I would say that traditions (and the symbols they use, such as the "all-seeing eye") that are used mostly for impure or even dark purposes become 'tainted' energetically. A lot of what is usually described as occult seems to be like that and the association of 'occult' with spooky or dark is not a coincidence.
Though I suppose some people can stay on the light side of the occult and get a lot out if it, if they are careful. Same as ouja board channeling, which can be used to tune into very high energies or very low ones, like a radio. But you definitely need to know exactly what you are doing.
Other mystery traditions seem to have less of this danger. And I would also say that astrology and tarot are pretty safe.
I would ditto this observation. And I'd agree that "[needing] to know exactly what you are doing" is a definite requirement in the Western Occult tradition these days, given the nature of its historical corruption and manipulation and possible "outside influence" (a la STS influence). The difficulty in fulfilling this "requirement" is that the state of occult affairs in the Information Age is such that finding out exactly what one "needs to know" is a winding road at the very least (obfuscation, high noise-to-signal ratio), and a treacherous road depending on how deep you go into any one teaching or lineage, by which I mean deep enough to the point where you are practicing a tradition's prescribed or recommended practices, invoking certain powers or forces, etc. Which it doesn't sound like you're interested in doing from your initial post,
@Andrey.
To qualify the former sentence, I'd quote from Michael Topper, a self-professed Occultist, whom Laura references/quotes in the Wave and on the main Cassiopaean website,
here and
here.
This excerpt is from the Introduction to Magnum Organum; and for some context, he is speaking to the clamor of extra-dimensional voices trying to get our attention, a clamor with many different opinions or views of the same thing, such as the "Earth energy-screen" quoted below, which the Ra Material states was put in place to protect us by "the good guys", whereas the Pleiadians ( I think as channeled by Barbara Marciniack?) say it was put in place by reptilians as a masking screen in order to "keep us here."
Just as there are emphatic astrological configurations (conjunctions, T-squares, trines) set by the timed/coded cycles and internal coordinates of things to occur so there's no real chance they won't occur, yet these significant coordinate "nodes" aren't strictly determined in the same way beforehand re specifics of the events they foreshadow. The events themselves must come to pass according to the type and quality of configuration; but the determinative contents surrounding, feeding into and concretely constituting those events are variable just as the exact meaning of Jupiter-square-Neptune may discharge in several probable ways and only arises as a specific complex of factors in the relative context "I" experience. In the same way the "sinking of Atlantis" or the "Earth energy-screen" may be considered a "necessary schedule event"; but a number of probable outriders issue from the raw potential of any such event. Those probabilities will "materialize" in their own separate contexts according to the coordinative streams that connect the percipient to the event. Thus in one context the spiritual learning requirement signified by the scheduled presence of an "Earth energy-screen" may come about as the apparent result of spiritual determinations issuing from a positive "Confederacy"; in another context, according to the luminous self-linkups of probability networks the requirement might be fulfilled through nefarious designs of some Negative machination. In either case the "requirement" is fulfilled, yet each probable event carries its own stress, implications, net of consequences and probable-projections in turn. Thus the "acceptance" of any given "story" of any given source as of primary importance regarding "your" origins, the facts and meanings of "your" present condition etc. isn't innocuous. Acceptance of any such story...inexorably links one to the probability-cords characterizing the specific circumstances of the beguiling storyteller. Though you may not have begun on that probability-curve, you wind up shunted onto it! You are effectually, the "guest" of those who invited you to accept their version-- a "guest" who's committed for the duration (without in any way having realized beforehand the significance of accepting so apparently-harmless an invitation).
So in the same way, I think we can be "shunted" or linked into beings and influences from using methods and interacting with forces that have historically been used in a largely negative way by negative beings. The practices and pathways of various traditions have picked up a "negative charge" so to speak through repeated use/abuse, and being connected to those energies may well have large consequences for us individually. That being said, as
@axj said above, astrology and tarot are pretty safe, as well as the more general information about any tradition, and their symbology and cosmology.
