OCCULTISM. Occult and occultism have taken on several meanings. Occultism has been the object of a variety of definitions, which for the most part are related to the notion of esotericism. In academic usage, occultism tends to refer to one modern Western esoteric current, that which flourished from the second half of the nineteenth to the first half of the twentieth centuries.

The Terms Occult and Occultism

A distinction must be made between the original adjective occult and the substantive occultism which first appeared in the nineteenth century. Occult has a long history. For example, in the Renaissance it was often used in the expression occult properties, as in Marsilio Ficino's De Vita coelitus comparanda (1486, III, ch. 12), when he described how certain stones can attract celestial influences. Likewise, Cornelius Agrippa, in De Occulta Philosophia (1533, I, 10), explains that they "are called occult properties because their causes lie hidden, so...