Origin from 1972
The historical study of occult practice as it spread through cheap print, correspondence courses and popular societies rather than elite esoteric philosophy. Dates when a widely practiced modern occult system actually began, often a commercial nineteenth or twentieth century innovation.
Facts
Method
Methodhistorical study of occult practice as it circulated among a general readership, through cheap print, correspondence courses and popular societies, rather than among elite or academically trained practitioners 2 Subject
Subjectthe spread of occult ideas and practices, tarot, popular astrology, spiritualism, folk magic manuals, through mass print and popular societies rather than through elite philosophical circles 2 Identity
Field Category Parent FieldHistory of Western Esotericism 1 Origins
Emerged As Named Discipline Learn More
The Occult Leaves the Study and Reaches the Newsstand
The history of popular occultism studies how occult ideas and practices, tarot reading, popular astrology, spiritualism, mail order correspondence courses and mass market grimoires, spread among a general readership through cheap print and popular societies, distinct from the history of elite esoteric philosophy transmitted among trained initiates. Scholars of Western esotericism turned to this material seriously from the 1970s, treating the nineteenth and twentieth century occult revival's popular publishing, from Spiritualist newspapers to Golden Dawn offshoots sold by mail, as historical evidence in its own right rather than as a debased footnote to more respectable esoteric philosophy.
Much of what a general reader today associates with the occult, popular tarot decks, newspaper horoscope columns, correspondence course initiations, descends from this specifically popular and commercial nineteenth and twentieth century print culture rather than from any older continuous esoteric lineage. The atlas relies on the discipline to date accurately when a widely practiced modern occult system actually originated, frequently a nineteenth or twentieth century commercial innovation, rather than accepting a system's own marketing claim to ancient or unbroken descent.
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