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The occult is a category of supernatural beliefs and practices, encompassing such phenomena as those involving mysticism, spirituality, and magic in terms of any otherworldly agency. It can also refer to other non-religious supernatural ideas like extra-sensory perception and parapsychology.
Today, North America hosts a diverse array of beliefs about witchcraft. [1] [2] Indigenous communities such as the Cherokee, [3] Hopi, [4] the Navajo [5] among others, [6] included in their folklore and beliefs malevolent figures who could harm their communities, often resulting in severe punishments, including death. [7]
[1] [2] Often, it arises from ignorance, a misunderstanding of science or causality, a belief in fate or magic, or fear of that which is unknown. It is commonly applied to beliefs and practices surrounding luck , prophecy , and certain spiritual beings, particularly the belief that future events can be foretold by specific (apparently ...
Druidry is also known as Druidism and Neodruidism. The Ancient Order of Druids in America was founded in 1912 as the American branch of the Ancient and Archaeological Order of Druids. [22] Coming from the Druid cultural revivals in the UK in the 18th and 19th centuries, Neodruidry in the U.S. has a long history.
The occult (from Latin: occultus, lit. ' hidden ' or ' secret ') is a category of esoteric or supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of organized religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving a 'hidden' or 'secret' agency, such as magic and mysticism.
Witchcraft or witchery broadly means the practice of and belief in magical skills and abilities exercised by solitary practitioners and groups. Witchcraft is a broad term that varies culturally and societally and thus can be difficult to define with precision, [ 109 ] and cross-cultural assumptions about the meaning or significance of the term ...
By the 1990s many scholars were rejecting the term's utility for scholarship. They argued that the label drew arbitrary lines between similar beliefs and practices that were alternatively considered religious, and that it constituted ethnocentric to apply the connotations of magic—rooted in Western and Christian history—to other cultures.
To Kehoe, citing practices such as drumming, trance, chanting, entheogen and hallucinogen use, spirit communication, and healing as definitive of shamanism ignores the fact that they exist outside of what is defined as shamanism and even play similar roles in nonshamanic cultures, for example chanting in the Abrahamic religions. She argues that ...