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From Lat. occultus, “secret, hidden,” the term “occult” has reference to phenomena, processes, and practices in nature, the spiritual world, or the extraterrestrial sphere that point to hidden forces that escape both normal sensory observation and the knowledge that rests on it. From the end of the 19th century, the term “occultism” came into use primarily for practical or theoretical dealings with transcendental phenomena of this kind. Today it is usually related to the occult worldview that is b…

In distinction from Indian or pseudo-Indian theosophical societies (see 4) of the Blavatsky type, theosophy in the traditional sense represents the concern in all religions to penetrate the deepest mysteries of the deity. In the early church and the Middle Ages “theosophy” was another term for theology. It came to be restricted to special kinds of Christianity only in the 18th century and now applies analogously to non-Christian phenomena. 1. Features As distinct from metaphysics and philosophy, theosophy relies generally on revelation. If this is not found in the …

T. Vaughan first introduced the term “anthroposophy” at the beginning of the 18th century in the title of a book. Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) adopted it to advance his Adyar theosophy. 1. Development Steiner was born on February 27, 1861, in Kraljevec, which was then in Austria, near the Hungarian-Croatian border. Early in life he had spiritist and occult experiences. He was also attracted by the solemnity of Roman Catholic worship and by the exact sciences. As a student of nature and literature at Vienna, he developed his ment…

In contrast to astronomy, which operates mechanistically, astrology rests on the conviction that the character and destiny (Fate and [Good] Fortune) of people can be decisively affected by the position of the stars at the moment of their birth. Only heavenly bodies that may be seen with the naked eye are relevant: the sun, the moon, the planets, and the “houses” to which these belong in the zodiac. Fixed stars outside the zodiac may figure in the calculations in a supplementary capacity. The demonstrable physical influence of heavenly bodies (esp. the sun) on terrestrial processes,…

In antiquity the word “esoteric” was used for knowledge that was imparted only to an inner circle of fully initiated students, while “exoteric” denoted that which in principle was accessible to everybody. In a broader sense the esoteric soon became anything that is entrusted only to a select group on the basis of certain qualities. In contrast to secret societies, whose very existence is meant to be secret, such a circle is a nonsecret order or group that guards a secret. We find such circles in all cultures in the cultic field, as well as philosophical and, increasingly, political fields. Whe…

Since the ninth and tenth centuries the Gk.-Arab. word alchēmeia has denoted the attempt to change base metals into silver and gold. This effort has been more than a mere curiosity in the history of science and technology, however, for in alchemy the smelting, alloying, and tinting of metals have been linked with the belief that one can help what is thought of as living nature achieve its quickest possible development and fulfillment. It was probably in Alexandria in the second century b.c. that popul…

Contrasting with animism, spiritism (or spiritualism) believes that all things have spirits, or souls, that the dead and other spiritual beings have fellowship with each other, and that humans can make contact with the souls of the dead and with spiritual beings. Spiritists believe that the spirits of the dead can cause noises or make things disappear, give answers to questions about the hereafter, explore the other world, and offer information as to the future. 1. We can distinguish the various kinds of spiritism according to the media by which these messages are tran…

[German Version] Holy mountains play a major role in many religious traditions. Little is known of the origins of this phenomenon and the real reasons for it – whether specific mountains were holy from the outset or came to be considered holy after the example of others. Apparently, though, neither Olympus, Kailas, Fuji, nor the mountains of Yahweh – not to mention the high places with sanctuaries of Canaanite and Germanic deities – owe their holiness simply to their physiogeographic features. As …

[German Version] Firmicus Maternus, Julius, member of a respected Sicilian family. Trained in both Latin and Greek, toward the end of this career as a lawyer c. 335 he composed the most comprehensive Latin handbook of astrology, the Matheseos libri VII (ed. Kroll-Skutsch, 1897–1913, repr. 1968; ET: Astrology Theory and Practice: Matheseos Libri VIII, 2005). He converted to Christianity, probably from philosophically excessive astral beliefs; then in De errore profanarum religionum (ed. Turcan, 1982) he was the first Christian (c. 350) to summon the emperors Consta…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies The term vision (from Lat. visio) denotes a clear perception of images of individual scenes or long sequences (some coupled with auditory [Auditory hallucination] or olfactory elements) in a waking state. Visions can arise spontaneously or be induced by rhythms, asceticism, meditation, psychedelic drugs, or rituals (Rite and ritual). They are experienced without exception as coming from without, although related external stimuli cannot be verified. Religiously dispose…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies 1. Phenomenology Western, Christian connotations of the concept of the soul, imposed on the religio-historical evidence by outside studies, must be generally excluded if the soul is understood as the principle of manifestations of life that are perceptible (or culturally considered to be perceptible), although they are rarely categorized under a common umbrella term. It is therefore reasonable to speak of a multiplicity of souls – for example four among the Ob-Ugrians (Hasenfratz, Einführung, 38–41), five among the Proto-Germanic peoples ( ib…

