Is New Age Occult? Mystery, Gnosis, and Spiritual Discernment, Part Eight: What kind of person does a practitioner become?

This is the last part of an 8-part series. You can start with the Introduction here.

We began this series with a seemingly simple question: Is New Age occult? Along the way, that question opened into much larger ones that we’ve been exploring. What does “occult” actually mean? How does Christianity understand its own relationship with mystery and unseen reality? How do my roots and my Wesleyan understanding of what Methodists call the Quadrilateral of scripture, tradition, reason, and experience shape spiritual discernment?

What happens when we understand creation panentheistically, as existing within the presence of God, as I do? What can ritual, earth-centered spirituality, and Goddess imagery contribute to our spiritual imagination? And, if gnosis means direct experiential knowledge of the sacred, who gets access to it? As I wrote in the previous part, one thing has become especially important to note: Mystery is not the same thing as secrecy. The Divine is available to everyone and cannot be possessed by anyone.

With that in mind, we can return to the original question. Is New Age spirituality occult?

In the older historical sense of the word, some of it certainly is. Some New Age practices draw directly or indirectly from traditions historically described as occult or esoteric. Astrology, divination, channeling, energy work, and various forms of metaphysical teaching all have connections with the history of Western esotericism and other spiritual traditions concerned with unseen dimensions of reality. But “New Age” and “occult” are not identical categories.

One thing I feel is important is understanding that even when a practice can accurately be described as occult, that description alone does not tell us whether it is spiritually healthy. It does not tell us whether it is true or false, whether it is liberating or harmful. All it tells us is something about the kind of practice or tradition we are discussing.

It still must be evaluated in order to answer those questions. The evaluation leads to discernment. My spiritual background gives me useful resources for that task. I can ask what scripture contributes to the conversation without pretending that a single verse necessarily ends it. By scripture, I mean the Holy writings of various belief systems. I can listen to the traditions of those who practice a spiritual path without assuming that every inherited judgment is beyond reconsideration. I can use reason to examine spiritual claims critically. I can take experience seriously without assuming that every interpretation of an experience must be correct.

In the end, I can ask about the fruits. What kind of person does the practice develop? Do they deepen love, compassion, justice, humility, responsibility, and freedom? Do they have greater reverence for other people and for the Earth? Do they take time for thoughtful discernment, or do they demand unquestioning belief?

Does the practice empower people, or create dependency? Does it cultivate humility before mystery, or spiritual grandiosity? Does it invite exploration, or does it use fear to prevent questions? Does it deepen the practitioners capacity to love?

These questions can be asked of New Age spirituality. They can be asked of Theosophy, Wicca, paganism, Druidry, esoteric traditions, and Goddess spirituality. They must also be asked of Christianity.

Something does not become spiritually healthy merely because it is labeled Christian. History gives us far too much evidence to make that assumption. Likewise, something does not become spiritually dangerous merely because it is labeled pagan, occult, mystical, or New Age.

I do not believe mystery belongs only to Christianity, nor does gnosis belong only to initiates of a particular practice. I do not believe the Divine is confined to the boundaries human beings draw around religious traditions, and I do not believe openness requires abandoning discernment.

The deeper question beneath “Is New Age occult?” is not whether we can place New Age spirituality safely inside or outside a particular religious boundary. The deeper questions are these: What do we mean by “occult”? Why has the word become so strongly associated with fear? What is the difference between mystery and secrecy? Who, if anyone, owns spiritual knowledge? By what criteria do we discern whether a spiritual path or practice is genuinely life-giving?

If the occult is simply “that which is hidden,” perhaps the task of spiritual life is not to possess hidden knowledge but to become more attentive to the mystery that has been present all along.

The sacred may be hidden not because it has been withheld from us,
but because we are still learning how to see.

Is New Age Occult? Mystery, Gnosis, and Spiritual Discernment: Part Seven: Gnosis — Who Owns Spiritual Knowledge?

 

This is part seven of an 8-part series. You can start with the Introduction here.

Throughout this series, I have been exploring what happens when we recover the older meaning of “occult” as hidden or esoteric rather than simply using it as a synonym for evil.

As you know by now, my own journey has led me through Methodist Christianity, a broadly Anglican framework of discernment, panentheism, and studies of Theosophy, Wicca, neo-paganism, and Druidic traditions. Along the way, I have come to value ritual, earth-centered spirituality, and feminine imagery of the Divine. There are aspects of esotericism in all of these spiritual pathways. The concept of esoteric traditions raise another important question:

Who gets access to spiritual knowledge?

