that run counter to reality. Yet the storehouses of Heaven remain closed to them.
As with life, I believe this is also true for magick: It’s all about who you know.
Perhaps it’s a mistake to assume that the entire damn universe will rearrange itself, just so we can have avocado toast. Maybe - just maybe - we need to make friends with someone who knows what the hell they’re doing. Someone who really can pull strings from beyond the confines of visible 3D reality. And furthermore, that someone just might expect something from us in return for services rendered.
Reciprocity. Cause and effect. These are hard and fast rules that appear to govern every level of conceivable reality. Not “The Universe is desperately trying to make you rich, you’re just not thinking correctly.”
Get in touch with a demon, deity, angel, succubus, UFO - whatever works - then shit will start happening. It worked for me. Entering into a relationship with the supernatural hasn’t made me rich, but I didn’t ask for that. I asked for Catherine, and that’s precisely what I got.
Here is my experiment: I’m going to do a ritual every day at 9 AM for the next month. I have an idea of what I want to accomplish. I’m going to visualize and feel myself having accomplished said thing as powerfully as I can muster. Then I’m going to physically work towards realizing the idea. Catherine will help me. We’re just a couple of spirit-sex junkies over here and she’s also gonna have to work for her next fix.
Let’s see what combining a frustrated succubus and Law of Attraction methods gets us