Occultism occupies a contested and generative position within the depth-psychology corpus. Sri Aurobindo offers the most systematic philosophical rehabilitation of the term, arguing that occultism is not the pursuit of chimeric miracle but rather the empirical science of supraphysical forces — the discovery of higher orders of cosmic energy operative within and beyond the physical world. For Aurobindo, occultism stands as one of four primary avenues through which Nature opens the inner being, alongside religion, spiritual thought, and direct inner realisation. Jung’s position is more ambivalent: he acknowledges the renaissance of occult interest in his era as a culturally significant symptom of rationalism’s failure and the hunger for living truth, yet he also criticises occultism as a potential source of inflation and as a vocabulary that can obscure rather than illuminate genuine psychological phenomena. Von Franz sharpens this critical edge, observing that occult movements systematically resist psychological interpretation, preferring archaic naming conventions to analytical precision. Hoeller documents Jung’s specific critique of modern occultism while situating it within the Pan-Sophic tradition from which Gnosticism and alchemy equally draw. Place’s historical scholarship reveals how occultist myth-making about the Tarot — however historically unfounded — generated lasting interpretive frameworks. Collectively, these authors map a fundamental tension: occultism as suppressed knowledge deserving re-examination versus occultism as a regressive flight from the disciplined confrontation with the unconscious that depth psychology demands.
occultism might be described as the science of the supernatural; but it is in fact only the discovery of the supraphysical, the surpassing of the material limit
Aurobindo redefines occultism as a legitimate empirical science of supraphysical forces rather than a pursuit of arbitrary miracle, repositioning it within a systematic philosophy of cosmic energy.
, The Life Divine, 1939thesis
There are four main lines which Nature has followed in her attempt to open up the inner being, — religion, occultism, spiritual thought and an inner spiritual realisation and experience
Aurobindo situates occultism as one of four foundational evolutionary instruments through which Nature advances the spiritual development of the human being.
, The Life Divine, 1939thesis
Occultism has enjoyed a renaissance in our times that is without parallel — the light of the Western mind is nearly darkened by it.
Jung diagnoses the modern revival of occultism as a culturally symptomatic reaction to rationalist exhaustion, framing it as a dangerous popular response to the failure of scientific specialisation to satisfy deeper human needs.
, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, 1966thesis
a first stage of religious belief and practice which would be occult after a crude inchoate fashion in its character and interests, not yet spiritual; its main element would be a calling in of small life-powers and elemental beings
Aurobindo traces a developmental genealogy of occultism from primitive life-magic toward higher spiritual forms, distinguishing crude occult practice from genuine supraphysical knowledge.
, The Life Divine, 1939supporting
a discrediting and condemnation of most of the occult elements which seek to establish a communication with what is invisible, a reliance on the surface mind as the sufficient vehicle of the spiritual endeavour
Aurobindo argues that rationalist religion’s suppression of occult elements impoverishes spiritual life and ultimately empties both religion and intellect of genuine vitality.
, The Life Divine, 1939supporting
There is a revival of interest in magic, in Freemasonry symbolism, in Rosicrucian symbolism, and in astrology and the occult sciences — and the followers of these movements all reject psychology.
Von Franz identifies the contemporary occult revival as systematically antagonistic to depth psychology, preferring traditional supernatural naming to psychological interpretation of the same phenomena.
, Puer Aeternus: A Psychological Study of the Adult Struggle with the Paradise of Childhood, 1970supporting
There is a revival of interest in magic, in Freemasonry symbolism, in Rosicrucian symbolism, and in astrology and the occult sciences — and the followers of these movements all reject psychology.
Von Franz reiterates the structural incompatibility between occultist movements and analytical psychology, showing how occult terminology conceals rather than reveals psychic reality.
, The Problem of the Puer Aeternus, 1970supporting
Occultism: in Pan-Sophic tradition, 28-29; modern, 31, 209; Jung’s criticism of, 35
Hoeller maps occultism’s location within the Pan-Sophic tradition that also encompasses Gnosticism and alchemy, while noting Jung’s specific critical distance from its modern forms.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982supporting
widespread and ever-growing interest in all sorts of psychic phenomena, including spiritualism, astrology, Theosophy, parapsychology, and so forth. The world has seen nothing like it since the end of the seventeenth century.
Jung contextualises the occult revival historically, comparing it to the flowering of Gnostic thought and diagnosing it as a cultural expression of the psyche’s compensatory reaction to one-sided rationalism.
, Civilization in Transition, 1964supporting
the intellect makes such frequent use of magical apotropaic words like ‘occult’ and ‘mystic,’ in the hope that even intelligent people will think that these mutterings really mean something
Jung critiques the defensive weaponisation of the word ‘occult’ by the rationalising intellect as a means of dismissing genuine psychic phenomena without engaging their reality.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting
IV. ON OCCULTISM of the unconscious, just as this world is contained in ‘Orthos.’ The unconscious is of unknown extent and is possibly of greater importance than consciousness.
Jung’s section heading ‘On Occultism’ frames the unconscious as the depth-psychological counterpart to occult conceptions of invisible reality, suggesting structural homology between the two domains.
, Collected Works Volume 18: The Symbolic Life, 1976supporting
occultists began to interpret the Tarot as an ancient book of knowledge that was created in Egypt by a group of sages possibly under the direction of Hermes Trismegistus
Place documents how occultist myth-making retrofitted the Tarot with a fabricated Egyptian pedigree, generating influential but historically unfounded interpretive frameworks that persist to the present.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting
Fortune-tellers and occultists continued to reiterate the story of the Tarot’s Egyptian origin and one can find examples in bookstores even today of authors who continue to repeat these unfounded theories as plausible histories.
Place demonstrates the persistent cultural authority of occultist narrative despite historical refutation, showing how romantic myth sustains practical divinatory use of the Tarot.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting
occultism, 76
Neumann’s index references occultism in passing as a classified topic within his larger study of the Great Mother archetype, indicating its presence in the broader symbolic field without elaboration.
, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955aside
he had to rely also on the aid of subliminal experience; for the subliminal too must have been more active, more ready to upsurge in him, more capable of formulating its phenomena on the surface
Aurobindo contextualises proto-occult intuition in early humanity’s reliance on subliminal faculties before rational intellect supervened, connecting occultism’s roots to an earlier mode of knowing.
, The Life Divine, 1939aside