Occultism: Summoning Your First Spirits
Occultism is a ritual-magic mod where you summon spirits — also called demons — from The Other Place to work on your behalf. This guide covers the ideas you need before your first ritual.
Spirits and their ranks
Spirits are supernatural entities that perform magic for the summoner. Researchers identify four major ranks, in ascending power:
- Foliot — the lowest class, used for manual labor and minor tasks.
- Djinni — the most commonly summoned, versatile in intelligence and power.
- Afrit — powerful spirits used for major artifacts and possession.
- Marid — the strongest identified class, extremely dangerous to summon.
How magic works here
You do not cast spells directly — you bind spirits and let them do the work: storing vast amounts of items, mining in dimensions, crafting enchanted tools and jewelry, and more. A spirit is normally summoned bound, meaning it stays under your control.
Getting started
Your path is: learn how rituals are performed, summon a low-rank spirit, and put it to work. The next guides cover the ritual steps in detail and what spirits can automate once summoned. Occultism's in-game book documents each ritual and spirit as you unlock it, so keep it on hand.
The newer build is far larger
Occultism grew substantially between versions, and in several places doubled or tripled:
- Crafting — 178 recipes on 1.21.1 against 57 on 1.20.1
- Rituals — 158 against 66
Dimensional Mineshaft — 194 against 86- Crushing — 240 against 180
- Spirit Fire — 27 against 13, Spirit Trade — 14 against 3
Two categories exist only on 1.21.1: Crystallize with 54 recipes and Stonecutting with 32, plus a 2-recipe sawmill.
Almost any guide will describe the newer build, and a 1.20.1 world will be missing a great deal of it.
Crushing is the biggest system
At 240 recipes on 1.21.1, crushing is the largest category in the mod — this is where spirit-powered ore multiplication lives, and it is the practical reason to summon anything at all.
The dimensional mineshaft
194 recipes describe what the mineshaft can produce, which makes it the second-largest system and the mod's answer to mining.
Scale
304 pages, 162 items, 142 blocks, no structures — everything here is built and summoned rather than found.