"Don't be Afraid of Black Magick"

"Don't be Afraid of Black Magick", by Robert Anton Wilson (originally published in "Gnostica"):

The old theological cliche that the devil is the "father of lies" contains an important neuro-political truth...the ordinary reality of the conditioned citizen is somewhere around 99.97% mythology. Mind warping, brainwashing, demonology, the hurling of curses, etc, begin with the bare-faced lie that the mind warper's alternate reality is not mythology at all but "really" "real."

The Satanist's reality is real. So is Rev Sun Myung Moon's. And the nudist reality. The snake-worshiper's reality. The Methodist reality. The Republican reality. The SLA reality. The Buddhist reality. The vegetarian reality. The scientific reality. Every one of these realities is "real" to the nervous system programmed to convert all incoming energy signals into the coding (language categories) of that "reality," and to exclude as background noise all signals not fitting the code.

The biggest lie in the world is the idea that there is one "true" reality. That is the lie which keeps the conditioned citizen trapped in the one static reality imprinted by parents and schools in childhood. It is the lie which the black magician exploites in making the demons of his reality in your reality.

America is the greatest country in the world to the conditioned American. Fernando Poo is the greatest country in the world to the conditioned Pooan. Catholicism is the one true religion to the Catholic. Voodoo is the one true religion to the Voodooist. Mirrors and blue smoke.

There are dozens of meta-programming rituals in occult manuals, showing how to insulate your reality from attacking demonic forces out of some black magician's separate reality. Some of the best and most commonsensical are in Dion Fortune's Psychic Self Defense. Personally, I regard such rituals as unnecessary, since they take the terrorist too seriously.

Do you believe this article is saying there is no actual objective reality or that, to someone who believes something, something takes the place of objective reality (A classic "Map =/= territory" error)

The former may or may not be true (as we have no means outside our own subjective reality to test it), the later is more or less true (in as far as abstractions can be, which ultimately is a no).

He's saying every individual's reality is subjective. If there is a greater objective reality it's far beyond the reach and scope of an individual mind. Even QED theorists argue over the very nature of reality. If you've seen "Big bang Theory," which is a tv sitcom about college physics students of extraordinary brilliance (and sub-ordinary social skills) you might have seen the episode where they discuss QED theories in the context of relationships between individual students who held vying theories as if they were religious maxims (What will we teach our kids? etc).
It's really nothing to do with black magick at all. It's just the same old hermetic princples as always disguised in black and white for the sake of a superficial meaningless religious argument that distracts us all from the quest for the truth. This theological distraction is half of the grandest spell of all being cast right in front of our eyes while they play the oldest trick in the book...

Seriously...didn't anyone see "The Illusionist"? It's a simply distract and mystify while pulling a slight of hand. Theology is the distraction. Politics is the distract. Red vs. Blue. Black vs. White. Good vs. Evil.

The truth is much simpler. All you have is right now and what you know RIGHT NOW RIGHT HERE. Truth be told you know too much as it is and all this theological complication is just a distraction from that ever present unnamable yet obvious truth which we are all aware of if we just put down those distraction for just a second...