What Is Occultism? The Hidden Sciences from Agrippa to Today
What is occultism? A history of the occult from hidden qualities and Agrippa's occult philosophy to Lévi, Theosophy, the Golden Dawn and the modern occult.
Occultism is the study and practice of what is believed to be hidden in nature, the human being and the cosmos: secret forces, correspondences and spiritual realities that ordinary perception and conventional science do not reach. The word comes from the Latin occultus, "hidden", and in its long history it has named three related things: the "occult sciences" of astrology, alchemy and magic; the Renaissance "occult philosophy" of Agrippa and his predecessors; and the modern occultist movement that took shape in nineteenth-century France and Britain with Éliphas Lévi, Papus, the Theosophists and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
The Word "Occult": From Hidden Qualities to Hidden Knowledge§
In medieval natural philosophy, "occult" was a technical term rather than a sinister one. Scholastic writers distinguished the manifest qualities of things, such as heat, cold, moisture and dryness, which the senses could detect, from occult qualities, whose effects were evident but whose causes were not. The magnet's pull on iron, the power of certain stones and herbs to heal, the influence of the moon on the tides and the action of poisons were all classic examples. Thomas Aquinas wrote a short treatise on the occult works of nature, and the question of how such hidden virtues operated occupied physicians and philosophers for centuries.
From this sense grew the idea of the "occult sciences" (scientiae occultae), disciplines that claimed to understand and use these hidden powers. The secondary meaning of "occult" as "secret" or "reserved for initiates" came later and gradually overlaid the first. By the nineteenth century the word suggested a body of concealed wisdom handed down by adepts, and in the twentieth it acquired, in popular speech, the darker associations it often carries today.
The noun is younger still. Historians usually trace the French occultisme to a dictionary of new words published in 1842, and it was Éliphas Lévi and his followers who turned it into the name of a movement. In English, "occultism" became common in the 1880s through the writings of Helena Blavatsky and A. P. Sinnett, whose book The Occult World (1881) introduced many readers to the term.
The Occult Sciences: Astrology, Alchemy and Magic§
For most of its history, occultism meant a set of practical and theoretical disciplines. Astrology studied the influence of the heavens on earthly events; alchemy studied the transformation of matter and the preparation of medicines; natural magic sought to use the hidden sympathies between things; and ritual magic addressed angels, demons and spirits through names, seals and prayers. Divinatory arts such as geomancy, chiromancy (palm reading) and physiognomy were often counted among them. Many of these disciplines came to Latin Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries through translations from Arabic, and the Islamic world had its own rich classification of them (see Islamic occult sciences).
The occult sciences were not marginal in their own time. Kings employed astrologers, universities taught astronomy and astrology together, and alchemy overlapped with metallurgy and pharmacy. Their story, and the controversies they provoked, is told in our survey of the occult sciences.
Occult Philosophy in the Renaissance§
The second great meaning of the word is philosophical. In fifteenth-century Florence, Marsilio Ficino translated Plato and the Corpus Hermeticum and developed a theory of how the spirit of the world linked the stars to human bodies and souls. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola argued that magic and Kabbalah could confirm the truth of Christianity. Building on both, the German humanist Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa composed De occulta philosophia libri tres, drafted around 1510 and printed in full at Cologne in 1533. Agrippa divided the universe into elemental, celestial and intellectual worlds and explained how a learned magus could draw down powers from each.
Agrippa's book gave the tradition its name and became the standard encyclopaedia of Western magic. Readers can consult the 1651 English translation in our reading room as Three Books of Occult Philosophy, and its contents are discussed in our article on Agrippa's Three Books. The wider movement, from Ficino to Robert Fludd, is surveyed in occult philosophy.
Occultism as a Modern Movement§
The third meaning, and the one most scholars have in mind when they speak of "occultism" proper, is the movement that emerged in the nineteenth century. Its founding figure was Alphonse-Louis Constant, who wrote as Éliphas Lévi. His Dogme et rituel de la haute magie (1854–1856) presented magic as an ancient science of the "astral light", unified by the Kabbalah and the tarot, and promised to reconcile religion with reason. Lévi's disciples and readers, among them Papus and Stanislas de Guaita in Paris and the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in London, built initiatory orders and published systematic textbooks of "occult science".
At the same time, the Theosophical Society, founded in New York in 1875, offered a global synthesis of Western occultism and Asian religion, while Spiritualism and the older practice of mesmerism made contact with unseen forces a popular, almost domestic, experience. Together these strands formed what historians call the occult revival, with distinct national forms in France, Britain and Germany.
