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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.
Occultism is one form of mysticism. [a] This list comprises and encompasses people, both contemporary and historical, who are or were professionally or otherwise notably involved in occult practices, including alchemists, astrologers, some Kabbalists, [b] magicians, psychics, sorcerers, and practitioners some forms of divination, especially Tarot.
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.
Esoteric schools of thought are schools, currents or movements which have an occult system of thought based on esoteric knowledge. They aid to prepare the individual toward spiritual evolution . It almost always deals with some system of esoteric cosmology and contain some common themes as rebirth , occult history of human evolution, planes of ...
The terms esoteric and arcane can also be used to describe the occult, in addition to their meanings unrelated to the supernatural. It also describes a number of magical organizations or orders, the teachings and practices taught by them, and to a large body of current and historical literature and spiritual philosophy related to this subject.
The chapter "How Panurge consulteth with Herr Trippa" of Gargantua and Pantagruel, a parody on occult treatises of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, contains a list of over two dozen "mancies", described as "common knowledge". [2
Wicca has also inspired a great number of other traditions in Britain, Europe and the United States, most of which base their beliefs and practices on Wicca. Many movements are influenced by the Movement of the Goddess , and New Age and feminist worldviews.
She developed the term left-hand path as a translation of the term vamachara, an Indian Tantric practice that emphasised the breaking of Hindu societal taboos by having sexual intercourse in ritual, drinking alcohol, eating meat and assembling in graveyards, as a part of the spiritual practice.