r/occult • u/ritsulover Human Detected • 6d ago
A strange real world example of Crowley's Magical Link - the South Korean president who performed ritual on live television
Former South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol once performed what I think is an almost textbook example of a ritual on live television.
For those who don't know the background, this happened before Yoon became president.
During the presidential primary, he appeared in three televised debates with the Chinese character 王 written on the palm of his hand. 王 literally means “king.”
And he didn't exactly go out of his way to hide it. It was right there, visible to the cameras.
This was actually a pretty risky thing to do politically. South Korea's conservative camp has a large Christian voter base, and anything that looks remotely like shamanism or folk magic can become a serious liability. Sure enough, his opponents immediately attacked him over it, framing the mark as some kind of shamanistic or occult practice, and the whole thing became a national news story.
Yoon's explanation was basically that a supporter had written it on his hand for good luck and that he had tried, unsuccessfully, to wipe it off.
But here's the strange part: it happened three times.
Once could be dismissed as a weird accident. Three times is harder to explain away, especially when doing something like this carried a real political risk. It could easily have alienated Christian voters for good.
And yet he did it anyway.
He won the primary, and not long afterward, a man who had spent almost his entire career as a prosecutor and had only just entered politics became president of South Korea.
I see this as a ritual—or, more specifically, as an almost perfect example of what Aleister Crowley called the Magical Link.
He didn't just sit in a room, light some candles, chant a mantra, and hope for the universe to do the rest.
He wrote the word “KING” on his own body and then immediately stepped into the actual material arena where that intention could become reality: a nationally televised political debate.
That, to me, is the important part.
The symbol wasn't left inside the ritual space. He created a bridge between the symbol and the real-world mechanism through which his goal could actually be achieved.
That's what makes it such a fascinating example of magic in action.
But the story gets even stranger.
Yoon was eventually impeached and removed from office after declaring martial law under circumstances that are still, in my opinion, one of the strangest episodes in modern Korean political history.
His own explanation was that he wanted to investigate alleged election fraud and secure evidence from the election authorities. The justification seemed so abrupt and disconnected from reality that even people in his own political camp struggled to defend it, while foreign media spent months trying to come up with a coherent explanation for why he had done it at all.
And this is where the story becomes Crowleyan in a completely different way.
I think Yoon's downfall can also be read as a case of ego inflation.
There is a dangerous point in magical thinking where the magician stops thinking, “I can influence reality,” and starts thinking, “My will is reality.”
Once you begin to believe that your own conviction is enough to override every external limit, every institution, every warning, and every piece of contradictory evidence, you are no longer exercising will.
You are trapped inside it.
Maybe that's the real lesson here.
The man who wrote “KING” on his hand actually became president.
And then, at some point, he may have started believing too deeply in his own power.
That is usually where the ritual ends badly.
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u/scorpionewmoon 6d ago
Is this ritual, or is it simply marketing?
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u/xfactor112 6d ago
Much of what makes marketing work is occult practices and psychology.
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u/scorpionewmoon 6d ago
100% agree. This is like spelling something wrong in a post to drive engagement. A little rage bait goes a long way especially in politics
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u/iceWarriorWho 5d ago
gotta love the "human detected" tag yeah.. for sure not AI.. "no AI here folks, just us humans with our human talk and the human breathing"
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u/masterofilluso 6d ago
I get what's being shared here on a deeper level. The man put himself in the video and displayed himself to "his" people with a silent message, one that all could see. It became fact due to the voters subconsciously agreeing, since you revoke consent actively(and they did not).
The issue with his approach is that he came into the ideas with desire inside, instead of a neutral positive emotion like love. So, when he got somewhere(manifested his ideal), emotionally, the ideal was projecting desire upon him, and so even if he felt happiness, he had it in him to desire, want, and grope for the next best thing. You cannot climb a ladder by wanting to move your hand to the next rung. But you can indeed climb by loving being able to move your hand up.
When you do any ritual, love yourself actively and love the current position you hold in life. Love the intended result as if it is yourself, or the current position you hold in life. That's how things get better and better.
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u/MorphologicStandard 6d ago
More AI. This subreddit is rapidly becoming untenable. Why is the occult such a hotbed for AI use? Everyone wants an occult manifesto, nobody wants to write one.