The word gnosis generally refers to direct or experiential knowledge, particularly knowledge of spiritual reality. Historically, many esoteric traditions have distinguished between teachings available publicly and teachings reserved for initiates.

I understand some of the reasons for this. Certain teachings require context and some practices require preparation. Spiritual experiences can be misunderstood. Symbols may carry layers of meaning that are difficult to communicate without deep study. Responsibility and maturity matter. Community can matter.

However, I do not believe that genuine access to the Divine is ultimately the property of a chosen few. My panentheistic understanding leads me in another direction. If all things exist within God, and if divine presence permeates creation while also exceeding it, then the possibility of encountering the sacred is woven into existence itself.

Gnosis may be cultivated and deepened. It may need interpretation. It may need to be tested through reason, community, tradition, experience, and attention to its fruits. No priesthood, institution, lineage, guru, initiated circle, or spiritual elite owns the Divine.

This leads me to a clarification that I find important: Mystery is not the same thing as secrecy. Something may be hidden because someone has deliberately concealed it, but something may also be hidden because it is profound, subtle, difficult to perceive, or impossible to exhaust. A mystery does not necessarily cease to be a mystery when it becomes available to everyone. The ocean is available to everyone, but no one possesses the ocean. Love is available to everyone, but no definition exhausts it. The natural world surrounds us yet remains filled with realities we are still discovering. The Divine may be universally present and still remain infinitely mysterious.

Perhaps, then, gnosis need not mean possession of secret information that makes one spiritually superior to others. Gnosis can mean awakening to a reality that has always been present. In that sense, the spiritual journey is not necessarily about gaining admission to an exclusive circle. It may be more about learning to perceive.

This does not mean that every spiritual claim is equally true. It does not mean that teachers are unnecessary or that traditions have nothing to teach us. It does not mean that preparation, discipline, study, or initiation can have no value. It means only that these things should serve awakening rather than create spiritual monopolies.

There is a significant difference between saying: “This takes time to understand.” and saying: “Only people like us are permitted to know.” There is a difference between guiding someone into deeper understanding and creating dependency upon those who claim exclusive access to truth. This is where esoteric traditions and Christian traditions must both be willing to examine themselves.

Christianity has also claimed exclusive spiritual authority and churches have also controlled access. Clergy have also positioned themselves as necessary intermediaries. Institutions have also confused stewardship of a tradition with ownership of the Divine. The temptation to become gatekeepers of mystery is not unique to occult or esoteric traditions.

I propose that the healthiest spiritual traditions are those that offer maps without claiming to own the territory. They teach practices, preserve wisdom, provide community, and help people interpret experience. They also recognize that the mystery itself remains greater than the tradition. If that is true, then the original question, “Is New Age occult?” begins to look different. Perhaps the most critical issue is not whether a practice can be placed inside or outside the category of “occult.”

Maybe the question is what we do with mystery once we encounter it.

Next in the series

If mystery is not the same thing as secrecy, and if no tradition owns access to the Divine, then labels alone cannot tell us whether a particular spiritual practice is trustworthy.

In the final article, I will return to the original question, “Is New Age occult?” and suggest that the deeper task is not labeling but discernment: asking what a spiritual path produces in human lives and in our relationships with one another, the Earth, and the sacred.

Is New Age Occult? Mystery, Gnosis, and Spiritual Discernment, Part Six: Ritual, Goddess, and an Expanded Spiritual Imagination

This is part six of an 8-part series. You can start with the Introduction here.

In the previous article, I described my understanding of the Divine as broadly panentheistic: everything exists within God, while God remains infinitely more than everything that exists. From that perspective, creation can be encountered as sacred. Nature, body, symbol, season, and material reality need not be obstacles to spiritual life. They can become ways of encountering and responding to the Divine.

This understanding has shaped my appreciation for ritual. My studies of Theosophy, Wicca, neo-paganism, and Druidic traditions have given me an increased appreciation for symbolism, sacred space, the rhythms of nature, seasonal observance, and embodied spiritual practice.

Ritual itself was not foreign to my Christian background. Christianity is deeply ritualistic. For instance, baptism uses water. Communion uses bread and wine. Churches use candles, vestments, music, sacred words, gestures, seasons, and symbolic spaces. Christians kneel, stand, sing, pray, fast, feast, process, anoint, bless, and lay on hands. Ritual is one of the ways human beings embody meaning. It brings together body, imagination, memory, community, place, and intention.

