There are many requests for help in studying “the occult,” as it is popularly called. One individual asking this question is probably interested by such subjects as alchemy, ghosts, magic, palmistry, witchcraft, UFOs, Bigfoot or yoga. Another character is probably inquisitive about para-psychology, that is involved with the medical investigation of clairvoyance, reincarnation Ritual For Hire and other paranormal phenomena. The variety of interests protected by means of either class is distinctly huge. Therefore, this guide will no longer try and provide titles coping with precise topics within the Occult Sciences or Parapsychology however will direct the reader to widespread assets and bibliographies. Emphasis is at the maximum modern-day and complete sources.
The New York Public Library has an in depth collection of substances on the occult. The General Research Division collects a huge range of topics such as esoteric magic (as opposed to level magic, that is accumulated with the aid of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts), spiritualism and witchcraft. There are mainly robust collections on divination and Theosophy. The Science, Industry and Business Library collects substances on alchemy and ufo. Books on oriental mysticism and yoga are gathered via the Asian and Middle Eastern Division. The Slavic and Baltic Division collects, in the authentic language, the works of Russian mystics, which include H.P. Blavatsky, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture collects titles on voodoo, santeria and related subjects.
Parapsychology, the department of psychology which offers with the scientific research of paranormal or psychic phenomena, is accumulated through the General Research Division. Occultism, numerous theories and practices involving a perception in and understanding or use of supernatural forces or beings. Such ideals and practices—mainly magical or divinatory—have befell in all human societies for the duration of recorded history, with extensive variations both of their nature and inside the mind-set of societies towards them. In the West the time period occultism has obtained intellectually and morally pejorative overtones that do not gain in other societies where the practices and beliefs worried do not run counter to the triumphing worldview.
Occult practices centre at the presumed capability of the practitioner to govern herbal laws for his own or his customer’s gain; such practices have a tendency to be regarded as evil only when additionally they involve the breaking of ethical laws. Some anthropologists have argued that it isn’t always possible to make a uncomplicated distinction between magic—a foremost element of occultism—and faith, and this may properly be actual of the non secular structures of a few nonliterate societies. The argument does now not keep, however, for any of the important religions, which regard each natural and moral law as immutable.
