Occultism

Occultism is the study and practice of what its followers hold to be hidden forces or laws of nature, inaccessible to the ordinary senses. The word gained currency in France in the nineteenth century, notably with Éliphas Lévi and then Papus, who brought magic, Kabbalah, astrology and tarot together into a single system. People still speak of the “occult sciences,” a historical expression that does not mean they are sciences in the modern sense.