For that reason, I do not regard any spiritual practice as suspicious simply because it is ritualistic. What matters is what the ritual expresses and what it cultivates. Does it deepen attentiveness, create connection, encourage reverence? Does it help embody values that might otherwise remain abstract? On the other hand, does it foster fear, manipulation, dependency, or claims of power over others? The same questions should be asked of Christian ritual and non-Christian ritual alike.

My encounters with Goddess spirituality have similarly expanded my spiritual imagination. I find Goddess spirituality useful and empowering. For me, this does not necessarily mean replacing a male God with a competing female deity. Rather, it means recognizing that religious language shapes the way we imagine the Divine and therefore shapes the way we imagine ourselves and the world.

When masculine imagery for God becomes so dominant that it is mistaken for the actual gender of God, our spiritual imagination becomes unnecessarily narrow. If the Divine ultimately transcends human gender, then masculine language cannot exhaust the reality of the Divine. Feminine and maternal images can reveal dimensions of sacred reality that exclusively masculine language may obscure.

Goddess spirituality has helped me engage questions of embodiment, creativity, relationship, nature, power, gender, and sacred presence in ways I find meaningful. It has also reminded me that symbols are not merely decorations added to theology. Symbols help shape consciousness.

The images through which we imagine the Divine influence what kinds of authority we regard as sacred, what bodies we value, how we understand power, and where we expect to encounter holiness. This does not mean that every use of Goddess imagery is theologically identical or that every form of Goddess spirituality makes the same claims.

It means that I am willing to engage those images as spiritually meaningful.

My framework for discernment gives me room to ask what such imagery reveals, how it relates to scripture and tradition, whether it withstands reasoned reflection, and what I experience through engaging it. My panentheistic perspective gives me room to encounter the Divine through more than one symbolic vocabulary.

My Wesleyan roots continue to bring me back to the question of fruits. I ask, what kind of life does this spirituality cultivate? Does it enlarge love, deepen compassion, empower people without teaching them to dominate others? Does it increase reverence for the Earth and for embodied life? For me, these questions are more useful than simply asking whether a symbol or ritual originated inside or outside Christianity.

My studies of esoteric traditions also introduced another question. If “occult” refers to hidden knowledge, who has access to that knowledge? Must spiritual knowledge remain the possession of initiates? Is direct experience of the sacred reserved for a chosen few?

Or, is mystery something else entirely?

Next in the series

Esoteric traditions have often distinguished between public teachings and knowledge reserved for initiates. I understand some of the reasons for that distinction, but I do not believe the Divine ultimately belongs to a spiritual elite.

In Part Seven, I will explore gnosis, initiation, and the difference between mystery and secrecy.

Is New Age Occult? Mystery, Gnosis, and Spiritual Discernment, Part Five: A Panentheistic World, Finding the Sacred Within Creation

This is part five of an 8-part series. You can start with the Introduction here.

In the previous articles, I have explored the older meaning of “occult,” Christianity's own relationship with mystery, and the Wesleyan framework that continues to shape my spiritual discernment. That framework of bringing Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience into conversation has led me toward an understanding of the Divine that is broadly panentheistic.

By panentheism, I mean that all things exist within God and God is present in and through creation, while also being infinitely more than creation. This is not quite the same as saying, “Everything is God.” Creation is not the totality of God. God cannot be reduced to the universe. But neither is God absent from the universe. Nothing exists outside the sustaining presence of the Divine. For me, this changes the way I encounter the world.

Nature is not merely a backdrop for human "salvation." The body is not merely a temporary container for the soul. Matter and spirit are not necessarily enemies. The Earth is not simply a collection of resources placed here for human use. Creation can be encountered as sacred, not because every part of creation is identical with God, but because all creation exists within and participates in divine presence.

This understanding resonates with the sacramental imagination I find within Christianity. A sacramental worldview recognizes that material things can communicate spiritual meaning. Water can become more than water without ceasing to be water. Bread and wine can carry layers of meaning that exceed their ordinary use. Oil, touch, words, music, silence, architecture, seasons, and shared meals can become ways of encountering grace.

Panentheism extends that intuition. If God is present throughout creation, then the possibility of encounter is not confined to officially designated sacred spaces. A forest may become a place of prayer. The turning of the seasons may become a spiritual teacher. The body may become a site of wisdom rather than an obstacle to spirituality. Earth herself may call us into reverence and responsibility.