What modern occultists believed§
Despite their differences, nineteenth-century occultists shared several convictions. They believed in a primordial wisdom, older than the religions, preserved in symbols and secret traditions. They believed in subtle forces, variously called the astral light, animal magnetism, od or vital fluid, that linked mind and matter. They held that the human being had a hidden constitution with higher faculties that could be developed by training. And, crucially, they insisted that their knowledge was scientific: the occult was not opposed to science but its unrecognised frontier.
Occultism and Esotericism: How Scholars Use the Terms§
Scholars today generally treat "Western esotericism" as the broad field and "occultism" as one of its currents. The historian Antoine Faivre used "occultism" for the nineteenth-century movement from Lévi onwards, and Wouter Hanegraaff has proposed a sharper definition: occultism is the form esotericism takes when it tries to come to terms with a disenchanted world, borrowing the language of science, evolution and psychology to defend older beliefs about correspondences and hidden powers. On this view, mesmerism, Spiritualism and Theosophy are characteristically "occultist" because they translate traditional ideas into modern terms. For the larger framework, see what is Western esotericism.
Sociologists added other concepts. James Webb described an "occult underground" of rejected knowledge, Colin Campbell spoke of a "cultic milieu" in which unorthodox ideas circulate, and Christopher Partridge coined "occulture" for the reservoir of occult themes in modern popular culture.
Occultism, Science and Rejected Knowledge§
The relationship between occultism and science is one of the subject's central themes. In the seventeenth century many occult qualities were absorbed into the new natural philosophy, while astrology and ritual magic lost their academic standing. In the nineteenth century occultists embraced electricity, magnetism and evolution as analogies for their own teachings, and some eminent scientists investigated mediums and telepathy. The results, examined in our articles on psychical research and occultism and science, did not persuade the scientific community: claims such as clairvoyance and mesmeric fluids have not been confirmed by controlled experiment. Historians nonetheless take these debates seriously, because they reveal how the boundaries of legitimate knowledge were drawn.
The Occult in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries§
Occultism did not end with the fin de siècle. Aleister Crowley's Thelema, Dion Fortune's Society of the Inner Light, Gerald Gardner's Wicca and, later, chaos magick all grew from the soil of the occult revival. A second revival in the 1960s and 1970s carried occult ideas into the counterculture and the New Age, and the internet has made once-rare texts and practices universally available. These developments are covered in contemporary occultism and the occult today.
Occultism has also left a deep mark on literature and art, from Bulwer-Lytton's Zanoni and the poetry of W. B. Yeats to the abstract painting of Kandinsky and Hilma af Klint, a story told in occult literature and art.
Frequently asked questions§
What does "occult" actually mean?§
"Occult" comes from the Latin occultus, meaning hidden or concealed. In medieval science it described qualities, such as magnetism, whose effects could be observed but whose causes were invisible. Only later did it come to mean secret knowledge reserved for initiates, and later still to carry the sinister associations of popular usage.
Is occultism the same as Satanism or black magic?§
No. Most historical occultists were Christians, Theosophists or independent seekers who regarded their work as philosophical and spiritual. Satanism as an organised religion dates only from the 1960s and is a distinct subject. The equation of the occult with devil-worship owes much to polemics and to modern horror fiction.
Who founded modern occultism?§
No single person founded it, but Éliphas Lévi is usually regarded as its most influential early figure, since his books of the 1850s and 1860s defined occultism as a unified science of magic. Papus in France, Helena Blavatsky in the Theosophical Society and the founders of the Golden Dawn in Britain built on his work.
What is the difference between occultism and esotericism?§
In current scholarship, "Western esotericism" is the umbrella term for a family of currents including Hermeticism, Christian Kabbalah, alchemy, Rosicrucianism and Theosophy. "Occultism" usually refers more narrowly to the nineteenth- and twentieth-century movement that presented these traditions as a modern science.
Sources and further reading§
- Three Books of Occult Philosophy — Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, 1533
- Dogme et rituel de la haute magie — Éliphas Lévi, 1856
- The Occult World — A. P. Sinnett, 1881
- The Occult Underground — James Webb, 1974
- Access to Western Esotericism — Antoine Faivre, 1994
- New Age Religion and Western Culture — Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 1996
- The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern — Alex Owen, 2004
- Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture — Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 2012