Adam Darski

A man created God, and he even gave him his own features and personified him; then he fell to his knees before something he created—as if he had taken everything that’s wonderful, creative and good out of himself and put it on a pedestal, while at the same time seeing himself as a pile of rotten manure. Why? I have no idea. What I do know is that with our attitude, creativity, and expansive relation to the world, each one of us can develop their godly element—without the help of figurines on walls and without prayers to golden calves.

You decline religion, but you often refer to occultism. Can’t you see a contradiction?

The fact that I assume that God does not exist does not mean that I’m automatically deprived of spirituality. There are a lot of things that happen to us and manifest themselves and are not quite explainable by science.

The world is magical. As children, we look at it in a very simple, often very naïve, but pure way. We notice the magic. Only later do the definitions and concepts in which we close down the reality appear. We tame it and describe it. With time we treat descriptions as unchangeable and ultimate. That’s how organised religions work. People are drawn to it because they want to feel safe and get all the answers to their questions. We fear what we don’t know. This fear kills curiosity and the will of cognition. I don’t close my door to something I can’t touch, name, and define.

You take Crowley’s or the aforementioned Spare’s books, read them, and accept them uncritically?

I am very sceptical. That’s my attitude toward everything. On the other hand, I am an empiricist. I don’t negate anything before I digest it. I don’t decline an idea because of labels that somebody decorated it with.

What Crowley, Spare, and I have in common is a conviction about the existence of a hidden potential in human nature. They look at the world like a constantly curious boy. And I’m buying that. I’m not running around with a magic wand; I don’t do rituals with candles, and I’m not a student in any school of magic. But there are things in occultism that inspire me. I take a lot from that legacy, like I do from many others.

I’ve got a tattoo on my back of the whole Hieroglyphic Monad by John Dee, Queen Elizabeth I’s astrologist. Does that mean I walk the same path as he did? No. I can’t; that’s not me. My nature is extreme eclecticism. We’ve talked about the smorgasbord. This is what it is about. I am interested in philosophy, counterculture, and also occultism, for sure, but I don’t want to follow a path that somebody else walked first. I avoid categories like the plague. I decline all kinds of universalism in a natural way.

Of course, I read with passion; I get inspirations and I borrow and steal ideas—anything! I’m like a sponge soaking up water. This knowledge is my fuel, but the creator of the system that allows me to live and function is me.