This does not mean that every spiritual impression is automatically divine or that discernment becomes unnecessary. Quite the opposite. If the sacred can be encountered throughout life, discernment becomes a continual practice. My panentheistic understanding also shapes the way I understand Jesus.

Jesus remains central to my spiritual life, but I do not understand his centrality as requiring me to believe that God is absent everywhere else. I encounter in Jesus a profound revelation of divine love: love expressed through compassion, healing, justice, inclusion, liberation, relationship, and self-giving. Following Jesus, for me, means learning to perceive and participate in that love.

It does not require me to believe that wisdom, grace, beauty, or genuine encounter with the sacred can occur only within explicitly Christian settings. This is one reason I have been able to learn from Theosophy, Wicca, neo-paganism, Druidic traditions, and other forms of spirituality without feeling that I must simply exchange one identity for another.

Different traditions offer different symbolic languages. They make different claims, and those differences matter. But difference does not necessarily mean that no genuine insight can cross a boundary.

My studies of earth-centered traditions have deepened my awareness of season, place, embodiment, and the living world. They have encouraged me to notice dimensions of spiritual life that Christianity has sometimes neglected or subordinated. This has not led me away from the sacred. In many cases, it has helped me see the sacred more widely. Once creation itself can be encountered as existing within divine presence, ritual begins to look different as well.

So do feminine images of the Divine.

Next in the series

My encounters with Wicca, neo-paganism, Druidry, and Goddess spirituality did not simply give me additional beliefs. They gave me new symbolic languages and new ways of attending to body, Earth, season, ritual, and the Divine.

In Part Six, I will explore ritual and Goddess spirituality, and why I find them useful and empowering without necessarily experiencing them as a rejection of my Christian roots.

Is New Age Occult? Mystery, Gnosis, and Spiritual Discernment: Part Four: My Roots and a Way of Discernment

 

This is part four of an 8-part series. You can start with the Introduction here.

So far in this series, I have argued that “occult” is a more complicated word than popular usage often suggests. Historically, it refers to what is hidden or concealed, not automatically to what is evil. I have also suggested that Christianity itself contains a deep engagement with mystery, unseen reality, ritual, and mystical experience.

The question therefore becomes not simply what is “occult,” but how we discern among spiritual claims, practices, and experiences.

My own approach begins with my Christian formation. My foundational Christian teaching from childhood was Methodist, the Wesleyan expression of the Anglican tradition. That formation remains an important part of me, even as my spiritual life has expanded into other areas of study and experience. Methodism gave me a Christianity concerned not only with what one believes, but with how faith is lived.

During my childhood, I learned that believing about God is different from believing in God. As an adult returning to church for a while after decades studying other traditions, I came to understand more fully that grace matters. Transformation, compassion, and community matter. As a spiritual individual, I know that the fruits of spiritual life matter.

My understanding of Jesus' teachings is broad and progressive. I find value in an approach that brings scripture, tradition, reason, and experience into conversation with one another. I do not see these as four simple boxes to check, nor do I imagine that they always agree.

Scripture matters, but scripture must be interpreted. We encounter it through language, history, culture, translation, and our own assumptions. I can speak of the scriptures of Christianity, but as Paul referenced in Acts 17:28 and later Christian philosophers built upon, there are universal truths to be found in the scriptures of many traditions.

Tradition carries accumulated wisdom. It gives us the voices of those who have wrestled with questions of faith before us. But tradition also bears the limitations of history. It can preserve profound insight and prejudice, as well as structures of power.

Reason allows us to question, examine, compare, and remain intellectually responsible. A spiritual claim does not become true merely because someone experiences it intensely or attributes it to God.

Experience also matters. Faith is not merely a set of propositions inherited from others. It is lived. It is encountered in bodies, relationships, communities, suffering, beauty, nature, ritual, prayer, and moments that may resist easy explanation. Experience, however, must also be interpreted. A profound experience may be real without our first explanation of it being correct.

That principle applies equally to visions, mystical experiences, charismatic phenomena, dreams, channeling, divination, intuition, and encounters described in other spiritual traditions. For me, this creates a framework of discernment rather than a system of automatic answers.

I can ask what Scripture contributes to a question without pretending that a verse ends every discussion. I can listen to tradition without assuming that every inherited judgment is beyond reconsideration. I can use reason without reducing all reality to what can presently be measured. I can honor experience without making every subjective impression self-authenticating. This approach gives me room to remain rooted in the teachings of Jesus while also being open to mystery.

