Occultism IS Evil, Satanic and Spiritually Dangerous. The practice of witchcraft is debilitating to the soul and ultimately destructive. An adventure can be designed to teach everything from Christianity to Zoroastroism. To outsiders looking in, however, we appear to turn our backs on their good intentions toward something they perceive as dark and wrong. Hard looking in, hard to reach out.
Cults are almost by definition closed societies.
It is part of the fun of the hobby. It is this very cult system which has, I believe, worked to make role playing such a large hobby. This elitism bound us all together and made us strong as a group. Our close-knit society of gamers made role playing grow into an international phenomenon. We then circled the wagons when we perceived outsiders beginning to attack our hobby.