It used to be that few people bothered with the underworld. They recognized its existence, but they feared it, revered it, respectfully steered clear of it.
Nowadays it’s different. We haven’t simply neglected the existence of the underworld. We recognize it but treat it like we do any other dimension of human experience. We “make use of it.” We “make of it what we will.”
We go on little weekend or afternoon tours of the underworld. We take some drugs. We buy a book that teaches us some “techniques”. We “open doors” for ourselves. We read a little philosophy and learn to say clever things about what lies on the Earth and under the Earth.
What’s conspicuously absent from all this is a sense of reverence. Reverence is passé. Everything is ultimately subject to us. Meaning is relative to our ends. The gods are what we need them to be at any moment.
The Adept must accept every “spirit”, every “spell”, every “scourge”, as part of his environment, and make them all “subject to” himself; that is, consider them as contributory causes of himself … He must therefore realize that every event is subject to him. It occurs because he had need of it … All experiences contribute to make us complete in ourselves. We feel ourselves subject to them so long as we fail to recognise this; when we do, we perceive that they are subject to us.
Journeys to the underworld used to be rare and were undertaken for the benefit of the gods, the benefit of the cosmos, even the benefit of human generations. Now it’s all about me: getting something—knowledge, power, experience—for my own sake, “my growth,” for my own entertainment.
“It’s Friday. You guys wanna call down some spirits or maybe just hit the bar?”
To say that modern people have become materialistic is not strong enough of a criticism; nor is it entirely accurate. There are probably more people on the planet interested in “spirituality” than at any other point in human history. No, we haven’t simply denied the dimension of the spiritual, the world of shadow. That would be far less of a crime than what we’ve actually done.
Instead, we do with it what we do with everything else. We degrade it. We flatten it. We “democratize” it. We cheapen it. We disrespect it. We parade it. We use it for our entertainment.
We turn the dark into just another mode of the light. We “have preferences.” And we conveniently forget what magicians and prophets of nearly all time have tried to remind us, which is that what we call “light” is in and of itself the darkest void of all.
And then so we can sleep, so we can look at ourselves in the mirror, so we can look at anything at all without screaming in horror, we sprinkle a little rationalization on top.
“But what really is the difference between the sacred and the profane?”
“It really does depend how you look at it. 
“
“Yes, but…”
Meanwhile, the gods wait.
They do not wait in judgment. They do not even wait patiently. They wait as they always do.