Jesus remains central to my spiritual discernment. I encounter in his life and teachings a call to radical love, compassion, healing, justice, liberation, inclusion, and awareness of God's presence. For me, following Jesus does not require fear of every spiritual vocabulary that developed outside Christianity. It does require discernment.

This is likely where my Wesleyan formation continues to speak most clearly: What are the fruits? What kind of person am I becoming? What kind of community does a specific spiritual practice create? Does it deepen compassion? Does it encourage justice? Does it enlarge love? Does it foster humility? Does it free people, or make them dependent? Does it help us become more attentive to the sacredness of others?

These questions do not solve every theological problem. But they prevent spiritual discernment from becoming merely an exercise in labeling. My own use of this framework eventually led me toward a larger question.

What if all creation exists within the presence of God? In the aforementioned scripture, Acts 17, Paul quotes pagan philosophers Epimenides (For in him we live and move and have our being) and Aratus (For we are indeed his offspring).

What if God is not simply present at particular times, in particular buildings, or through particular religious traditions? That question led me toward panentheism.

Next in the series

My Wesleyan roots and Anglican framework give me a way to remain grounded while continuing to explore. But my understanding of God has increasingly become panentheistic: everything exists within God, while God remains infinitely more than everything that exists.

In Part Four, I will explore what that means for creation, nature, embodiment, and the possibility of encountering the sacred beyond conventional religious boundaries.

 

Is New Age Occult? Mystery, Gnosis, and Spiritual Discernment: Part Three: Christianity and the Hidden

 

This is part three of an 8-part series. You can start with the Introduction here.

In the Introduction to this series, I suggested that we cannot meaningfully ask whether New Age spirituality is “occult” until we define the word. Historically, occult refers first to what is hidden, concealed, or beyond ordinary perception. It does not automatically refer to something that is evil.

That creates an immediate complication for Christianity. Christianity itself is filled with the hidden. The biblical tradition includes dreams, visions, prophecy, angels, healing, mystical encounters, symbolic actions, and experiences of divine presence that cannot be reduced to ordinary sensory perception.

The Christian tradition that followed is no less mysterious. It includes contemplatives and visionaries, stories of divine encounter, practices of discernment, sacramental theology, and centuries of reflection on experiences that resist easy explanation. If the mere presence of unseen spiritual realities makes something “occult,” Christianity would have difficulty exempting itself.

Mystical experience itself cannot be the dividing line. Christianity has a rich mystical tradition. Its mystics have spoken of union with God, divine presence, sacred darkness, interior transformation, visions, silence, and experiences for which ordinary language seems inadequate. Mysticism is not an alien intrusion into Christianity. It is part of Christianity's history.

The same is true of ritual. Christianity is profoundly ritualistic. Water, bread, wine, oil, candles, incense, sacred words, gestures, seasons, fasting, feasting, pilgrimage, laying on of hands, and communal prayer all embody spiritual meaning. Ritual engages more than intellect. It involves the body, imagination, memory, community, symbol, and place. It creates a space in which meaning is not merely explained but enacted.

This matters when Christians encounter rituals from outside their own tradition. A ritual does not become spiritually suspect merely because it involves candles, circles, chanting, sacred objects, symbolic gestures, or attention to particular times and seasons. Christianity has its own versions of many of these things.

The relevant question is not simply: Is this ritual? The more useful questions are:

What does this ritual mean? What kinds of relationships does it cultivate? What understanding of reality does it embody? What does it do to and for the people who participate in it?

This is where I find a distinction between mysticism and manipulation useful.

Mysticism, at its healthiest, involves openness to a reality greater than oneself. It tends toward receptivity, humility, transformation, and an awareness that the mystery encountered cannot be completely possessed or controlled.

Manipulation moves in another direction. It seeks control, certainty, power over others, or guaranteed spiritual outcomes. It may create dependency on a teacher, leader, institution, or system. It may discourage questions. It may use fear to maintain authority.

But here again, Christianity cannot use this distinction only to judge others. Christian communities can also become manipulative. Christian leaders can claim unquestionable spiritual authority. Christian institutions can exploit fear. Christian practices can become superstitious. Christian language can be used to control rather than liberate. A Christian label is therefore no guarantee of spiritual health, just as an “occult,” “pagan,” or “New Age” label is not proof of spiritual danger.

Perhaps the more useful distinctions lie elsewhere: Contemplation or control? Receptivity or manipulation? Humility or spiritual superiority? Freedom or dependency? Love or fear?

