Modern Occultism
An exploration
The occult is an idea. Simple in concept yet seismic in impact, it is that there exist unseen dimensions or intersections of time, all possessed of their own events, causes, intelligences, and perhaps iterations of ourselves, whose influence is felt on and through us.
Since relatively early in the revival of the search for ancient spiritual concepts during the Renaissance — by spiritual, I mean extra-physical — the outlook that I describe has been broadly, though not exclusively, known by the Anglicized term occult from the Latin occultus for secret or hidden.
We who live in the West are in peculiar situation regarding our religious past. With regard to religious history, our storyline differs from the development of religions in many of the Eastern cultures. In the East, including China, India, Japan, and a variety of Asian cultures, you encounter a religious continuum that is very ancient. Vedism or Hinduism is one of the oldest continuously observed religious cultures in the world. The same as true of Buddhism. In the Persian world, although dominated by Islam, this is true of Yezidism and Zoroastrianism. Although certain societies, like mainland China, are officially atheistic there exist ancient Taoist, Confucianist, and Animist traditions, which have timelines that extend back millennia.
