Occult books digitized and put online by Amsterdam’s Ritman Library

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

AI, LLMs & Occult Humor

  • Many comments spin the digitized collection into sci‑fi/horror premises: AI trained on grimoires summoning or banishing demons, “GPT-666,” AI necromancy of historical occultists, or AI vs. demons as a war scenario.
  • Occult–AI analogies are popular: programming as alchemy, prompt engineering as demon evocation, and SEO / black-box ranking systems as “occult” information practices.
  • Several people link this to existing fiction (Lovecraft, Laundry Files, Evil Dead, Buffy, Anathem) and joke that current AIs are already trained on these texts.

Scholarly & Historical Interest in the Occult

  • Some highlight serious academic resources (YouTube lectures, podcasts, historians) and argue that occult literature is key to understanding early science, hermeticism, and the Renaissance.
  • Occult philosophy is framed by some as “early natural philosophy” and a humanist core of European thought, closely tied to Neo-Latin scholarship and largely untranslated corpora.
  • Specific authors and works (Agrippa, Ficino, alchemical and Rosicrucian traditions) are recommended as starting points.

Debates on What “Occult” Means & Whether It’s Dangerous

  • One view: occult is essentially pre‑modern social psychology, propaganda, or narrative technology—“spellcasting” as psychological manipulation.
  • Another view: occult practice is a broad domain (theurgic vs thaumaturgic) and historically a tool of marginalized people, not mainly state control.
  • A more spiritual stance insists that real black magic and demons exist and are harmful, urging caution, while skeptics invoke stage-magic debunkers and dismiss such claims as incoherent.
  • There’s extended back‑and‑forth tying occult, religion, mysticism, and modern ideological “belief systems” together as structurally similar.

Occult Texts as Training Data for LLMs

  • Some argue occult texts would be “useless or detrimental” for models; others say they’re valuable for intellectual diversity and understanding Renaissance thought.
  • It’s noted that many such texts are already online and likely scraped; specialized “occult LLMs” and religious AIs are mentioned.
  • Speculation arises about AI accidentally “conjuring demons,” with one commenter reinterpreting “demons” as self‑sustaining harmful information loops (e.g., addictions, destructive patterns).

Access, Downloads & Use Cases

  • Several users are frustrated that the library’s viewer doesn’t offer straightforward bulk download; workarounds (dezoom tools, scripts, Internet Archive approaches) are shared.
  • People want local copies for preservation, research, translation, and RAG/GM tools.
  • Others are excited about using the scans as inspiration and props for tabletop RPGs and as a source of high‑quality historical occult artwork.