notes-occult

much of what is usually called "the occult", e.g. divination, karma, alchemy, is thought of as a sort of "physics of spirituality", or, a set of "laws" or regularities found in our universe which can best be described in terms of spiritual and moral entities and values such as goodness, souls, fairness, etc.

For example, in karma, the idea that there is a law that whatever evil you do will come back to you, or that it will come back to you threefold.

when people say that they believe that these things "don't exist", what i think they really mean is that they don't believe:

that there exists laws relating/governing these items beyond what can be derived from the union of: * the definitions of the terms * the laws of physics, i.e. the laws which govern "physical" things like atoms

so, we see that to assert disbelief in these sort of occult things is a kind of reductionism; we are saying that if you know the laws of atoms, and then you consider what happens as people (who are made of atoms) live their lives, that you won't discover additional regularities that only come into play when atoms are in a pattern of "soulfulness" or when they are in a pattern of "justice"; so you don't need to introduce additional laws to describe what happens in these situations.