I’d imagine the crux of them being interested in the occult is wanting to live forever. They think themselves gods and probably are searching for the fountain of youth be it through science or rituals and shit. ofc it’s all bullshit and there’s no such thing as the paranormal but I guess it could be a fun hobby.

I think you have a bit of a cartoonish view of rich people. Some are as you’ve said, the celebrity billionaires and so on, but a lot of them are actually doing just fine. They have the time and money to follow their passions, spend time with loved ones, experience the world, etc. Their wealth enables them to achieve the type of self-actualization that most people don’t. Meanwhile, the working classes are further and further atomized, alienated, forced to compete with one another, and generally ground down such that personal relationships become harder to cultivate and maintain, and the pathway to self-actualization gets further and further away.

It’s tempting to think that rich people are mostly soulless ghouls, and working people are much more in tune with their humanity and community, but frankly, that’s cope. The wealthy are the ones who have the means and opportunity to thrive, while everyone else has to spend most of their time and effort just getting by. Not all wealthy people are doing well, not all working people are doing poorly, but the Charles Dickens ideal of the rich and miserable Scrooge and the poor but happy Cratchit family is the exception, not the rule.

This isn’t a defense of the wealthy. Quite the opposite. It’s a damning indictment of the status quo. Everyone deserves the opportunity to thrive, and pretending that wealth doesn’t make it easier to do so obscures the reality and makes it harder to argue that wealth should be shared and controlled by everyone.

I think you’re doing a lot of unnecessary psychoanalyzing. It seems to me that rich people are into the occult simply because it’s a thoroughly human interest. The rich associate other rich people so that’s who they get together with. “The occult” in the western imagination is when relatively well off white men get together, put on robes and blindfolds, and jerk each other off. But Wicca, and Vodou, and Catholic Folk Magic, and Hoodoo, etc. all qualify as occult as well. Everyone’s into it and they always have been. I don’t see why the basic motivations to practice or seek help from practitioners of the occult would be that different between the rich and the poor.

The only difference is that the rich have the time and resources to devote to that kind of exploration while everyone else doesn’t. And, of course, that’s not a necessary fact of humanity, that’s just a reflection of our particular fucked up society. Pre-capitalist societies had roles for people who were “into the occult” too-- they were just called shamans or priests or healers. And they didn’t have to worry about making rent every month.