These questions do not eliminate theological differences. Different traditions make genuinely different claims about God, humanity, revelation, salvation, and the nature of spiritual reality. But labels alone cannot do the work of discernment. If Christianity wishes to speak meaningfully about “the occult,” it must first acknowledge its own relationship with mystery. It must distinguish the mysterious from the sinister and the unseen from the evil. It must also ask how we decide what is spiritually trustworthy.

For me, that question begins not with Wicca, Theosophy, paganism, or New Age spirituality. It begins much earlier in my spiritual experience. It begins in childhood, within the Wesleyan stream of Christianity.

Next in the series

My spiritual journey did not begin outside Christianity. Its foundation was laid within Methodism.

In Part Three, I will explore how that foundation still shapes my approach to spiritual discernment and how Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience provide a framework for remaining both rooted and open.

Is New Age Occult? Mystery, Gnosis, and Spiritual Discernment: Part Two: What Do We Mean by “Occult”?

Books pictured: Reiki for Beginners by Victor Archuleta, Linda Goodman's Star Signs, Meditations on the Tarot, A Journey into Christian Hermeticism by Anonymous, The Golden Bough by James Frazer, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead, with commentary by C.G. Jung;  also a set of Mythic Tarot Cards, a set of Chi balls, a sheathed dagger, and a sitting Buddha candle holder with candle

This is part two of an 8-part series. You can read the Introduction here.

The word “occult” comes with a lot of baggage. In popular Christian usage, “occult” is often treated as synonymous with evil, demonic, forbidden, or spiritually dangerous. As a result, once the word is applied to something, the discussion may effectively be over. The label itself becomes the judgment.

Historically, however, the word has had a broader, more neutral meaning. Derived from the Latin occultus, it refers to that which is hidden, concealed, or not immediately visible. In the history of spirituality and esoteric thought, “the occult” has generally concerned hidden dimensions of reality, unseen forces, and forms of knowledge not readily accessible through ordinary perception. This is the understanding of the term that I am most comfortable with.

Because of my varied spiritual background, I am familiar with “occult” in this older, more traditional sense. I do not automatically hear the word as a synonym for evil. That does not mean I regard every practice described as occult as wise, harmless, or spiritually beneficial. It means only that the word itself does not settle the question.

This matters because several different meanings are often collapsed into one. Something may be occult in the historical sense because it concerns hidden or esoteric knowledge. Something may be considered forbidden within a particular theological tradition. Something may be judged harmful, manipulative, or destructive. These categories can overlap, but they are not identical.

Esoteric does not automatically mean forbidden. Forbidden does not automatically mean evil. Unfamiliar does not automatically mean dangerous.

If we fail to make these distinctions, “occult” becomes less a useful description than a container for religious anxiety. This is particularly important when discussing something as broad as “New Age spirituality.” New Age is not a single religion with a single creed, authority, or set of practices. It draws from Western esotericism, Eastern religious traditions, alternative healing, psychology, metaphysics, mysticism, indigenous traditions (sometimes respectfully and sometimes problematically), and modern self-development culture.

Some New Age practices have clear historical connections to traditions commonly described as occult. Astrology, divination, channeling, energy work, and various forms of esoteric teaching may reasonably be placed within that history.

Saying that something has an occult or esoteric history tells us what kind of tradition we are discussing. It does not yet tell us whether that tradition is true, false, wise, foolish, liberating, exploitative, spiritually nourishing, or harmful. Those are different questions.

The question “Is New Age occult?” might be too broad to be particularly useful. We might instead ask: What particular belief or practice are we discussing? What does it claim about reality? What kind of spiritual authority does it claim? What is the practitioner required to do? What are its fruits?

That last might be one of the more important questions. Before we can answer those questions, however, we must be willing to examine Christianity itself. If “occult” simply means hidden, mysterious, or concerned with realities beyond ordinary perception, then Christianity itself presents us with an interesting complication.

The Bible is filled with dreams, visions, angels, prophecy, healing, symbolic actions, and encounters with divine mystery. Christianity has its own long tradition of mystics, contemplatives, visionaries, and sacramental practices.

So where, exactly, is the boundary?

Next in the series

If Christianity itself makes room for mystery, unseen realities, ritual, and direct encounters with the Divine, then perhaps the dividing line is not simply between the “Christian” and the “occult.”

In Part Two, I will explore Christianity and the hidden and ask whether the more useful distinction may be not between mysticism and the occult, but between mystery and danger, contemplation and control, spiritual encounter, and spiritual manipulation.