Those elements of occultism that appear to be not unusual to all human societies—divination, magic, witchcraft, and alchemy—are handled in depth beneath. Features which might be particular to Ritual For Hire Western cultures, and the records of their improvement, are treated best in brief.
The Western tradition of occultism, as popularly conceived, is of an ancient “mystery philosophy” underlying all occult practices. This secret philosophy derives ultimately from Hellenistic magic and alchemy on the only hand and from Jewish mysticism on the alternative. The fundamental Hellenistic supply is the Corpus Hermeticum, the texts associated with Hermes Trismegistos, which can be involved with astrology and other occult sciences and with non secular regeneration.
The Jewish detail is furnished by the Kabbala (the doctrine of a mystery, mystical interpretation of the Torah), which have been acquainted to scholars in Europe because the Middle Ages, and which was linked with the Hermetic texts during the Renaissance. The ensuing Hermetic-Kabbalistic lifestyle, known as Hermetism, integrated both theory and magical exercise, with the latter supplied as natural, and accordingly excellent, magic, in assessment to the evil magic of sorcery or witchcraft.
Alchemy become additionally absorbed into the body of Hermetism, and this link became reinforced in the early seventeenth century with the arrival of Rosicrucianism, an alleged mystery brotherhood that applied alchemical symbolism and taught mystery understanding to its fans, growing a religious alchemy that survived the upward thrust of empirical science and enabled Hermetism to bypass unscathed into the duration of the Enlightenment.
During the 18th century the tradition became taken up through esoterically inclined Freemasons who could not locate an occult philosophy within Freemasonry. These enthusiasts endured, both as character students of Hermetism and, in continental Europe, as businesses of occult practitioners, into the nineteenth century, when the boom of non secular skepticism led to an increased rejection of orthodox religion via the educated and a consequent look for salvation via different way—inclusive of occultism.
But the ones fascinated grew to become to new varieties of occultism rather than to the Hermetic way of life: on the one hand to Spiritualism—the practice of alleged normal communication between the residing and the spirits of the useless via a dwelling “medium”—and on the alternative to Theosophy—a mix of Western occultism and Eastern mysticism that proved to be a most effective propagator of occultism however whose influence has declined markedly over the past 50 years.