[German Version] Virtually all over the world and among the most varied cultures, excavators of temples, fortifications, dikes, and other significant structures have found human and animal skeletons and vessels with vegetables, household objects, money, or decorations beneath foundations. In the case of human remains, it is often difficult to determine whether the remains simply belong to a resident who was interred there; often enough, injuries or wounds, e.g. to the skull, though also the arrang…

[German Version] I. Archaeology – II. Religious Studies – III. House Church (in Early Christianity) – IV. Sociology I. Archaeology Functionally, the house was a building which, in contrast to a palace, served as a private dwelling. While circular structures have been identified in prehistoric Palestine, from the Chalcolithic to the Early Bronze Age the broad-room type of house dominated, that is, a one-room and one-floor structure with a single entrance on the long side. In addition, there were sometimes apsidi…

[German Version] Typology of religion groups religions according to shared features. Unlike the phenomenology of religion, which studies variations of particular phenomena in religions, typology of religion studies religions as totalities to determine common features. I. Typical Singularities G. Mensching was one of the few notable students of religion who followed F.D.E. Schleiermacher in treating type as “ambiguous: on the one hand . . . a common feature within different religious organisms, on the other, what is ‘typically’ singular and peculiar …

[German Version] In religious studies, intoxication is often understood as the state that is induced through the intake of euphoric substances. This is misleading because in an unfavorable setting or basic psycho- mental disposition of the consumer, it is not euphoria but states of anxiety (Anxiety and Fear) and depression that are induced. For this reason, it is preferable, in the history of religion and culture, to define intoxication as a state of enhanced emotionality induced by psychoactive d…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies Prostitution, the “oldest profession,” is a form of surrendering one’s own body, tendentially at will, to other people for sex. It can have various motivations, but here we shall consider primarily its religious context. Sacral prostitutes, male and female, have often been associated with temples. The phenomenon was widespread in the ancient Near East, with prostitutes devoted to various goddesses. Even in Jerusalem, prostitutes of both sexes ¶ apparently were not banned from the temple until after the Babylonian Exile (586 bce). According t…

[German Version] The care and style of one's hair is governed by the conventions prevailing at any one time, and a full head of hair is regarded everywhere as a sign of health, while its loss through violence or age is seen as dishonor or as powerlessness and decreasing vitality. This has resulted in hair being ascribed with a fairly constant symbolic and magical significance. As the hair (and nails) also continue growing shortly after death, they are seen as bearing the power to maintain and rais…

[German Version] The fugitive soul is represented pictorially in many forms. Late, principally Roman sarcophagi depict Prometheus (Culture hero) forming a human being as a statuette, to which Athena adds a butterfly (Gk ψυχή/ psychḗ ). Frequently the soul is represented as a bird. The soul bird itself comes from ancient Egypt. In the earliest period, a bird resembling a stork, later a falcon, was considered the embodiment of divine powers called ba. Probably on account of a later shift in meaning, this term was already translated by Horapollon as psychḗ or “soul.” In the Old Kingdom…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies Suicide is the violent taking of one’s own life by one’s own hand; it also includes voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide. Cultural traditions vary greatly regarding the admissibility of suicide. In tribal cultures, the aged and infirm in the Kalahari or other extremely arid regions ask their relatives for death. Kings and chiefs in African tribal cultures must kill themselves when the fortunes of war turn against them or they grow frail. To avoid dying in bed…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Practical Theology I. Religious Studies Especially in Germany, occultism (from Lat. occultum, “what is hidden [in the mysteries]”) became a collective term for all theories and practices dealing with “extrasensory” and “supernatural” forces after the appearance of H.P. Blavatsky’s theosophy in the 19th century. It differs from spiritualism in explaining spiritualist phenomena as being caused by an unspecified natural force. But since religions, Gnosis, and esotericism a…

[German Version] I. Natural Science – II. Religious Studies – III. Practical Theology I. Natural Science Parapsychology is the study of supranormal psychic phenomena (also known as psy-phenomena) such as extrasensory perception, telepathy, telekinesis or psychokinesis, remote viewing or second sight, spiritual healing, out-of-body and near-death experiences. All these phenomena are (psychic) effects from a distance, and therefore mental connections that obviate physical causal connections. Scientific research i…