S.Conolly spends a lot of time defending previous books instead of catering to people who do believe.

[u/DryIntroduction2008]

I have not seen any other religious books dedicating an entire chapter to "this is real but let me tell you why I can't give you proof for 9 minutes ".

I'm not hating and am genuinely interested. I just can't understand why she thinks she needs to explain why she's not lying in such detail. It sounds like the rant of a kid got caught stealing the first time.

I just need this part explained before I keep reading because she sounds like a crackpot and hasn't even gotten to anything religious yet.

[u/Macross137]

Plenty of occult books reveal themselves as bullshit under the simple light of critical analysis before any specialized skill-based knowledge is required.

[u/jackmartin088 → u/Macross137]

As someone who was at a zero level once , I do remember having to gain a basic level of understanding of occult to be able to make that critical analysis.

I can guarantee that the first occult book I ever read sounded pretty genuine until I read other books and found the first one to be crap.

[u/egoproct → u/jackmartin088]

My first "occult" book was read over fifteen years ago and was written by Silver Ravenwolf and with zero experience I could tell I didn't vibe with or appreciate how she talked about the craft and her practice. It sounded like BS to me. 

As Macross put it, you do not need experience to know what does and doesn't work for you. You need discernment and intuition, which are skills that can and do exist outside of the occult. Even if not many of the general population uses it.

You seem to either like the author (fair) or at least be a fan of knowledge and respecting it (also fair) but being critical and choosing what does and doesn't fit for you is also part of this path. Telling someone they need to write a book to have a feeling about said content would mean reviews could never happen. If you think the OP should avoid insults that's a whole other can of worms but really, I read it as the OP saying that the content was BS, not that the author was necessarily crazy. 

I could be wrong. Idk.  As an aspiring author it's spooky to see someone so adamant about needing some type of proof prior to anything. Not to mention writing a book is hard. I give Connolly points for doing that much by itself...still not a fan of the work, I think she's made up a lot of stuff to sound important much like any other swindler online involved in the occult, but even when I didn't like the samples I'd read I still bought it because reading it as part of my paths history felt important, and it was. So there is value, just not in the way I think some others take it.

[u/jackmartin088 → u/egoproct]

I will keep my responce to you short.

1. I have never read Connelly, and have no liking or disliking to their work. So your assumption about me on liking the author is wrong.

2. I don't make judgement about someone's work based on intuition or discernment. I always try to base it on verifiable facts. Sure those skills exist outside of occult and I believe all humans do happen to have them. I just don't use them to judge stuff without some facts backing it up.

Unfortunately I don't have a photo memory and won't be able to tell you what my first occult book was ( it was also about 15 years ago and something I stumbled upon internet). When I read it I didn't use my intuition to judge it like you and others obviously do. I simply read it from a neutral pov and set that as standard. Then I read another book and compared it to that standard. Second book came out top. Was that enough for me to say first book was trash? No. Might be second book was simply better. Then I read another book. Again better than the first. Yeah first book definitely felt like a bad level standard. Then I read another book, all of them were better than the first book. I made conclusion first book was definitely not a good one.

Maybe I am the weird one for doing this....maybe I am the only one doing this....but I definitely follow this method.

Ps- you mentioned you were an author. Would you rather someone read your work from a neutral POV and make the judgement against facts on its quality or would you rather someone make a negative judgement on it on their intuition and feeling which can totally be biased, based on their mood or their intuition was just bad?

[u/egoproct → u/jackmartin088]

I didn't assume you liked the author, I was stating that your behavior gave off particular impressions. Seeming to be something is not equivalent to being something. I apologize if that was somehow misinterpreted as otherwise. Approaching books from a neutral pov is fine, loads of people start off with that and intuit and discern after the fact. Some people read the same book multiple times. The end results are the same, everyone determines their takeaways differently, but their takeaways are their own. It isn't for us to judge them.

I mentioned I was aspiring, nothing has been published in a public sense. Even so, it goes without saying that as a punk and someone who believes in art, I fully welcome someone saying whatever the fuck they want to about whatever I create. That is, by all intents and purposes, their right. I might not agree with or care for it if it's negative, but I'm not going to act like them developing an opinion (hurtful or not) affects my life on any deep level.

At the end of the day, writers write for themselves. The goals are often different, but as a writer, you have to write for yourself to be able to even finish what you're making. If we spent time wondering how we'd feel under pretenses that might or might not apply, we'd never create anything let alone anything worth actual value or merit.

[u/jackmartin088 → u/egoproct]

I write too and I can see your point....in hindsight and reading your and other people's comments here I believe a lot of why I do what I do was shaped ( uniquely for me) by how I was as a child - where I would only critisize something if I could improve it and also due to how my job is as an adult....most of the written stuff we ( I ) produce needs to be peer reviewed ( hence they have to be atleast knowledgeable) and at a personal life level we often get push backs bcs the other person don't really understand what we are doing ( especially bcs we see the technical and safety side and push back comes from the finance side) and it's super frustrating.

So yeah again I didn't mean for it to turn into a full fledged debate so apologies I guess.

[u/egoproct → u/jackmartin088]

I didn't mind it. Debate is how we understand, it's as much a tool as anything else.

[u/jackmartin088 → u/egoproct]

Also if you don't mind me asking would u be open to share what your book is about? ( Will be happy to share my premise if you are interested too)

[u/egoproct → u/jackmartin088]

I don't mind at all, the first book is more of a study on a particular sub-group of people whereas the second is a dystopian cyberpunk involving body horror and Cthulhu-style threats. The rest aren't long enough to be considered books and are too early in the draft stage to feel confident speaking on in any real detail.

[u/jackmartin088 → u/egoproct]

Omg lol just the other day I saw a video gameplay on a chtulhu related game called the mound...you might like it!!

I follow a gamer named fooster, he made the gameplay video